Categorized | Holidays
Housing Problems?????
Posted on 26 June 2009
With the number of homeless people rising and the continual growth of the council housing lists.
What do you think of this solution.
Park Homes! No, I don't mean the caravans you see on the holiday sites, I mean the prefabricated homes with tiled roofs, up to three bedrooms, central heating and double glazing.
These things look just like a modern bungalow, they can be purchased for between 60 to 90,000 (probably cheaper if you buy in bulk)
The councils must have acres and acres of land on which to site these homes and rent them out.
Construction time is a matter of hours and within a short space of time would go a long way towards alleviating the housing crisis.
The Park Homes could be rented for say, 5 years, then at the end of that time, sold off and removed from site to be replaced with new ones for continuation of rental.
This would create employment, housing opportunity and would alleviate the strain on benefits and council services.
It would give those living in mortgage misery a way out and would cause a drop in the house prices in the UK.
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June 26th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
You are absolutely right! Around York we have quite a number of these sites and we have friends living on one of them. It’s about 8 miles from the City centre and three miles from the nearest market town. It has a monitored electronic gated entrance and is beautifully laid out. The buildings quite shocked me the first time i went to visit and i was taken through all four designs which are on site. They are simply beautiful. Lovely pine exteriors with tiled roofs, well laid out gardens and decent safe walkways around each property plus tarmac drives and circuit road. Each has a stunning kitchen, most with granite worktops (our friends have the matching granite on the floor in tiles) and top of the range Neff appliances of the owners choice. All the rooms are large and airy. The walls are plasterboard so you can paint or wallpaper to your hearts content and probably the best thing about them is they are so cheap to heat! You don’t pay council rates either as you pay a site fee so overall you are actually paying out less than a third of what you would to the local council. Banks and building society’s will give you a mortgage on them as they will last as long as a conventional house providing they are maintained correctly. It’s a win win situation for any council who really wants to look after its rate payers.
Let’s not forget that we are only just starting to see the edges of this horrendous recession, it’s going to be with us for a long time. In about 18 months we should start to see a bit of light on the horizon but until then it’s batten down the hatches time for the u.k. and any ideas like this should be applauded not denigrated by anyone. Unless you have a substantial amount of money off shore don’t think that you’re not going to be seriously affected. Our existing councils should be sorted out so that only the genuine people who want to help are left at the helm and the rest should be made redundant – that should sort the wheat from the chaff!
June 26th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
You will find some of thes fabricated bungalows are better made than you think and a well kept and maintained bungalow is easily capable of lasting more than 25 years.
Also there are prefabs from the WW2 still in existence in areas all over the country although few and far between, and still lived in.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Good idea but also there are hundreds and hundreds of empty buildings and old factories that lots of homeless people would be willing to help convert into housing if it meant they would have a home at the end of it.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
A council estate where the land is owned by the council and the property subsidised by the tenant. .
You pay all that money to buy something which in the end will be worthless.
Please bear in mind, everyone is in the same boat, from the individual to the council. There is no money available at present. You can’t spend what you haven’t got. That is why everything is in a mess now.
I was brought up in a council estate in the back streets of Newcastle just after the war. If you think things are hard today, you are mistaken. In the 1950’s they tried the experiment of prefabricated housing. It was a disaster in many areas. They became more run down than the houses. They looked awful after a few years. Then realising they needed more affordable housing they discovered building tower blocks was the solution. Wow, there is no end to all of this.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Such a beautiful idea, and then Politicians get hold of it and duck it up!
June 26th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
I think thats a great idea. Write to your local MP about it.
Carousel – Whats up with council estates then?
June 26th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
nice idea, but the cost of this would be astronomical. far better to give them a tent each and tell em to get on with it.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
My mum lives in a park home. They’re good little houses and cheap to build, I think you may have a point there.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Prefabs – hundreds of thousands of them were built after WW2 to house many of the ex servicemen and their families. They were only supposed to last for 10 years and were meant to be temporary accommodation, but many are still standing and lived in today – albeit radically modernised. They were very cheap to construct and made nice dwellings, much better than park homes in my opinion.
The biggest problem is suitable land, we have to be very careful where we site any homes built due to floods as we’ve seen in Gloucester and Hull last year. We really need to make use of existing derelict industrial land more, but also, we need to build up local services and public transport. It’s not all about just building houses. All the govts done so far is build – and not even consider shops, schools, utilities and hospitals.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
The council would still need planning permission for this, and some smaller boroughs just don’t have the land to build anything on.Our local authority is always trying to build affordable social housing but inevitably not all schemes are approved, quite often local residents disapprove etc.
Its unrealistic to suggest your plans would be beneficial for all. Most people waiting for social housing are doing so for many social reasons. Normally young families,cant afford a mortgage,cant afford privately rented.
There is so much demand for social housing, not just from local homeless families, but also people waiting for moves on medical grounds, or emergency moves for social reasons. People who are struggling to pay their mortgage just wont be considered for social housing as they currently have a home and would be pointed in the direction of the CAB to help with their finances.
Local councils may have sold off their properties but it doesn’t mean the purse is full.
People have to realise the reality of social housing-quite often you are housed on a rougher estate’s-thats the nature of social housing. Many local authorities are now implementing deposit bonds so people can consider the option of renting privately-a positive step to your first home.
People have to be pro-active in trying to resolve their own housing situations. Its only going to get worse.
Building prefabb houses is expensive and not good value for money.
What is the answer? Helping people realise that there is more to life than social housing, and if you want it expect to wait. Otherwise either get a job and look for privately rented accomadation.
EDIT-The goverment now states that all local authorities have to prevent homelessness. So by providing expert advice and helping people secure private rented we are still meeting our duty of care. 250 families were helped last year in my own department with private accomadation,thus resulting in a decrease of the use of tempaory accomadation(no longer defined as B&B).
People must no longer be expected to be spoon fed. People are now expected to be pro-active in resolving their own housing issues,simply because there isnt enough social housing to go around.By all means, relay your ideas to local authorities, but dont expect to get very far.