Affordable Housing - Have Your Say

By BudePeeps | Thursday, January 12, 2012, 16:03

A new housing campaign group called Housing Voice is conducting a nationwide enquiry into the affordable homes crisis which seeems particularly pertinent to towns like Bude.

Lovely housing - if you can afford it!

At the firt meeting held in exeter in December, the consensue reached was that in the south west:

House prices are higher than the national average (more than 8 times the average salary)
Wages are lower than the national average with high seasonal unemployment
There is a lack of social housing
Over-reliance on high cost private sector homes (the gap between the number of homes required and the number being built is projected to be 750,000 by 2025)
A disproportionate amount of second homes and holiday lets (some villages are 50% second homes)
Welfare cuts, especially local housing allowance rates are affecting those in private rental
Rising house prices and severe curtailment of mortgages
Lack of supported housing for the elderly and vulnerable

Housing Voice is keen to hear from people who cannot afford or are struggling to afford decent housing, so have produced a survey. This may be completed online here.

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Comments

As to there being no social housing in Bude, what is behind Splash? What is Swallow Close and Woodfield Road?

It has always been difficult to get a roof over ones head. Like millions of people I lived in digs and bedsits for a good many years eventually getting my toe onto the bottom rung of the ladder after seven or eight years of scrimping and saving. I worked in London for three years but the property situation was appalling. The bottom rung of the ladder was well out of my reach as in some places old Victorian two-up and two-down terraced houses would have new Rolls-Royces outside! At work people on higher grades at the top points of their incremental scale did have a chance but the money was very tight. "Contours" not of height but of property prices would be drawn on maps followed by contours of travelling costs. Maidenhead seemed to come out tops and was popular. By forming car pools they could just about pay their mortgages. One engineer said that he had been on Croydon's housing list for eighteen years. The problem he said was that he was being out (Anglo Saxon word) ed by immigrants so he had to buy his own house. He was not a happy bunny.

Self-build needs to be considered. Possibly if people could do bricklaying at evening classes it might be a tremendous help to them later on. The problem is of course getting the land. Someone I know bought a swampy plot from a farmer. He managed to drain the land by restoring a neglected watercourse and he built a fine house. Unfortunately his turning of a pigs ear into a silk purse seemed to cause bad feeling. Life is so hard!

By Davey1000 at 20:08 on 12/01/12
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