Watch BOOMERS, exclusively on Nebula, today: go.nebulatv/boomers?ref=tomnicholas Everyone on the production team (and there's a lot of them!) has worked so hard on BOOMERS. It's packed with incisive interviews and investigation into intergenerational inequality, housing, pensions, and much more. All told through a globe-trotting journey to uncover the lives and legacy of the Baby Boomer generation. It also features my mum! Thanks so much to everyone who's already signed up to Nebula in anticipation. I can't wait for you all to see it and to hear what you think!
My father told me about when he finished school at age 15 and worked as a running boy in Stockholm in 1949. Landlords were so desperate to find tenants that they let people "test-live" their apartment one month for free. Yeah! "- Creditworthiness? I'm a 15 year old running boy." "- Deal!" And those were smack in the city center, the same apartments that now cost $600,000 to buy (can't rent anything in the entire city anymore). Btw, when he was fired as a running boy, which seems to have happened frequently, he said that he just walked across the street, saw a note in the window of another shop looking for running boys, and was hired. Life seems to have been much simpler back then. With human to human relations, and using reason. Instead of this monstrous corrupt anonymous bureaucracy "regulating" everything as an imposing middleman between us all everywhere all of the time. So that no one is allowed to simply solve the problem at hand anymore.
So basically, "About 70 years ago, people had problems that they worked together to solve. Then in the 80's they realized they could make A LOT more money if they undid those solutions for the next three generations of people...who hadn't lived through all that stuff before, and therefore had no idea what was being done to them until it was much too late." Copy and paste this for most societal problems we have right now; and freely share it between the UK and USA.
Don't forget, "Brainwash them into thinking there's no other way for the economy to work while they get scammed by private companies owning basic public services."
Not entirely true, in the 1950s the anti-labour/socialist education came into being. As the children were indoctrinated through their schools & Hollywood. As their grandparents began to retire & pass away, neo-liberalism crept in. The implosion of the Iron Curtain 30 years later gave the neo-liberals all the ammunition they needed to bend the Boomers & GenX into submission. I lived through the entire charade & became one of its critical opponents. I hope younger generations will never make the same mistakes but human experience is fickle because myths are what civilisation is built on from the dogma of religion to the dogma of democracy. We live in a post modern world where capitalism & democracy are synonymous terminologies but they are contradictory. In the words of Orwell, "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
America wouldn't even en be here if it wasn't for a 2% tax. It seems war may have been a big part of all that growth. I remember the 70's weren't that great for Britain or America. So many more rich people now.
More rich people but a much higher proportion of lower middle class and homeless people. Doesn't sound better to me, doesn't sound better for normal people to me. @@craigpoer
What really concerns me is a huge number of people simply deny this is an issue and just say "you're all lazy" and "if you don't like it just buy a house". Like being sympathetic is an impossible thing now. My girlfriend has worked for the NHS for nearly 20 years, she has excellent qualifications and by any standards is hugely successful, knowledge and valuable to society. When we were house hunting together, every property we found had a waiting list of at least 20 people and the prices were outrageously out of our price range, even with her excellent job. Can anyone seriously, with a straight face, tell me that a GP of 20 years should be unable to afford her own home? And that a waiting list of 20 families per property is in any way acceptable??
To answer you, no, of course not. I dont understand how we have such a huge proportion of the population who are struggling so much yet theres a significant lack of effort being put in to solving the problem. We have a government for a reason, and they're seriously lacking here. If anyone is lazy, its the government, not you/your girlfriend.
What really angers me, is that it's the right-leaning Tories that caused the issue, and they have the gall to blame the problem on immigration. People will vote Reform because this has not been explained to them propoerly or they're too ignorant to listen.
@@colinofay7237 We voted against Corbyn. Failing voting for him, we did not choose to install him by any means despite that. We have the government we have for a reason.
@@czarkusa2018I'm broadly on your side but are you seriously suggesting we should have had a people's revolution to install Jeremy Corbyn as our glorious leader?
Liberal Capitalism is not going to solve our problems for good niether is Fascism or reactionary politics going to help as it barely has the the problem pinned down or lacks in principle
In a Word... Greed! Some of us don't like to take their fair share... And would rather take the whole damm cake! Along with the table AND the chairs! And leave nothing behind for the rest of us! And then when we complain we get labelled as anti-Capitalists! Not that I mind being called that! 😊 Greed is a VERY powerful motivator for some! And the damage it can cause is simply incalculable! Given the highly restrictive resources... That we ALL have to share!
@@amymak93 Here in Canada Mulroney was our version of Thatcher/Reagan, at around the same time. I wonder how many other countries had a similar leader or shift in/around the 80s?
I love that thatcher on housing is essentially: "cheap council housing is too much government dependency, so we will replace it with an expensive government-subsidized mortgage program" so smart bestie
It was tactical, she knew that in the future it would be easier to get rid of the mortgages than it would be to get rid of the housing. And she was right.
This video just once again reiterates a point for me. One for which my father, just doesn't understand. He goes on about how Reagan and thatcher etc were great for the economy. All the while not understanding what they effectively did. My analogy is essentially they sold the seed grain. Essentially they took assets of the public state, one with had broader intangible benefits, and sold them off. In doing so it looked "great" for their economies. They cut rates and lowered taxes (sort of) so everyone was like omg everything is roaring. The issue is, what they produced was a net weaker result. Less competitive companies. More of expensive housing. Systems rife for exploitation. Government isn't the answer for everything. I don't think the government should be in the business of making smart phones for example. The issue is, some aspects benefit the broader society and make that society more competitive globally. More expensive housing means higher wages needed. If those wages are going to landlords that is an unproductive use of capital relative to goods or services. Expensive education means a lower productivity workforce as education is fundamentally a method for labor saving creation. Lastly, having Healthcare seek profits means lower employment mobility and reduced entrepreneurial drive. All and all, the thatcher, and Reagan and mulroney in my case, FUCKED, us.
I saw it put a bit differently. Thatcher+Reagan instituted certain economic measures/solutions that WERE necessary at the time, but needed to be temporary, because in the long term these solutions become a problem decades later. If they had been temporary, as they very well should have been, the problems of today could have easily been avoided. To add to that, its not like this was the first (or second) time that economic measures/solutions became harmful later on
Perfectly said…. I wish there was a way out of it but the British people seem resilient to common sense and instead favour easy immediate financial gains over economic stability and swooning over immigration as the root cause of issues rather than looking at its own history.
Summed it up. Thatcher didn’t want poor people to be lazy leaning on councils. But the rich can be lazy leaning on the inefficient economic system they profit off. 😢
@@johnmccrossan9376I wish I could give a direct url, but youtube blocks those. Just type into google "truthorfiction" and then the quote, and it should return the truthorfiction site breakdown on its resurgence of popularity, as well as when he said it and why. I'll try to send the url in the next message.
@@johnmccrossan9376 Truthorfiction has an article about it if you want to look it up. I tried to cite it exactly, but those replies look like they've been deleted.
More and more people might face a tough time in retirement. Low-paying jobs, inflation, and high rents make it hard to save. Now, middle-class Americans find it tough to own a home too, leaving them without a place to retire.
This is precisely why I like having a portfolio coach guide my day-to-day market decisions: with their extensive knowledge of going long and short at the same time, using risk for its asymmetrical upside and laying it off as a hedge against the inevitable downward turns, their skillset makes it nearly impossible for them to underperform. I've been utilizing a portfolio coach for more than two years, and I've made over $800,000.
I haven't watched the video yet and have no idea what you'll be saying in it, but I'm going to assume the the "Almost" in the title means that Thatcher (and by extent, Reagan) fucked everything up.
she only had a 4 minute segment in a 43 minute video... she increased homeownership by giving discount (33%) and no deposit on property that was owned by the government (council homes)...... but stopped new council homes from being built because she took the money and used it for tax cuts for the wealthy and paying down debt
This is so true. Im 55, gen x. In the late 80s i bought my own flat, rental properties were non existent, and getting a 100% mortgage was cheaper than renting. In the early 90s however there was a banking crisis, and mortgage interest rates went from 2.5% to 16% in under 2 years. My flat was repossessed leaving me and my 2 small boys homeless. I was given a council flat, and as my family grew transferred to a house. I have been in my current post war built council house for almost 24 years. I am very lucky to be on an old style tenancy agreement my kids however unless they can buy, do not have that choice. They have to rent from private landlords at extortionate prices. Its shameful.
@GillMosley-wo9mf they have this land for growing food because they were built with experience of WW2 and WW1 in mind. Food self-sufficiency was a HUGE deal back then, and still is, though people perceive food self-sufficiency as less important now.
im 44, the inbetweeners.. the banks passed off their liabilities for all of us wearing hoodies, that they didnt see as a good investment. We just refused to fit in. Like so many generations before us, each a disappointment to those who raised us
@@Libertaro-i2uyep we're lucky to have a big garden but the quality of the house is so bad my dad got permission to do work on the house while renting because it's not a safe livable environment I was breathing in black mold for years
Conservatism (whether it be American or British) holds with the simple idea that unbridled free market forces hurt nobody... Well, nobody worth mentioning, anyway.
That's not conservatism, it's libertarianism. Conservatism is massively damaging to the UK, but not through the free market forces it allows, more those that it forbids. It is the reason, for example, we are one of the few developed countries yet to form a legal structure for private e scooter ownership.
I cannot think of an unbridled economy. These days economies are run by the state and legislated to within an inch of their lives. Conservatives just allow society more freedom than do socialists, since they prefer a more evolutionary approach. .
@@FlatDerrick I don't disagree but I also have never heard anyone ask for a legal structure for private e scooter ownership. On the list of problems this country has that's not even top 10,000.
@@HarryBillinghurstForget I mentioned e-scooters then if it isn't relevant to your own bubble. Substitute in nightclubs, bars, alcohol, cannabis or the myriad of other taxable trading opportunities that Brits are denied thanks to 'Think of the Children' style ideology.
tbf conservatism was originally about power of the monarchy and the aristocracy and preserving the traditional hierarchy left over from feudalism. however in the last half century "the conservatives" have been completely co-opted by right-wing libertarianism which is a completely different ideology centred around free-market capitalism, which could end up being even worse than feudalism as it doesn't even have common land, or a social pressure for "noblesse oblige".
I've been watching the housing market closely, Prices have been skyrocketing for years. It's going to be tough for first-time buyers to enter the market." how can one diversify $280k reserve .
I agree, It's not just the prices, but also the increasing interest rates that are making it more difficult for people to afford homes. With a good FA you can make up your portfolio.
The housing market has always had its ups and downs, but it's true that this time feels different. Having a portfolio manager will save you a lot in the market. My coach has helped me expand my portfolio by 200% over the past few months.
@@Aarrenrhonda3 in times like these, it's crucial to be cautious and not rush into the market , Who is this your FA , my portfolio needs urgent attention , been a lot of losses.
You missed the most critical reason Thatcher, (and others) wanted working class ownership of houses. It is impossible for a worker to strike for more than a few months if he has a mortgague;- the house will be reposessed. On the other hand local councils could not throw their tennents out, nor could for example coalmine owners, or many other professions, who also provided housing. Indeed most local councils in mining or heavy industrial areas, were very sympathetic to chalenges to Tory power which was decimating their communities. Thus it was a massively effective way of removing the unions', and Labour Local Authorities' power.
@@MP_PapHew that type of short term thinking is why people become generationaly poor. A never ending poor of working all your life and never having anything to show for it, nothing to improve your own position or that of your family. We see that today already, with welfare families. A endless loop for many welfare children, they grow up just to live off of welfare to then go on to have children who will do they same. Always being at the mercy of handouts. No thank you
It's not about cruelty, it's about funding aristocrats who live off rent money. Rents must never decline. Even in Glasgow, a city emptying out, rents remained high
Owners were leaving renters did not. So demand increased for rentals as owners removed their rentals from the markets. Resulting in too many renters chasing fewer rentals. Supply and demand. Rents increse as a result. To bring down rental prices, we need MORE rentals to meet the demand of the renters. It is that simple. By vilifying landlords, forcing then to sell will only increse rental prices due to there being fewer of them
City council owed housing (mostly apartments) is really big in Sweden. They are run as for profit business but all the share are owned by the city and the board are politically appointed. Not super cheep, but they actually build affordable stuff and not only high end.
I lived in Växjö and the housing market is as bad as the UK. Just don't want Sweden's PR to outstrip Sweden's increasing decline re: equality and it's societal safety net.
This video is honestly amazing but it's very hard to watch. Hearing about a government looking after its people and prioritising housing is making me tear up when i think about how hard it is right now.
Its not even just that . To think how better off the uk would of been if thatcher hadnt privitizied everything ontop of ruining every generation after the boomers from getting affordable housing is GUT RETCHING . Its fucking devastating
It makes me think how evil, immoral and unethical Thatcher was to reverse all of the good work. I cant believe the UK could built literally millions of homes in just a few years and now we have [a deliberate] housing shortage
Very important you mentioned the revolution in Russia being a motivator for the initial housing plans; whilst we didn't get a revolution here the rich were definitely scared of one. Once that fear passed they got to do whatever they wanted with privatisation projects like what Thatcher got away with
Britain was always good at that: reforming and compromising to cut off revolutionary stressors at the pass. It's honestly a pretty good explanation for why they still have a monarchy, since one of the few times they had a king who tried to rule despotically, they chopped his head off like Louis XVI.
Watching vids on the early 20th century, It's fascinating to see how each country presents its content of this period only in terms of its own locality. All of these schemes were carried out globally by one tiny minority, the super rich. We're living through exactly the same scam today and few of us ever think of it in terms of the open collusion they don't even bother to hide this time around
Maybe the real treasure was the tax cuts we made along the way. 22:52 "A shift essentially away from people having a decent home as a need and a right, towards people being able to use homes as an asset, as something to get wealth." I think this is a big part of the issue. For homes to be affordable, the price has to go down. For homes to be a wealth generator, the price has to go up. Isn't it fundamentally contradictory for homes to be both affordable and be an appreciating asset?
If home prices rose and wages both rose at the rate of inflation, homeownership could be a way to basically save money that wouldn't lose value to inflation without pricing people out of first-time home buying. When a country's major political parties all want home values/prices to rise _faster_ than inflation while also suppressing wage growth, though...
@@georgesdelatour There's no increasing competition in the job market in most countries where house prices grow faster than wages, so reality disagrees with you.
@@M_M_ODonnell If home prices rose exactly the same as wages and inflation, then homes wouldn't be wealth generators, their value would be stable, so they wouldn't be wealth generators and every generation would have exactly the same hardships getting a home. So you're not talking about the same scenario as @Anthony-tw9bw is. On the other hand, if house prices were dropping, then every generation would be richer and richer since they could more and more easily afford a home. So basically if you want your population's wealth to stay the way it is, then you need house wealth to match wages and inflation. If you want your population's wealth to drop, then you want houses to become more expensive (corrected for wage inflation) over time. If on the other hand you want your population's wealth to grow, then you want housing to become cheaper. You know, like televisions. They're constantly improving and the basic models keep getting cheaper and cheaper until they're obsolete. Same should happen to housing. So there would still be space for people to spend stupid money on housing, but the average quality would constantly be growing for everyone.
You don't need decent housing to survive. Shelter is a basic survival need, but this could just as easily be met in a tent or shack as it can in a palatial mansion. Also, what's wrong with people making a living by owning and maintaining rental properties? Not only does a landlord provide their tenants with housing, he or she also provides certain maintenance services. People who are renters have fewer responsibilities than homeowners, for example, if a major appliance or fixture goes kaput, it is the responsibility of the landlord to make replacements or repairs or pay someone else to do it. Renters also tend to be freed from yardwork, painting, etc.
I've lived in the UK for 5 years now and I can't do it anymore. I spend 55% of my take-home income on housing (rent, council tax, and bills) and the only way I can afford to live here at all is to have a flatmate. I will never own my own home if I stay in the UK. I will never be able to afford a car or a dog, and forget about children. There is mold in every bathroom I have had on this island and I am so concerned for what that means for my health. Housing really is atrocious. I could put up with all the other cons of being an immigrant in the UK if the housing was good - or at least fine - but it's really not. I can not wait to move back to my home country, even though it means having to live with my parents for a year or two before I can get a mortgage.
Try America if possible, not much better but I’m 24 and able to have good housing in a beautiful area and a son. Pursuing education as well, and have a hopeful future. Best of luck to you
This was what prompted me to move into the sticks in Scotland. Housing prices are still stupidly high, but actually theoretically affordable. Rent is still legally capped (even if not very strictly anymore), which has helped massively.
Back in the day, when I purchased my first home to live-in; that was Miami in the early 1990s, first mortgages with rates of 8 to 9% and 9% to 10% were typical. People will have to accept the possibility that we won't ever return to 3%. If sellers must sell, home prices will have to decline, and lower evaluations will follow. Pretty sure I'm not alone in my chain of thoughts.
If anything, it'll get worse. Very soon, affordable housing will no longer be affordable. So anything anyone want to do, I will advise they do it now because the prices today will look like dips tomorrow. Until the Fed clamps down even further, I think we're going to see hysteria due to rampant inflation. You can't halfway rip the band-aid off.
consider moving your money from the housing market to financial markets or gold due to high mortgage rates and tough guidelines. Home prices may need to drop significantly before things stabilize. Seeking advice from a financial advisor who understands the market could be helpful in making the right decisions.
There are a handful of experts in the field. I've experimented with a few over the past years, but I've stuck with ‘’ Carol Vivian Constable” for about five years now, and her performance has been consistently impressive. She’s quite known in her field, look-her up.
I just looked her up on the internet and found her webpage with her credentials. I wrote her a outlining my financial objectives and planned a call with her.
"Private sector building has never expanded to soak up excess demand", well why would they? If you control the supply, you can keep prices artificially high.
One could as the same of computing, why build a faster and cheaper computer? Ultimately because that’s how one stays in the market. Land is the key difference from electronics here and land value tax is what solves the slum issue.
@@JollyGiant19That is the case when you dont control the supply. Land tax would help the case but when the modern state is controlled by narcissistic psychopaths in the business sector, it would have enough loopholes to only fuck over those who only own their own house.
Been saying it for years in Canada... when we stopped building social housing we started to see the private sector stagnate.. and when something is not a choice, i.e. a need.. private sector will often only ever do the bare minimum and you need the state to either take up the slack or literally compete with the private sector so it does not get complacent.
Yeees, and exactly why I seriously hope we don't use a ton of gov money, pushed to private developers, to build more homes (that the private developers will continue to own and set their own market prices) as then we'll be back in 10 or 15 years wondering why it cost so much and why they're falling apart. I'm done paying ridiculous rent to a landlord who can then go use all this cash flow to build/buy more properties, lately "luxury developments" (which really just means, we've ensured the bare minimum standards are met for 30% more rent!- but you've got a dog walk area at least!) before the average Canadian can save up enough- it's a brutal imbalance. I won't let my experiences renting in Canada as a young Canadian be ignored. We need proper change, and I worry that none of our future leaders will actually make a difference. Conservative, Liberal, NDP- I don't feel like any parties are truly aiming to help middle class or lower, only helping corporations make more on our backs. Edit: Regardless of any of my comments made; I agree, we 1000% need more government built/ owned housing.
For solving this problem in Canada, we also have the added challenge of needing political good will on both the federal and provincial levels (since housing is the province of, well, provinces).
35:14 as a town planner this paper was utter nonsense, right now there are 1.1 million properties with planning permission not being built. Also the number of houses being applied for is not even 300,000 and the number given permission was over 85%, just keep in mind more will be given permission and not be built, than will be rejected.
Introduce a punishing tax on empty lots and properties. They're not "developers", they're speculators banking on land value going up. We don't need to support this behaviour.
And if they were all built in 6 months - it would not cover 2 year's worth of inward migration. No one in the comments, or indeed the video, mentions this.
@heraliogomezchatsandsnac-ts8ki 1. If one person lived in one house, which they don't the average is 2.4 per household and higher among migrants. 2. Who do you thinks building the houses... 3. I guess you don't want any babies born then as that's going to be a larger cohort than the immigration figures will be this year 2025 that is. Go on say that. They can't even build houses. 4. One of the largest cohorts of migrants is students, who in first year live halls many in 2nd and 3rd do as well, but the rest go into homes that are 6 - 8 people per house, so definitely not taking up to much housing.
@@heraliogomezchatsandsnac-ts8ki because your comment is bollocks. Migration is not having the impact that fear mongers claim. As a nation we have a chronic shortage of workers, we NEED migration. There can be temporary difficulties when too many migrants move to a specific locale, but it does begin to settle fairly quickly. The areas where it doesn't already had major issues that migration- in the long term- will help to mitigate.
I find it hard to blame buy-to-occupy residents. I’m looking hard at policy that encourages the collecting of dozens of properties, treating them like shares and not a human necessity. It’s one of the most horrendous things any government can do to its population and had lead to untold social problems they think they can solve by building more prisons but, I don’t know, isn’t keeping people out of prisons more worthwhile an endeavour?
@@Libertaro-i2uyou're so right, since when has been alive been important too? Why bother living decently let's go back to stone tools and the woods. You show the way I think your effort will really be motivating for us people that still hesitate between liking living correctly and just dying on the street.
@sykes1024 she said firing all miners in the country would grow the economy. This is so mind-bogglingly st upid, not just in hindsight where multiple regions of the UK have not recovered to this day. Yes mining was on the downward trend but that means retraining and investment in new technology in those areas for the jobs is what is needed.
@@Parakeet-pk6dl Mainly because the economy increased a lot under Thatcher so everything was gravy in the 80s but what I don't think people realised was that she was selling off the future for short-term gains and because we were doing well, the country got complacent to the point where we're perfectly fine with private companies owning natural monopolies and fucking us with it for hefty profits and bonuses.
@@mikester4896 the economy didn't grow very fast it was slower than the decade before and had higher inflation. There was high unemployment and mutiple regions of the country still have not recovered economically to this day. Right to buy and the fight between the SDP and Labour is what get her in power as she never won more than the SDP and Labour combined.
One of the biggest wins from the most recent budget that seems to be mostly unreported was ensuring right to buy proceeds go to local councils. With some small tweaks to make sure funding is available to actually build places that small change might make it viable for councils to start building again. Another potentially huge idea could be giving powers to councils to be able to buy land which has planning approved but no construction for years due to private builders sitting on assets to drip feed supply via eminent domain. We're in a national emergency. Those resources (land) need to be put to use. It could also be a huge jobs program. Get younger people into construction and gove them skills for life.
As far as I am aware it is practically illegal for local authorities to finance the construction of social housing themselves. This was passed around the time on Right-to-Buy, and it's why they can only team up with housing associations and community-interest-companies now when it comes to building new stock.
@RichTapestry that may well have been the case at the time. Yet another evil inflicted on us by Thatcher. It looks like even the Tories under Johnson were giving councils a bit more leeway with how they fund new developments. Allowing them to borrow to build. With all the cash from right to buy sales going back to local councils it might even be profitable for councils to start building again. A big remaining issue I believe is getting land. I think they have to pay the cost priced as if the land had already been developed. Freeing up councils to be able to acquire land at reasonable rates is probably a sensible next step. Hopefully some of the bolder councils will take the ball and run with it now.
What surprises me when visiting the UK is how poor many neighborhoods look. Here in the Netherlands even the poorer areas are looked after, have a lot of green spaces, proper side walks and cycling infrastructure. To be fair, if I travel to Belgium I have a similar experience. But not as bad as in the UK. Obviously the UK has a lot of beautiful cities with nice architecture mostly concentrated in the centre. But having visited people in the suburbs of London and seen many other suburban areas all over the UK, including Scotland, it all feels very poor to me.
For centuries the UK has been ruled by the kind of people that would sooner burn money in front of a homeless person than give them the money. That's why it looks so poor - our rulers would genuinely pay extra to make society worse. Our schools and hospitals are far more expensive, but are also literally falling apart right now.
@amhuman5138 I like towns like York, Cambridge and my favorite Edinburgh. So their are nice city centres but to be fair also many ugly ones. But I agree the Netherlands also wins big here, with almost every center of town looking great. Except for the really new ones like Lelystad and Almere, who were built the last 50 years..
@@sanderdeboer6034 They're a few exceptions, although I do want to add one to your list: Bath. Because of a certain event about 80 years ago a lot of our stuff got destroyed, and it just so happened to be the worst era of architecture, so way too much of our nation is disgusting brutalist slabs.
Thing is, when you feel poor and trodden on, you don't look after your area either. So there's a lot of graffiti, broken public utilities, falling apart public transport and just general grime and littering. People can't feel proud when they feel disadvantaged. It's not everyone, obviously, but poverty breeds more poverty and dissatisfaction.
Unless this labour government actually starts building new council housing I could see a revolution start if a prolonged period of unemployment happens.
I think one of the key problems is that house price growth is considered sacrosanct in the UK and homeowners (which are still the majority of voters) are primed to vehemently oppose anything that'll bring down their precious house price even in the slightest. Even home improvements are often thought in terms of how positively/ negatively they'll affect the house price rather than whether they'll make living ok your own home more pleasant and comfortable. And until homeowners are the majority of the population and we tackle this sentiment, there will be no meaningful steps to resolve the housing crisis. I've personally just bought my first flat and I just don't understand why I'm meant to obsess about my house price and in its name block any opportunity for my neighbours to have quality affordable housing in my area. If more housing means my house price falls so be it, if it brings me into negative equity, so be it, I'll stay put for a couple of years, but that's all minor issues compared to rampant homelessness in the area and the increase of crime and antisocial behaviour that inevitably comes with it.
Currently in council house. Massive hole opened up in the foundation floor. Had a carpenter to replace wooden flooring when it was discovered. Ground water slowly seeping up. No news from council despite several failed attempts to get their attention. Wood through the house is rotting as the main floor beams are now creaking and moving. Housing crisis is going to keep getting worst if they let perfect houses like this one fall apart
if you can remove 300mm soil from under the ground floor floorboards youll save yourself from the ground water. airvents get blockecked overtime due to long term heave and movement of soils under timber floors. Do not undermine your foundations (typically 600mm deep below ground llevel)
Always interesting to get these insights into the history of these sorts of issues in other countries, and comparing it to the history that I know better in my home country of Sweden. usually there is a very big overlap. In this case the Swedish government in the 60s decided to build 1 million new homes (in a country of 8 million people!), and by the mid 70s the housing crisis was entirely solved. Then in the 90s following an economic crash and the new neoliberal trends, the government decided that they no longer had any obligation of ensuring that there was enough housing available. And thus, all government spending on housing was cut, and we gradually got a bigger and bigger housing shortage. Yey. Sweden is quite unique in that we don't have any social housing, everything (before the latest neoliberal reforms at least) is "rent controlled" through collective bargaining agreements, and rental housing is available to everyone on equal terms through "housing queues". As long as the government built enough housing to keep the market supplied, this worked very well, rents only rose with inflation and increases in standards, and the queues were kept short. But as soon as government spending stopped things started getting worse, and I think that's the trend in every country, no matter the social housing system or whatever.
Part of good quality homes that I think is often completely overlooked today is a decently sized garden. Can't let the kids play out in the streets incase they get kidnapped or hit by a car, can't let them run around in the house or garden because there's no space. Then wonder why kids spend their days holed up in their rooms playing with iPads or computers, and why they're sicker and fatter than kids who grew up outside.
Hello from Los Angeles where homelessness is at crises level. Surveys show about 60,000 unhoused people in our city. At the same time we have we have some of the most expensive housing in world. A lot of it has to do with mandatory low density building and onerous building approval processes as well as a nationwide drug addiction problem. That is an over simplification of course. About a decade back voters passed a massive bond to build public housing which has been leveraged with private capital. The cost of these units well exceeded those in the private sector. $500,000 to $800,000 a unit in low rise apartment buildings Its mindbuggling expensive. What is being built are fairly attractive structures but nothing to fancy. They target a variety of constituents. I wondered how such a scheme of goverment ownership might work. I see the Brits have been doing something a kin to this for quite some time. I wish someone would do a well thought out mini doc like this on what is happening in my city. Its all really confusing and i dont understand the relationship between the public and private sector or why they have become so expensive. Well done video essay you made here.🎉
Indeed. A lot of those regulations make it impossible to have 'multi-family' households. When the Council can force you to evict a friend, because you don't have enough garages...! That wasn't a joke either, I had to remove a kitchenet because I had 2 garages and not 4. That kitchenet made the house into a 'multi-family unit,' and I needed 2 more garages by regulation.... Or I could remove the Kitchenet and thus prevent the multi-family complaint by city hall!
@@lostbutfreesoul I've seen places (and may be moving to one) where parking requirements for building or renovating to accommodate more people are reduced or eliminated if within a few blocks of public transit, which seems like an important detail. (This also depends on availability of public transit, which can't be taken for granted here in the privatization-obsessed and car-worshipping US.)
I can hear my neighbours talking quietly through the wall in my new build. The TV keeps me awake every night. Might as well live with them. Boils in the summer, freezes in the Winter. Might as well live in a tent. New Builds suck.
My mum worked managing council houses for decades including the death blow push to a ‘community housing association’. She would have agreed with this video wholeheartedly. ‘Right to Buy’ killed council housing with 90% of the people buying their property selling within a few years when they couldn’t afford the upkeep and ending back on the increasing long queue for community housing .
one thing ive learned most from watching a myriad of videos; capitalism cannot solve problems, because to solve a problem would mean elimination of a revenue stream.
Like any other system, Capitalism has it's advantages and disadvantages! And right now, unless you happen to be rich... The disadvantages definitely outweigh the advantages! So if we can all accept that... The question now becomes, what do we do about it? Again, if you're rich then such concerns like these are of course completely irrelevant to you!
excellent, but the state would own all the homes and then evict the undesirables to the streets. these could be political dissident's or criminals but be sure, the state would make it worse. If you want to save homeless children adopt a family or fund Shelter charity. giving the national housing to the state would be madness, they cant even build a railway from liverpool to birmingham.
The graph at 14:48 tells an interesting story. I immediately noticed that the percentage of owner-occupied homes is going up at the same time as private rent is going down. Here in Canada, whenever the government proposes a housing-affordability policy, the Conservative Party says that the policy doesn’t help middle class people buy their first home. I’m wondering why council houses means more people buying houses.
Because housing becomes cheaper. The more supply you have, the cheaper housing becomes overall. When conservatives promote "home ownership" they are really promoting pumping more buyers' money into the market so that the price of houses goes up, inflating the wealth of existing homeowners.
It's mainly the right to buy scheme that has increased the number of home owners in the UK, but increasing the supply through building more council houses will bring rent and house prices down. This makes it more affordable for people to buy property.
Because rental yields go down and being a landlord isn't as good as an investment, this stabilises and may even reduce house prices as some drop out, this also allows first time buys to save more with better rents to income ratios, and so makes becoming an owner occupier easier.
The fact that the wealthy & ruling classes stopped doing something that was done for decades to prevent revolution is something that should deeply concern you. I recommend working out regularly for unrelated reasons.
The fact that the Russian Revolution scared the British government into giving everyone homes is a great reminder that revolutions work and that we should definitely keep doing them.
Millions of Russians died and starved to death due to it. If anyone spoke out against their "one of us" mentality they were exicuted. If you didn't share all you earned you were.... Exicuted. Particularly if you wete farmers. So farmers simply stop producing as much, just enough for them selves, for if they made any more it was confiscated. So there was no incentive to produce more. Which created mass famine Not exactly somthing to praise now is it.
The start reminds me of Angel Meadow in Manchester the worst slum at the height of the industrial revolution. It had twice the density of the most dense place on the planet today and half of it was a Graveyard. Housing was normally a single room for an entire family or even mutiple families. The worst was the basement, they had no furniture and would sleep on straw on the floor. The basement flats would have raw sewage flow through them in heavy rain. I remember reading in the census that one person's address was "on the stairs" they slept on the staircase of a house. Life expectancy in England before the industrial revolution was 46, at the height of the industrial revolution it was 47 in Manchester it was 23. As I said half the slum was an unmaintained Graveyard, as the childrens families had no money they would use human skulls as footballs to play with. During economic recessions the top soil of the Graveyard rich in nutrients from the decomposing bodies would be sold to farmers and bones would be crushed up and sold to the Tannaries. There were a couple of tanneries in the area which is the smelliest industry as it involves human and animal waste product in the process, coupled with the gas works the place would stink. With all the textile factories and the railway the smog would have been a nesr constant and everything covered in smoke. Fredrick Engels visited factories owned by his father in the area and the horrors he saw there made him a communist he described it as hell upon earth. In the end the government placed flagstones across the entire Graveyard to stop the top soil from being taken. On the pennine moors are the Hungar Walls, these were built during times of famine such as during the Potatoe Blight, they would build long dry stone walls in exchange for food, often these walls had no purpose but were done so it felt like the food was earned. The slum was eventually demolished and now all that is there is expensive offices, flats and a park.
I'm an urban planning student currently writing a paper on social housing in Canada compared to in Europe, and this video is the story of so many countries. You go from quality social housing for all, to neoliberals destroying it and telling you to buy a home instead, and now no one can afford a home, private rentals, and there's no social housing. It all goes back to neoliberalism.
At 59 seconds, 913 sq. meters to 268 sq. meters has to be a mistake. That's got to be square feet. A 913 square meter home would be huge, at 9827 square feet. Even a 268 sq. meters would be a pretty good sized house at 2884 sq. feet. I live in public housing in the U.S. My apartment is about 600 sq. feet. It's not huge, but I have a reasonable sized bedroom, a small kitchen, and a reasonable sized living room . That would be about 56 square meters. It kind of reminds me of the problems with rent controlled apartments. I'm on disability, and I get a rent subsidized apartment. It's privately owned (could just as easily be publicly owned, there might even be advantages to it). Basically though, the government pays most of the rent. I end up paying 25% of my income towards that (minus deductions for utilities) which at this point puts my portion at $199/mo. I pay my own heat/hot water/phone/internet. The landlord gets about another $800/mo. from the government. They might get a little bit more if they didn't do Section 8 (their fair market apartments run $1100 to $1600/mo. They got a subsidy to build and a subsidy to switch us from electric heat to natural gas (which sucked for us, since we got a subsidy for utilities anyway, so the cost savings all went to them). Still, because they get close to fair market rent there is an incentive to build out more Section 8 housing. Rent control, on the other hand, means the landlords get a lot less money for an apartment, so they try everything to get tenants out. Much cheaper for the government though. It's a shame they didn't offer the homes at actual cost. The NIMBY thing is a big problem over here in the U.S. too. Our complex actually managed to get built because originally it was only for seniors. They opened it up to people on disability later, and then allowed other low income people to rent.
As a (German) historian, I never understood why Clement Attlee is not seen as one of the greatest PMs of the 20th century (especially in regard of the status of "awful person who got one important thing right" Winston Churchill).
I've always said that Churchill lucked into being a good guy. If he hadn't been around at the same time as Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler, he likely would be regarded today as one of the greatest monsters of the 20th Century, considering his treatment of Ireland, India, and other colonies.
History revisionism to ensure that we are brainwashed into thinking this system is the only way the country can work. Thatcher, the Conservatives, right-wing media and 'think tanks' have done a number on us and Labour who've shifted along towards the centre. Corbyn was the closest we got to bringing the lefties back with Labour but he was back-stabbed by members of his own party and obviously the media went full into overdrive to destroy his campaign.
@@meganegan5992eh, India wouldn’t have happened the way it did without World War 2. Churchill chose his own people over conquered people which had consequences
There’s too much regulation and bureaucracy in the UK, it’s basically impossible to get planning permission to build anything. We have the same problem in the US but it’s 100x worse over there. You really need to density your cities. Obviously this won’t solve everything but it’s the biggest step. It’s way more cost effective than for the government to build all of it. Also rent control hurts the poor.
i feel like if we fixed the housing crisis it would help the economy significantly as consumers will simply have more money instead of landlords who are hording money
Plus I'd wager the number of people on long term benefits (and hence not contributing to the economy) due to depression, anxiety, stress, alcoholism, drug use, gambling addiction etc. would fall through the floor without the constant threat of sudden rent rises or eviction due to house sales turning your life upside down and wiping out every penny of savings.
Yeah, my town, USA, in Longmont, CO has done about the same thing. Here it's a city council that insituted building restrictions and urban renewal to eliminate housing for lower income. Now extreme rent burdened housing and rising homelessness. Though homelessness has been solved by making it illegal to sleep in the ruff or in vehicles. The police are kept busy.
Sadly, our post-Communist transformation was managed by people emulating Thatcher (and Reagan) so we ended up in the same heap of shit. Czechia used to have a substantial council/public housing stock before it was almost entirely privatized, new public housing is pretty much non-existent and housing here is now the least affordable in Europe. Prague alone owned and rented out 200.000 flats in 1990, now it's down to just 30.000.
@AlMc-i5p Too true. The ways the two dominant parties here diverge can be literally a matter of life and death for some people, but both are fully united when it comes to corporate capitalism being the only system we can be allowed to imagine.
The washing machine comment is especially funny considering most people I know in New England are forced to lug their clothing to laundromats in below freezing winters because not only are washer and dryer not included in most housing, but there aren't even hookups for such machines even if you decide to try and bring your own
I truly believe the reason we are having less children is because we don't have home's, My parents were both 22 when they owned a two bedroom flat with baby me. I'm now 32 living in my nans cabin. & iv never been able to keep a steady job.
It’s funny watching this to realise my argumentative Grandad, was right about what happened with housing in the 80’s, but ignorantly wrong about why it happened. He genuinely believes that people exploited the right to buy system, but refuses to recognise that was the entire point of how Right to Buy was set up. Turns out electing people who don’t think the state can do anything to run the State doesn’t end with a well run State. 😅
What the TINA neoliberals never acknowledge is that unfettered markets always fail. As more markets fail, we get more crises. Only well regulated markets, with provision for the poorest outside the market, actually work. Adam Smith actually said exactly this.
What difference does it make who owns a house, provided it's lived in? If there's 20 million houses, and 20 million families/people wanting a house then how can there be a housing crisis? (providing people don't buy 2nd homes to keep empty). If there's a 19 million houses, a crisis makes sense, or if there's 21 million families/people wanting a house, a crisis makes sense. Isn't the reason for the current housing crisis simply because the population has gone up, but the number of houses hasn't?
I wish we'd do something like this again. The idea of owning property seems so far beyond possible now, and the kind of quality council housing my grandparents lived in simply is no longer publicly owned. It's depressing.
@@katiemorison7969 Agree with the sentiment but I don't see the material base of political consciousness this needs. Dismantled by neoliberalism. A small hope remains though.
how I wish this fantasy of "the free market can solve this problem" was ever true....like for anything. Housing, healthcare, education, time and again we hear that the free market has a better solution and it simply does not.
@@DeoMachina Zero people die of starvation today in capitalist countries; Unless for their own reasons they choose not to eat And world food programs funded by capitalist countries means more people die of obesity than hunger globally. You're welcome
I love to see the consistent improvement in production value. You've become one of my favourite video-essaists and I can't wait to watch your Nebula documentaries, when I finally get to subscribe.
They rarely do though, why is my flat mouldy, and reeks of cig Smoke? Ah, because the previous renter created tropical, humid conditions for his Venus fly traps in his flat and smoked inside. Does this "Person" have to repair the damage he caused? No! Is he the reason smoke trails are in the floor and in the bathroom? Yes! Has her ever cleaned the flat? No! Could he be evicted for that? No, that would be "unhumane".
@@steamvyrus6249 i cannot fathom how you can live in a house or flat for several years and leave it completly moldy, basically never clean, destroy the wooden floor with a humid climate, leave the Windows in complete neglection, smoke inside so much that the ash is engraved in the floor, ... How can you live like that, how can you leave something like that in comlete neglection. I mean the shower had heavy calciferous traces up to one meter high and the water is soft. I am a chaotic Person, but come on... Maybe Audrey II was planted there, the conditions were perfect. But you are right, that was too harsh.
I paid half the price than my brother did for a 3 bedroom house because mine is a 1975 ex-council. The place is so sturdy, the only issues I have come up against are the result of previous owners' questionable DIY, and my place is about 50% bigger than his new build
The unaddressed issue is, why are firms building housing able to keep prices high. With cars, TVs, and in other sectors, firms compete, and this pushes down prices. Why is this no happening with housing?
That is why developers are not building enough. If they did and prices fell due to more housing on the market, they would have to work more and spend more for the same profit margin. So they don't.
I will be forever grateful to you, you changed my whole life and I will continue to preach on your behalf for the whole world to hear that you saved me from huge financial debt with just a small Investment, thank you Jihan Wu you're such a life saver
As a beginner in this, it’s essential for you to have a mentor to keep you accountable. Jihan Wu is also my trade analyst, he has guided me to identify key market trends, pinpointed strategic entry points, and provided risk assessments, ensuring my trades decisions align with market dynamics for optimal returns.
Most rich people stay rich by spending like the poor and investing without stopping then most poor people stay poor by spending like the rich yet not investing like the rich but impressing them. People prefer to spend money on liabilities, Rather than investing in assets and be very profitable
In the first ad break I got an ad for the extremely fancy new build-to-rent 'co-living space' in my neighbourhood. Studio apts with murphy beds and communal kitchens, starting from €2000 per month. The private rental market is wild.
As usual, to fail to mention the impacts of mass immigration to your videos. you're looking at one (small) dimension of a multi-faceted problem. I cant take this seriously.
Without immigration we'd have a smaller labour pool and our care/medical sectors would have ceased functioning Explain to me how that would have helped us build houses?
@@DeoMachina maybe you can house all 1 million people per year who come into the country? there's certainly no room for them where I live. Also over the last four years the NHS has employed lots more people quite a few of them immigrants, but productivity has not increased. so this country is taking on more immigrants, but they’re not even doing anything. 🤷♂️
Thanks Tom. It's honestly depressing how the political will to get mass council housing built is [likely] only going to come once the generation who bought the previous stock have exited. I wish people weren't so selfish and could see how supporting public housing initiatives could improve the economy. It doesn't make sense for exorbitant rents to be funneled to increasingly wealthy landlords, while the country suffers from lack of investment in local infrastructure, and the young get their incomes effectively cut in half.
No, the answer is for the government to take the lead instead of leaving it to the market. Neoliberalism does not work, never will. You need a strong government to intervene.
Exactly, council housing too! And then make it so they can't be sold at a discount, then flipped for by the previous tenant for massive profits and/or turned into a rental.
Not in America. There's sooooo much empty space here, literal skyscrapers empty, but corporate buying and greedy private landlords have made it impossible. Unless you're making in the ballpark of 120k/annually, your chances of home ownership is low. And the other factors used to determine who buys is fat more complicated and strict. A friend of mine literally had the money to outright buy but was still rejected. Space isn't the issue in most places, it's affordability.
I'm old (ish). I thought things were tough for my generation. The easy opportunities dried up a few years before I was able to take advantage of them. But things are much harder for young people now. I was eventually able to own a decent home. I fear the next generation won't own one until they inherit mine, assuming no disaster happens to kill even that chance.
On the topic of someone being able to make their rented property their home, I can't even decorate. My contract stipulates I can't put up posters, flags, or anything of the sort at risk of losing my deposit. This was the only property that gave us a viewing, or even acknowledged our request - out of 20. I feel like I'm living in someone elses house and I had no choice in the matter. For a glimpse at their pettiness, the bathroom light is automatic, and has a switch to turn it off and on. Because the light is automatic, the letting agency decided to cut off the cord for the light switch. Why? They won't tell us. Can you give us the light switch back? "No" they say. "It's automatic, why would you need a switch?". Shit is on constantly. It could be worse. I don't have black mould, I have heating that works (despite the lack of double glazing or wall insulation), I'm not going to be evicted. But this is the bare bare fucking minimum. It's not that I can't get on the housing ladder. It's not that I'm paying more than my parents mortgage. It's that landlords, and especially letting agents, seem to be completely vindictive for absolutely no reason. My previous landlord still hasn't returned my previous deposit of £750 (a lot of money for me right now!) because they don't have to yet. We don't just need more housing, we need housing without the callous indifference to the people who live in it.
Were getting fined for being in a house with and extra bedroom and because the property is adapted for the last three years since my mum passed. We are still waiting to be moved.
"for many in our parents generation home ownership was a fairly achievable aspiration" the property market in the UK is the pinnacle example of pulling the ladder up behind you
The stupidity of the Thatcher years and subsequent failures to at least keep up on building houses is staggering. Leave it to the private sector. They, in their profit mindset, will solve everything, without cutting costs or quality. Trust me bro! I found myself shouting to the video on how stupid these people were.
Adding more housing, whether public or private, will not solve the housing problem. The main problem is the "housing ladder" itself. Placing generational wealth on the speculation and flipping of real estate is not appropriate and leads to perverse incentives, one of the worst being NIMBY culture. Reintroduce the People's Budget and start the process of collecting land value for the community and nation.
as a younger swede i didn't know the exact details of the right to buy council housing and figured "yeah if you lived there for a long time you should be allowed to your home!" didn't know it was 3 years and no minimum age of the building utter insanity. it should be something like lived there 10 years and the building is 30 years old. poor people need to get on the housing latter. the council needs to shed older properties as growing public housing until it is all housing is a bad idea. the fact UK people were this personally greedy is utter insanity to me.
I am not a swede but live in Sweden and honestly it seems odd to me how the 1 million homes project in Sweden failed yet the council housing in the UK worked. I guess the British did it slightly better than Sweden
The people at the top of the wealth ladder in the UK have always been obscene. There families here passing millions down generation after generation and paying no inheritance tax because they have worked out ways round it.
I'm lucky enough to have lived in a 1922 council house for 25 years. We bought it a decade ago. Its a fantastic house, looks good, family sized, decent garden. Both our kids were born in the front room!
Nye Bevan wanted housing freely available to all at a reasonable cost so that all the people of the UK could experience each others lives and troubles, promoting social cohesion and empathy. Margaret Thatcher wanted housing to not be freely available because of the possibility that might work.
Watch BOOMERS, exclusively on Nebula, today: go.nebulatv/boomers?ref=tomnicholas
Everyone on the production team (and there's a lot of them!) has worked so hard on BOOMERS. It's packed with incisive interviews and investigation into intergenerational inequality, housing, pensions, and much more. All told through a globe-trotting journey to uncover the lives and legacy of the Baby Boomer generation.
It also features my mum!
Thanks so much to everyone who's already signed up to Nebula in anticipation. I can't wait for you all to see it and to hear what you think!
My father told me about when he finished school at age 15 and worked as a running boy in Stockholm in 1949. Landlords were so desperate to find tenants that they let people "test-live" their apartment one month for free. Yeah!
"- Creditworthiness? I'm a 15 year old running boy."
"- Deal!"
And those were smack in the city center, the same apartments that now cost $600,000 to buy (can't rent anything in the entire city anymore).
Btw, when he was fired as a running boy, which seems to have happened frequently, he said that he just walked across the street, saw a note in the window of another shop looking for running boys, and was hired.
Life seems to have been much simpler back then. With human to human relations, and using reason. Instead of this monstrous corrupt anonymous bureaucracy "regulating" everything as an imposing middleman between us all everywhere all of the time. So that no one is allowed to simply solve the problem at hand anymore.
Aww, I was excited about boomers. But alas, the link doesnt go to anything yet.
There's a typo in your link to Boomers, missing dot between nebula and TV
Why isn't this on Nebula? You need some money from ads? There is like the most ads I have ever seen in a UA-cam video
@@rssreader7352 it's up now.
So basically, "About 70 years ago, people had problems that they worked together to solve. Then in the 80's they realized they could make A LOT more money if they undid those solutions for the next three generations of people...who hadn't lived through all that stuff before, and therefore had no idea what was being done to them until it was much too late."
Copy and paste this for most societal problems we have right now; and freely share it between the UK and USA.
Perfect summary of the modern economic landscape lol
The real trickle down economics.
Don't forget, "Brainwash them into thinking there's no other way for the economy to work while they get scammed by private companies owning basic public services."
Not entirely true, in the 1950s the anti-labour/socialist education came into being. As the children were indoctrinated through their schools & Hollywood. As their grandparents began to retire & pass away, neo-liberalism crept in. The implosion of the Iron Curtain 30 years later gave the neo-liberals all the ammunition they needed to bend the Boomers & GenX into submission.
I lived through the entire charade & became one of its critical opponents. I hope younger generations will never make the same mistakes but human experience is fickle because myths are what civilisation is built on from the dogma of religion to the dogma of democracy. We live in a post modern world where capitalism & democracy are synonymous terminologies but they are contradictory. In the words of Orwell, "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
Reagan and Reagan in drag
utterly insane to think a 25% rent increase triggered a massive rent strike when nowadays a 25% rent increase is just another shitty year
America wouldn't even en be here if it wasn't for a 2% tax. It seems war may have been a big part of all that growth. I remember the 70's weren't that great for Britain or America. So many more rich people now.
@@craigpoer so wrong. the seventies was great for ordinary people. less rich people.
And they have paid 10% of their wages... If you add 25% to it, it would mean 12.5%.
Yeah, there needs to be a change
More rich people but a much higher proportion of lower middle class and homeless people. Doesn't sound better to me, doesn't sound better for normal people to me. @@craigpoer
What really concerns me is a huge number of people simply deny this is an issue and just say "you're all lazy" and "if you don't like it just buy a house". Like being sympathetic is an impossible thing now.
My girlfriend has worked for the NHS for nearly 20 years, she has excellent qualifications and by any standards is hugely successful, knowledge and valuable to society. When we were house hunting together, every property we found had a waiting list of at least 20 people and the prices were outrageously out of our price range, even with her excellent job.
Can anyone seriously, with a straight face, tell me that a GP of 20 years should be unable to afford her own home? And that a waiting list of 20 families per property is in any way acceptable??
To answer you, no, of course not.
I dont understand how we have such a huge proportion of the population who are struggling so much yet theres a significant lack of effort being put in to solving the problem.
We have a government for a reason, and they're seriously lacking here.
If anyone is lazy, its the government, not you/your girlfriend.
What really angers me, is that it's the right-leaning Tories that caused the issue, and they have the gall to blame the problem on immigration. People will vote Reform because this has not been explained to them propoerly or they're too ignorant to listen.
@@colinofay7237 We voted against Corbyn. Failing voting for him, we did not choose to install him by any means despite that. We have the government we have for a reason.
@@czarkusa2018I'm broadly on your side but are you seriously suggesting we should have had a people's revolution to install Jeremy Corbyn as our glorious leader?
@@XenFPV he is, that said revolutions are rarely productive.
It is really funny (but also depressing) how Thatcher is basically patient zero for most of the UK's problems. The Forrest Gump of British misery.
Her and Reagan were truly kindred spirits. A huge percentage of the horrible policies in place in the US can be traced back to his administration.
Liberal Capitalism is not going to solve our problems for good niether is Fascism or reactionary politics going to help as it barely has the the problem pinned down or lacks in principle
In a Word... Greed! Some of us don't like to take their fair share... And would rather take the whole damm cake! Along with the table AND the chairs! And leave nothing behind for the rest of us! And then when we complain we get labelled as anti-Capitalists! Not that I mind being called that! 😊
Greed is a VERY powerful motivator for some! And the damage it can cause is simply incalculable! Given the highly restrictive resources... That we ALL have to share!
@@amymak93 Here in Canada Mulroney was our version of Thatcher/Reagan, at around the same time. I wonder how many other countries had a similar leader or shift in/around the 80s?
@@amymak93 I came here to say this. Peas in a pod, those two were. Chuck Roger Douglas from New Zealand and Paul Keating from Australia in there too.
I love that thatcher on housing is essentially: "cheap council housing is too much government dependency, so we will replace it with an expensive government-subsidized mortgage program" so smart bestie
It was tactical, she knew that in the future it would be easier to get rid of the mortgages than it would be to get rid of the housing. And she was right.
She allowed many working class people, who had paid rent for years , to buy the home they spent so much on.
@@notyourordinarygran ...who then pulled the ladder up behind them and are still smug to this day about their "hard work".
@@notyourordinarygran boomers
So her rich friends could get a piece of the pie
This video just once again reiterates a point for me. One for which my father, just doesn't understand. He goes on about how Reagan and thatcher etc were great for the economy. All the while not understanding what they effectively did. My analogy is essentially they sold the seed grain. Essentially they took assets of the public state, one with had broader intangible benefits, and sold them off. In doing so it looked "great" for their economies. They cut rates and lowered taxes (sort of) so everyone was like omg everything is roaring. The issue is, what they produced was a net weaker result. Less competitive companies. More of expensive housing. Systems rife for exploitation. Government isn't the answer for everything. I don't think the government should be in the business of making smart phones for example. The issue is, some aspects benefit the broader society and make that society more competitive globally. More expensive housing means higher wages needed. If those wages are going to landlords that is an unproductive use of capital relative to goods or services. Expensive education means a lower productivity workforce as education is fundamentally a method for labor saving creation. Lastly, having Healthcare seek profits means lower employment mobility and reduced entrepreneurial drive. All and all, the thatcher, and Reagan and mulroney in my case, FUCKED, us.
It's classic junkienomoics.
I saw it put a bit differently. Thatcher+Reagan instituted certain economic measures/solutions that WERE necessary at the time, but needed to be temporary, because in the long term these solutions become a problem decades later. If they had been temporary, as they very well should have been, the problems of today could have easily been avoided. To add to that, its not like this was the first (or second) time that economic measures/solutions became harmful later on
Sounds like classic CEO behaviour. Short-term cuts to boost to profit and image, then duck out before the long-term consequences show themselves.
Honestly couldn't have said it better myself
Perfectly said…. I wish there was a way out of it but the British people seem resilient to common sense and instead favour easy immediate financial gains over economic stability and swooning over immigration as the root cause of issues rather than looking at its own history.
"We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor." - MLK Jr.
Summed it up. Thatcher didn’t want poor people to be lazy leaning on councils. But the rich can be lazy leaning on the inefficient economic system they profit off. 😢
If the workers aren't desperate, they might want more than the bare minimum.
Where did he say this?
@@johnmccrossan9376I wish I could give a direct url, but youtube blocks those. Just type into google "truthorfiction" and then the quote, and it should return the truthorfiction site breakdown on its resurgence of popularity, as well as when he said it and why. I'll try to send the url in the next message.
@@johnmccrossan9376 Truthorfiction has an article about it if you want to look it up. I tried to cite it exactly, but those replies look like they've been deleted.
More and more people might face a tough time in retirement. Low-paying jobs, inflation, and high rents make it hard to save. Now, middle-class Americans find it tough to own a home too, leaving them without a place to retire.
This is precisely why I like having a portfolio coach guide my day-to-day market decisions: with their extensive knowledge of going long and short at the same time, using risk for its asymmetrical upside and laying it off as a hedge against the inevitable downward turns, their skillset makes it nearly impossible for them to underperform. I've been utilizing a portfolio coach for more than two years, and I've made over $800,000.
'Sharon Ann Meny ' is the licensed advisor I use. Just research the name. You’d find necessary details to work with to set up an appointment.
middle class americans are working class :-)
No "might" about it and it will be a majority
At least the Islamic migrants are housed and fed etc.
I haven't watched the video yet and have no idea what you'll be saying in it, but I'm going to assume the the "Almost" in the title means that Thatcher (and by extent, Reagan) fucked everything up.
she only had a 4 minute segment in a 43 minute video... she increased homeownership by giving discount (33%) and no deposit on property that was owned by the government (council homes)...... but stopped new council homes from being built because she took the money and used it for tax cuts for the wealthy and paying down debt
Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead 🎶
pretty much on point
Generically a safe assumption for most things. :)
If there's a policy problem in the West, it's usually one of those two
This is so true. Im 55, gen x. In the late 80s i bought my own flat, rental properties were non existent, and getting a 100% mortgage was cheaper than renting. In the early 90s however there was a banking crisis, and mortgage interest rates went from 2.5% to 16% in under 2 years. My flat was repossessed leaving me and my 2 small boys homeless. I was given a council flat, and as my family grew transferred to a house. I have been in my current post war built council house for almost 24 years. I am very lucky to be on an old style tenancy agreement my kids however unless they can buy, do not have that choice. They have to rent from private landlords at extortionate prices. Its shameful.
The old council houses were beautiful with a good bit of land for growing food or flowers, a lot of them where semi detatched around here.
@GillMosley-wo9mf they have this land for growing food because they were built with experience of WW2 and WW1 in mind. Food self-sufficiency was a HUGE deal back then, and still is, though people perceive food self-sufficiency as less important now.
im 44, the inbetweeners.. the banks passed off their liabilities for all of us wearing hoodies, that they didnt see as a good investment. We just refused to fit in. Like so many generations before us, each a disappointment to those who raised us
@@GillMosley-wo9mf That's probably also why the British call their yards "gardens".
@@Libertaro-i2uyep we're lucky to have a big garden but the quality of the house is so bad my dad got permission to do work on the house while renting because it's not a safe livable environment I was breathing in black mold for years
Conservatism (whether it be American or British) holds with the simple idea that unbridled free market forces hurt nobody...
Well, nobody worth mentioning, anyway.
That's not conservatism, it's libertarianism. Conservatism is massively damaging to the UK, but not through the free market forces it allows, more those that it forbids. It is the reason, for example, we are one of the few developed countries yet to form a legal structure for private e scooter ownership.
I cannot think of an unbridled economy. These days economies are run by the state and legislated to within an inch of their lives. Conservatives just allow society more freedom than do socialists, since they prefer a more evolutionary approach. .
@@FlatDerrick I don't disagree but I also have never heard anyone ask for a legal structure for private e scooter ownership. On the list of problems this country has that's not even top 10,000.
@@HarryBillinghurstForget I mentioned e-scooters then if it isn't relevant to your own bubble. Substitute in nightclubs, bars, alcohol, cannabis or the myriad of other taxable trading opportunities that Brits are denied thanks to 'Think of the Children' style ideology.
tbf conservatism was originally about power of the monarchy and the aristocracy and preserving the traditional hierarchy left over from feudalism. however in the last half century "the conservatives" have been completely co-opted by right-wing libertarianism which is a completely different ideology centred around free-market capitalism, which could end up being even worse than feudalism as it doesn't even have common land, or a social pressure for "noblesse oblige".
Problem with Thatcherism is eventually you run out of state assets to sell off to fund it…
I've been watching the housing market closely, Prices have been skyrocketing for years. It's going to be tough for first-time buyers to enter the market." how can one diversify $280k reserve .
I agree, It's not just the prices, but also the increasing interest rates that are making it more difficult for people to afford homes. With a good FA you can make up your portfolio.
The housing market has always had its ups and downs, but it's true that this time feels different. Having a portfolio manager will save you a lot in the market. My coach has helped me expand my portfolio by 200% over the past few months.
@@Aarrenrhonda3 in times like these, it's crucial to be cautious and not rush into the market , Who is this your FA , my portfolio needs urgent attention , been a lot of losses.
Annette Christine Conte is the licensed advisor I use. Just search the name. You’d find necessary details to work with to set up an appointment.
Thank you for the lead. I searched her up, and I have sent her an email. I hope she gets back to me soon.
You missed the most critical reason Thatcher, (and others) wanted working class ownership of houses. It is impossible for a worker to strike for more than a few months if he has a mortgague;- the house will be reposessed. On the other hand local councils could not throw their tennents out, nor could for example coalmine owners, or many other professions, who also provided housing. Indeed most local councils in mining or heavy industrial areas, were very sympathetic to chalenges to Tory power which was decimating their communities. Thus it was a massively effective way of removing the unions', and Labour Local Authorities' power.
Brilliant comment. Rare these days to come across people who connect many dots at once.
She wanted people to stand on their own two feet and not beholden to a life time of payments and never owning anything.
@@MinkieWinkle I would much rather never own a house if it meant that today I would not have to spend 60% of my income just to not be on the streets.
@@MP_PapHew that type of short term thinking is why people become generationaly poor.
A never ending poor of working all your life and never having anything to show for it, nothing to improve your own position or that of your family.
We see that today already, with welfare families. A endless loop for many welfare children, they grow up just to live off of welfare to then go on to have children who will do they same. Always being at the mercy of handouts.
No thank you
@@MinkieWinkle and as we stand now, she utterly failed in that.
If I get a cent everytime a UA-cam video about problem in UK that started by Thatcher uploaded, I would be able to pay my rent.
One of the Main POINTs of the selloff was to destroy the social safety net that they represented!
The Cruelty Was And Still Is Part Of The Point.
You went from 0 to John Mulaney real quick.
It's not about cruelty, it's about funding aristocrats who live off rent money. Rents must never decline. Even in Glasgow, a city emptying out, rents remained high
@@JohnDoe-gc1pmprioritising landlords quality of life over the working class is inherently cruel
Owners were leaving renters did not.
So demand increased for rentals as owners removed their rentals from the markets.
Resulting in too many renters chasing fewer rentals. Supply and demand. Rents increse as a result.
To bring down rental prices, we need MORE rentals to meet the demand of the renters.
It is that simple. By vilifying landlords, forcing then to sell will only increse rental prices due to there being fewer of them
City council owed housing (mostly apartments) is really big in Sweden. They are run as for profit business but all the share are owned by the city and the board are politically appointed. Not super cheep, but they actually build affordable stuff and not only high end.
I lived in Växjö and the housing market is as bad as the UK. Just don't want Sweden's PR to outstrip Sweden's increasing decline re: equality and it's societal safety net.
This video is honestly amazing but it's very hard to watch. Hearing about a government looking after its people and prioritising housing is making me tear up when i think about how hard it is right now.
Its not even just that . To think how better off the uk would of been if thatcher hadnt privitizied everything ontop of ruining every generation after the boomers from getting affordable housing is GUT RETCHING . Its fucking devastating
It makes me think how evil, immoral and unethical Thatcher was to reverse all of the good work. I cant believe the UK could built literally millions of homes in just a few years and now we have [a deliberate] housing shortage
Very important you mentioned the revolution in Russia being a motivator for the initial housing plans; whilst we didn't get a revolution here the rich were definitely scared of one. Once that fear passed they got to do whatever they wanted with privatisation projects like what Thatcher got away with
Britain was always good at that: reforming and compromising to cut off revolutionary stressors at the pass. It's honestly a pretty good explanation for why they still have a monarchy, since one of the few times they had a king who tried to rule despotically, they chopped his head off like Louis XVI.
Watching vids on the early 20th century, It's fascinating to see how each country presents its content of this period only in terms of its own locality.
All of these schemes were carried out globally by one tiny minority, the super rich. We're living through exactly the same scam today and few of us ever think of it in terms of the open collusion they don't even bother to hide this time around
Maybe the real treasure was the tax cuts we made along the way.
22:52 "A shift essentially away from people having a decent home as a need and a right, towards people being able to use homes as an asset, as something to get wealth." I think this is a big part of the issue. For homes to be affordable, the price has to go down. For homes to be a wealth generator, the price has to go up. Isn't it fundamentally contradictory for homes to be both affordable and be an appreciating asset?
If home prices rose and wages both rose at the rate of inflation, homeownership could be a way to basically save money that wouldn't lose value to inflation without pricing people out of first-time home buying. When a country's major political parties all want home values/prices to rise _faster_ than inflation while also suppressing wage growth, though...
It's almost as if there's some mystery factor which increases competition in the job market while also increasing demand for housing.
@@georgesdelatour There's no increasing competition in the job market in most countries where house prices grow faster than wages, so reality disagrees with you.
@@M_M_ODonnell If home prices rose exactly the same as wages and inflation, then homes wouldn't be wealth generators, their value would be stable, so they wouldn't be wealth generators and every generation would have exactly the same hardships getting a home. So you're not talking about the same scenario as @Anthony-tw9bw is. On the other hand, if house prices were dropping, then every generation would be richer and richer since they could more and more easily afford a home. So basically if you want your population's wealth to stay the way it is, then you need house wealth to match wages and inflation. If you want your population's wealth to drop, then you want houses to become more expensive (corrected for wage inflation) over time. If on the other hand you want your population's wealth to grow, then you want housing to become cheaper. You know, like televisions. They're constantly improving and the basic models keep getting cheaper and cheaper until they're obsolete. Same should happen to housing. So there would still be space for people to spend stupid money on housing, but the average quality would constantly be growing for everyone.
You don't need decent housing to survive. Shelter is a basic survival need, but this could just as easily be met in a tent or shack as it can in a palatial mansion. Also, what's wrong with people making a living by owning and maintaining rental properties? Not only does a landlord provide their tenants with housing, he or she also provides certain maintenance services. People who are renters have fewer responsibilities than homeowners, for example, if a major appliance or fixture goes kaput, it is the responsibility of the landlord to make replacements or repairs or pay someone else to do it. Renters also tend to be freed from yardwork, painting, etc.
I've lived in the UK for 5 years now and I can't do it anymore. I spend 55% of my take-home income on housing (rent, council tax, and bills) and the only way I can afford to live here at all is to have a flatmate. I will never own my own home if I stay in the UK. I will never be able to afford a car or a dog, and forget about children. There is mold in every bathroom I have had on this island and I am so concerned for what that means for my health. Housing really is atrocious. I could put up with all the other cons of being an immigrant in the UK if the housing was good - or at least fine - but it's really not. I can not wait to move back to my home country, even though it means having to live with my parents for a year or two before I can get a mortgage.
Our situation is similar in India.
Try America if possible, not much better but I’m 24 and able to have good housing in a beautiful area and a son. Pursuing education as well, and have a hopeful future. Best of luck to you
@hotmess9640 hahah thanks yeah both Americas are entirely out of the question 🤣 thanks though
This was what prompted me to move into the sticks in Scotland. Housing prices are still stupidly high, but actually theoretically affordable. Rent is still legally capped (even if not very strictly anymore), which has helped massively.
@@Trampolina2000Cuba lol
Back in the day, when I purchased my first home to live-in; that was Miami in the early 1990s, first mortgages with rates of 8 to 9% and 9% to 10% were typical. People will have to accept the possibility that we won't ever return to 3%. If sellers must sell, home prices will have to decline, and lower evaluations will follow. Pretty sure I'm not alone in my chain of thoughts.
If anything, it'll get worse. Very soon, affordable housing will no longer be affordable. So anything anyone want to do, I will advise they do it now because the prices today will look like dips tomorrow. Until the Fed clamps down even further, I think we're going to see hysteria due to rampant inflation. You can't halfway rip the band-aid off.
consider moving your money from the housing market to financial markets or gold due to high mortgage rates and tough guidelines. Home prices may need to drop significantly before things stabilize. Seeking advice from a financial advisor who understands the market could be helpful in making the right decisions.
nice! once you hit a big milestone, the next comes easier.. who is your advisor please, if you don't mind me asking?
There are a handful of experts in the field. I've experimented with a few over the past years, but I've stuck with ‘’ Carol Vivian Constable” for about five years now, and her performance has been consistently impressive. She’s quite known in her field, look-her up.
I just looked her up on the internet and found her webpage with her credentials. I wrote her a outlining my financial objectives and planned a call with her.
"Private sector building has never expanded to soak up excess demand", well why would they? If you control the supply, you can keep prices artificially high.
One could as the same of computing, why build a faster and cheaper computer?
Ultimately because that’s how one stays in the market.
Land is the key difference from electronics here and land value tax is what solves the slum issue.
@@JollyGiant19That is the case when you dont control the supply. Land tax would help the case but when the modern state is controlled by narcissistic psychopaths in the business sector, it would have enough loopholes to only fuck over those who only own their own house.
Been saying it for years in Canada... when we stopped building social housing we started to see the private sector stagnate.. and when something is not a choice, i.e. a need.. private sector will often only ever do the bare minimum and you need the state to either take up the slack or literally compete with the private sector so it does not get complacent.
Yeees, and exactly why I seriously hope we don't use a ton of gov money, pushed to private developers, to build more homes (that the private developers will continue to own and set their own market prices) as then we'll be back in 10 or 15 years wondering why it cost so much and why they're falling apart. I'm done paying ridiculous rent to a landlord who can then go use all this cash flow to build/buy more properties, lately "luxury developments" (which really just means, we've ensured the bare minimum standards are met for 30% more rent!- but you've got a dog walk area at least!) before the average Canadian can save up enough- it's a brutal imbalance. I won't let my experiences renting in Canada as a young Canadian be ignored. We need proper change, and I worry that none of our future leaders will actually make a difference. Conservative, Liberal, NDP- I don't feel like any parties are truly aiming to help middle class or lower, only helping corporations make more on our backs.
Edit:
Regardless of any of my comments made; I agree, we 1000% need more government built/ owned housing.
For solving this problem in Canada, we also have the added challenge of needing political good will on both the federal and provincial levels (since housing is the province of, well, provinces).
35:14 as a town planner this paper was utter nonsense, right now there are 1.1 million properties with planning permission not being built. Also the number of houses being applied for is not even 300,000 and the number given permission was over 85%, just keep in mind more will be given permission and not be built, than will be rejected.
That's all think tanks are for, well funded warriors of the status quo.
Introduce a punishing tax on empty lots and properties. They're not "developers", they're speculators banking on land value going up. We don't need to support this behaviour.
And if they were all built in 6 months - it would not cover 2 year's worth of inward migration. No one in the comments, or indeed the video, mentions this.
@heraliogomezchatsandsnac-ts8ki 1. If one person lived in one house, which they don't the average is 2.4 per household and higher among migrants. 2. Who do you thinks building the houses... 3. I guess you don't want any babies born then as that's going to be a larger cohort than the immigration figures will be this year 2025 that is. Go on say that. They can't even build houses. 4. One of the largest cohorts of migrants is students, who in first year live halls many in 2nd and 3rd do as well, but the rest go into homes that are 6 - 8 people per house, so definitely not taking up to much housing.
@@heraliogomezchatsandsnac-ts8ki because your comment is bollocks. Migration is not having the impact that fear mongers claim. As a nation we have a chronic shortage of workers, we NEED migration. There can be temporary difficulties when too many migrants move to a specific locale, but it does begin to settle fairly quickly. The areas where it doesn't already had major issues that migration- in the long term- will help to mitigate.
I find it hard to blame buy-to-occupy residents. I’m looking hard at policy that encourages the collecting of dozens of properties, treating them like shares and not a human necessity. It’s one of the most horrendous things any government can do to its population and had lead to untold social problems they think they can solve by building more prisons but, I don’t know, isn’t keeping people out of prisons more worthwhile an endeavour?
Since when has decent housing been a necessity?
@@Libertaro-i2uyou're so right, since when has been alive been important too? Why bother living decently let's go back to stone tools and the woods. You show the way I think your effort will really be motivating for us people that still hesitate between liking living correctly and just dying on the street.
It's amazing how much thatcher ruined and how bafflingly economically and politically illiterate
Or she was extremely politically literate if you consider her goals to be to enrich the private sector rather than helping the people.
@sykes1024 she said firing all miners in the country would grow the economy. This is so mind-bogglingly st upid, not just in hindsight where multiple regions of the UK have not recovered to this day. Yes mining was on the downward trend but that means retraining and investment in new technology in those areas for the jobs is what is needed.
And still: people voted her in power… crazy
@@Parakeet-pk6dl Mainly because the economy increased a lot under Thatcher so everything was gravy in the 80s but what I don't think people realised was that she was selling off the future for short-term gains and because we were doing well, the country got complacent to the point where we're perfectly fine with private companies owning natural monopolies and fucking us with it for hefty profits and bonuses.
@@mikester4896 the economy didn't grow very fast it was slower than the decade before and had higher inflation. There was high unemployment and mutiple regions of the country still have not recovered economically to this day. Right to buy and the fight between the SDP and Labour is what get her in power as she never won more than the SDP and Labour combined.
One of the biggest wins from the most recent budget that seems to be mostly unreported was ensuring right to buy proceeds go to local councils. With some small tweaks to make sure funding is available to actually build places that small change might make it viable for councils to start building again.
Another potentially huge idea could be giving powers to councils to be able to buy land which has planning approved but no construction for years due to private builders sitting on assets to drip feed supply via eminent domain. We're in a national emergency. Those resources (land) need to be put to use.
It could also be a huge jobs program. Get younger people into construction and gove them skills for life.
As far as I am aware it is practically illegal for local authorities to finance the construction of social housing themselves. This was passed around the time on Right-to-Buy, and it's why they can only team up with housing associations and community-interest-companies now when it comes to building new stock.
@RichTapestry that may well have been the case at the time. Yet another evil inflicted on us by Thatcher. It looks like even the Tories under Johnson were giving councils a bit more leeway with how they fund new developments. Allowing them to borrow to build. With all the cash from right to buy sales going back to local councils it might even be profitable for councils to start building again.
A big remaining issue I believe is getting land. I think they have to pay the cost priced as if the land had already been developed. Freeing up councils to be able to acquire land at reasonable rates is probably a sensible next step.
Hopefully some of the bolder councils will take the ball and run with it now.
@@RichTapestryWhy can't (or won't) they just repeal this legislation or put another law on top of this one to make it possible to do so again.
What surprises me when visiting the UK is how poor many neighborhoods look. Here in the Netherlands even the poorer areas are looked after, have a lot of green spaces, proper side walks and cycling infrastructure.
To be fair, if I travel to Belgium I have a similar experience. But not as bad as in the UK.
Obviously the UK has a lot of beautiful cities with nice architecture mostly concentrated in the centre.
But having visited people in the suburbs of London and seen many other suburban areas all over the UK, including Scotland, it all feels very poor to me.
For centuries the UK has been ruled by the kind of people that would sooner burn money in front of a homeless person than give them the money.
That's why it looks so poor - our rulers would genuinely pay extra to make society worse. Our schools and hospitals are far more expensive, but are also literally falling apart right now.
What nice architecture? City centres look disgusting too. Only nice buildings in this country are in the countryside.
@amhuman5138 I like towns like York, Cambridge and my favorite Edinburgh.
So their are nice city centres but to be fair also many ugly ones.
But I agree the Netherlands also wins big here, with almost every center of town looking great. Except for the really new ones like Lelystad and Almere, who were built the last 50 years..
@@sanderdeboer6034 They're a few exceptions, although I do want to add one to your list: Bath.
Because of a certain event about 80 years ago a lot of our stuff got destroyed, and it just so happened to be the worst era of architecture, so way too much of our nation is disgusting brutalist slabs.
Thing is, when you feel poor and trodden on, you don't look after your area either. So there's a lot of graffiti, broken public utilities, falling apart public transport and just general grime and littering. People can't feel proud when they feel disadvantaged. It's not everyone, obviously, but poverty breeds more poverty and dissatisfaction.
So the UK problem is a shortage in revolutions abroad
Unless this labour government actually starts building new council housing I could see a revolution start if a prolonged period of unemployment happens.
I hate Thatcher so much and I'm not even British.
I think one of the key problems is that house price growth is considered sacrosanct in the UK and homeowners (which are still the majority of voters) are primed to vehemently oppose anything that'll bring down their precious house price even in the slightest. Even home improvements are often thought in terms of how positively/ negatively they'll affect the house price rather than whether they'll make living ok your own home more pleasant and comfortable. And until homeowners are the majority of the population and we tackle this sentiment, there will be no meaningful steps to resolve the housing crisis.
I've personally just bought my first flat and I just don't understand why I'm meant to obsess about my house price and in its name block any opportunity for my neighbours to have quality affordable housing in my area. If more housing means my house price falls so be it, if it brings me into negative equity, so be it, I'll stay put for a couple of years, but that's all minor issues compared to rampant homelessness in the area and the increase of crime and antisocial behaviour that inevitably comes with it.
Currently in council house. Massive hole opened up in the foundation floor. Had a carpenter to replace wooden flooring when it was discovered. Ground water slowly seeping up. No news from council despite several failed attempts to get their attention. Wood through the house is rotting as the main floor beams are now creaking and moving. Housing crisis is going to keep getting worst if they let perfect houses like this one fall apart
if you can remove 300mm soil from under the ground floor floorboards youll save yourself from the ground water. airvents get blockecked overtime due to long term heave and movement of soils under timber floors. Do not undermine your foundations (typically 600mm deep below ground llevel)
Importing 700,000 people a year doesn't make a difference to availability of housing......
Always interesting to get these insights into the history of these sorts of issues in other countries, and comparing it to the history that I know better in my home country of Sweden. usually there is a very big overlap. In this case the Swedish government in the 60s decided to build 1 million new homes (in a country of 8 million people!), and by the mid 70s the housing crisis was entirely solved. Then in the 90s following an economic crash and the new neoliberal trends, the government decided that they no longer had any obligation of ensuring that there was enough housing available. And thus, all government spending on housing was cut, and we gradually got a bigger and bigger housing shortage. Yey.
Sweden is quite unique in that we don't have any social housing, everything (before the latest neoliberal reforms at least) is "rent controlled" through collective bargaining agreements, and rental housing is available to everyone on equal terms through "housing queues". As long as the government built enough housing to keep the market supplied, this worked very well, rents only rose with inflation and increases in standards, and the queues were kept short. But as soon as government spending stopped things started getting worse, and I think that's the trend in every country, no matter the social housing system or whatever.
Part of good quality homes that I think is often completely overlooked today is a decently sized garden. Can't let the kids play out in the streets incase they get kidnapped or hit by a car, can't let them run around in the house or garden because there's no space. Then wonder why kids spend their days holed up in their rooms playing with iPads or computers, and why they're sicker and fatter than kids who grew up outside.
Hello from Los Angeles where homelessness is at crises level. Surveys show about 60,000 unhoused people in our city. At the same time we have we have some of the most expensive housing in world. A lot of it has to do with mandatory low density building and onerous building approval processes as well as a nationwide drug addiction problem. That is an over simplification of course. About a decade back voters passed a massive bond to build public housing which has been leveraged with private capital. The cost of these units well exceeded those in the private sector. $500,000 to $800,000 a unit in low rise apartment buildings Its mindbuggling expensive. What is being built are fairly attractive structures but nothing to fancy. They target a variety of constituents. I wondered how such a scheme of goverment ownership might work. I see the Brits have been doing something a kin to this for quite some time. I wish someone would do a well thought out mini doc like this on what is happening in my city. Its all really confusing and i dont understand the relationship between the public and private sector or why they have become so expensive. Well done video essay you made here.🎉
Indeed.
A lot of those regulations make it impossible to have 'multi-family' households.
When the Council can force you to evict a friend, because you don't have enough garages...!
That wasn't a joke either, I had to remove a kitchenet because I had 2 garages and not 4.
That kitchenet made the house into a 'multi-family unit,' and I needed 2 more garages by regulation....
Or I could remove the Kitchenet and thus prevent the multi-family complaint by city hall!
Maybe open borders also has something to do with it. What prevents you from having 100,000,000 homeless?
@@lostbutfreesoul I've seen places (and may be moving to one) where parking requirements for building or renovating to accommodate more people are reduced or eliminated if within a few blocks of public transit, which seems like an important detail. (This also depends on availability of public transit, which can't be taken for granted here in the privatization-obsessed and car-worshipping US.)
I can hear my neighbours talking quietly through the wall in my new build. The TV keeps me awake every night. Might as well live with them. Boils in the summer, freezes in the Winter. Might as well live in a tent. New Builds suck.
My mum worked managing council houses for decades including the death blow push to a ‘community housing association’. She would have agreed with this video wholeheartedly. ‘Right to Buy’ killed council housing with 90% of the people buying their property selling within a few years when they couldn’t afford the upkeep and ending back on the increasing long queue for community housing .
I'm really glad that Vienna never sold off it's social housing stock, nor has the strong renters protection been given up
one thing ive learned most from watching a myriad of videos; capitalism cannot solve problems, because to solve a problem would mean elimination of a revenue stream.
Yep. It’s the police investigating itself conundrum - they are inherently disincentivized from solving the issue because they are the issue.
Capitalism is a tool, which can be guided by government to act to public benefit with the right incentives
@alehaim
Yeah until the government gets bought out by those with capital and then we live in an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy
Like any other system, Capitalism has it's advantages and disadvantages! And right now, unless you happen to be rich... The disadvantages definitely outweigh the advantages!
So if we can all accept that... The question now becomes, what do we do about it? Again, if you're rich then such concerns like these are of course completely irrelevant to you!
@@AlexHider Who watches the Watchmen?
I would rather the government own all homes and no one is homeless rather than most people owns their homes and have homeless children.
excellent, but the state would own all the homes and then evict the undesirables to the streets. these could be political dissident's or criminals but be sure, the state would make it worse. If you want to save homeless children adopt a family or fund Shelter charity. giving the national housing to the state would be madness, they cant even build a railway from liverpool to birmingham.
The graph at 14:48 tells an interesting story. I immediately noticed that the percentage of owner-occupied homes is going up at the same time as private rent is going down. Here in Canada, whenever the government proposes a housing-affordability policy, the Conservative Party says that the policy doesn’t help middle class people buy their first home. I’m wondering why council houses means more people buying houses.
Because housing becomes cheaper. The more supply you have, the cheaper housing becomes overall. When conservatives promote "home ownership" they are really promoting pumping more buyers' money into the market so that the price of houses goes up, inflating the wealth of existing homeowners.
It's mainly the right to buy scheme that has increased the number of home owners in the UK, but increasing the supply through building more council houses will bring rent and house prices down. This makes it more affordable for people to buy property.
@@tomuhawk96 yes, great in the short term, detrimental long term
Because rental yields go down and being a landlord isn't as good as an investment, this stabilises and may even reduce house prices as some drop out, this also allows first time buys to save more with better rents to income ratios, and so makes becoming an owner occupier easier.
The fact that the wealthy & ruling classes stopped doing something that was done for decades to prevent revolution is something that should deeply concern you.
I recommend working out regularly for unrelated reasons.
The fact that the Russian Revolution scared the British government into giving everyone homes is a great reminder that revolutions work and that we should definitely keep doing them.
Millions of Russians died and starved to death due to it.
If anyone spoke out against their "one of us" mentality they were exicuted.
If you didn't share all you earned you were.... Exicuted. Particularly if you wete farmers. So farmers simply stop producing as much, just enough for them selves, for if they made any more it was confiscated. So there was no incentive to produce more.
Which created mass famine
Not exactly somthing to praise now is it.
The start reminds me of Angel Meadow in Manchester the worst slum at the height of the industrial revolution. It had twice the density of the most dense place on the planet today and half of it was a Graveyard. Housing was normally a single room for an entire family or even mutiple families. The worst was the basement, they had no furniture and would sleep on straw on the floor. The basement flats would have raw sewage flow through them in heavy rain. I remember reading in the census that one person's address was "on the stairs" they slept on the staircase of a house. Life expectancy in England before the industrial revolution was 46, at the height of the industrial revolution it was 47 in Manchester it was 23. As I said half the slum was an unmaintained Graveyard, as the childrens families had no money they would use human skulls as footballs to play with. During economic recessions the top soil of the Graveyard rich in nutrients from the decomposing bodies would be sold to farmers and bones would be crushed up and sold to the Tannaries. There were a couple of tanneries in the area which is the smelliest industry as it involves human and animal waste product in the process, coupled with the gas works the place would stink. With all the textile factories and the railway the smog would have been a nesr constant and everything covered in smoke. Fredrick Engels visited factories owned by his father in the area and the horrors he saw there made him a communist he described it as hell upon earth. In the end the government placed flagstones across the entire Graveyard to stop the top soil from being taken. On the pennine moors are the Hungar Walls, these were built during times of famine such as during the Potatoe Blight, they would build long dry stone walls in exchange for food, often these walls had no purpose but were done so it felt like the food was earned. The slum was eventually demolished and now all that is there is expensive offices, flats and a park.
Thanks for interesting info!
Sounds just like east London
Pods are the wave of the future when it comes to housing. Think about it, all you need for housing is a place to sleep, shower and change clothes.
I'm an urban planning student currently writing a paper on social housing in Canada compared to in Europe, and this video is the story of so many countries. You go from quality social housing for all, to neoliberals destroying it and telling you to buy a home instead, and now no one can afford a home, private rentals, and there's no social housing. It all goes back to neoliberalism.
It's because Canada was flooded by a billion Indians actually.
At 59 seconds, 913 sq. meters to 268 sq. meters has to be a mistake. That's got to be square feet. A 913 square meter home would be huge, at 9827 square feet. Even a 268 sq. meters would be a pretty good sized house at 2884 sq. feet. I live in public housing in the U.S. My apartment is about 600 sq. feet. It's not huge, but I have a reasonable sized bedroom, a small kitchen, and a reasonable sized living room . That would be about 56 square meters.
It kind of reminds me of the problems with rent controlled apartments. I'm on disability, and I get a rent subsidized apartment. It's privately owned (could just as easily be publicly owned, there might even be advantages to it). Basically though, the government pays most of the rent. I end up paying 25% of my income towards that (minus deductions for utilities) which at this point puts my portion at $199/mo. I pay my own heat/hot water/phone/internet. The landlord gets about another $800/mo. from the government. They might get a little bit more if they didn't do Section 8 (their fair market apartments run $1100 to $1600/mo. They got a subsidy to build and a subsidy to switch us from electric heat to natural gas (which sucked for us, since we got a subsidy for utilities anyway, so the cost savings all went to them). Still, because they get close to fair market rent there is an incentive to build out more Section 8 housing. Rent control, on the other hand, means the landlords get a lot less money for an apartment, so they try everything to get tenants out. Much cheaper for the government though.
It's a shame they didn't offer the homes at actual cost. The NIMBY thing is a big problem over here in the U.S. too. Our complex actually managed to get built because originally it was only for seniors. They opened it up to people on disability later, and then allowed other low income people to rent.
Yeah it would be sq ft. Most 3 bed homes in the uk are sub 1200 sq ft if your lucky lol.
is it housing size or land area?
It always comes back to Thatcher, and private landlords...
But hey, private landlords perform the kinds of maintenance on their properties that tenants don't have to.
Those people who purchased the council houses, trashed them, 0 maintenance and now they want 200.000 pounds for them
As a (German) historian, I never understood why Clement Attlee is not seen as one of the greatest PMs of the 20th century (especially in regard of the status of "awful person who got one important thing right" Winston Churchill).
I've always said that Churchill lucked into being a good guy. If he hadn't been around at the same time as Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler, he likely would be regarded today as one of the greatest monsters of the 20th Century, considering his treatment of Ireland, India, and other colonies.
History revisionism to ensure that we are brainwashed into thinking this system is the only way the country can work. Thatcher, the Conservatives, right-wing media and 'think tanks' have done a number on us and Labour who've shifted along towards the centre.
Corbyn was the closest we got to bringing the lefties back with Labour but he was back-stabbed by members of his own party and obviously the media went full into overdrive to destroy his campaign.
TWO. Churchilll reportedly _hated_ landlords too! LOL.
@meganegan5992 good guy :)
@@meganegan5992eh, India wouldn’t have happened the way it did without World War 2. Churchill chose his own people over conquered people which had consequences
There’s too much regulation and bureaucracy in the UK, it’s basically impossible to get planning permission to build anything. We have the same problem in the US but it’s 100x worse over there. You really need to density your cities.
Obviously this won’t solve everything but it’s the biggest step. It’s way more cost effective than for the government to build all of it. Also rent control hurts the poor.
i feel like if we fixed the housing crisis it would help the economy significantly as consumers will simply have more money instead of landlords who are hording money
Plus I'd wager the number of people on long term benefits (and hence not contributing to the economy) due to depression, anxiety, stress, alcoholism, drug use, gambling addiction etc. would fall through the floor without the constant threat of sudden rent rises or eviction due to house sales turning your life upside down and wiping out every penny of savings.
I love how informative your videos are. I do not love how I leave every single one FUCKING FURIOUS. Well done.
Nearly everything wrong in the world now can be blamed on Thatcher and Regan.
I blame it on pot
So true Tom. The greed of the wealthy feeds on the poor, while giving the illusion of freeing people.
Yeah, my town, USA, in Longmont, CO has done about the same thing. Here it's a city council that insituted building restrictions and urban renewal to eliminate housing for lower income. Now extreme rent burdened housing and rising homelessness. Though homelessness has been solved by making it illegal to sleep in the ruff or in vehicles. The police are kept busy.
The USA has the added bonus of private prisons. Gotta create those prisoners somehow!
Sadly, our post-Communist transformation was managed by people emulating Thatcher (and Reagan) so we ended up in the same heap of shit. Czechia used to have a substantial council/public housing stock before it was almost entirely privatized, new public housing is pretty much non-existent and housing here is now the least affordable in Europe. Prague alone owned and rented out 200.000 flats in 1990, now it's down to just 30.000.
Just like Reagan in the States, it seems like Thatcher started half the problems that the UK faces today. Great vid.
Thatcher seems to have the posthumous reputation she deserves, though -- in the US even Democrats speak kindly of Reagan.
Only half??
@AlMc-i5p Too true. The ways the two dominant parties here diverge can be literally a matter of life and death for some people, but both are fully united when it comes to corporate capitalism being the only system we can be allowed to imagine.
The washing machine comment is especially funny considering most people I know in New England are forced to lug their clothing to laundromats in below freezing winters because not only are washer and dryer not included in most housing, but there aren't even hookups for such machines even if you decide to try and bring your own
Another excellent video Tom, thank you. Can you show it to the politicians that ruin our lives.
I truly believe the reason we are having less children is because we don't have home's,
My parents were both 22 when they owned a two bedroom flat with baby me.
I'm now 32 living in my nans cabin. & iv never been able to keep a steady job.
if the free market is so great, why does it crash every 15-20 years and have to bailed out by taxpayers?
Shortage of materials, 1 million houses in 7 years, and modern governments can just about manage 40k in 5 years.
in the grim darkness of the near future, there is only HMO's
It’s funny watching this to realise my argumentative Grandad, was right about what happened with housing in the 80’s, but ignorantly wrong about why it happened. He genuinely believes that people exploited the right to buy system, but refuses to recognise that was the entire point of how Right to Buy was set up.
Turns out electing people who don’t think the state can do anything to run the State doesn’t end with a well run State. 😅
That was a great video. Concise and informative. Thank you.
’m starting to see a pattern with every video on UK politics:
“Between 1945-1979 things were good, but that all changed with Margaret Thatcher”
What the TINA neoliberals never acknowledge is that unfettered markets always fail. As more markets fail, we get more crises. Only well regulated markets, with provision for the poorest outside the market, actually work. Adam Smith actually said exactly this.
everyone taking part expects that they'll survive the collapse and be able to buy everything on the cheap...
Who would have thought that the free market wouldn't regulate itself
Absolute whiplash seeing my childhood street on a bus stop sign for B-roll footage
Especially seeing as my family benefitted from the right to purchase council housing
What difference does it make who owns a house, provided it's lived in?
If there's 20 million houses, and 20 million families/people wanting a house then how can there be a housing crisis? (providing people don't buy 2nd homes to keep empty). If there's a 19 million houses, a crisis makes sense, or if there's 21 million families/people wanting a house, a crisis makes sense.
Isn't the reason for the current housing crisis simply because the population has gone up, but the number of houses hasn't?
The people who can make more houses happen are the same ones who profit on housing becoming more scarce, this is why it matters who owns the houses
@@DeoMachinahow are people who buy their own council house responsible for building other houses?
@@caiparry-jones9775 Nah, they're a minority of the property-owning demographic
I'm talking about people with portfolios etc
I wish we'd do something like this again.
The idea of owning property seems so far beyond possible now, and the kind of quality council housing my grandparents lived in simply is no longer publicly owned. It's depressing.
Demand it.
@@katiemorison7969 Agree with the sentiment but I don't see the material base of political consciousness this needs. Dismantled by neoliberalism. A small hope remains though.
how I wish this fantasy of "the free market can solve this problem" was ever true....like for anything. Housing, healthcare, education, time and again we hear that the free market has a better solution and it simply does not.
Let's just ignore how 50 million people couldn't even afford to eat in Maoist China 🤦
@@Arthur_King_of_the_Britons How many people starved in capitalism again?
@@DeoMachina Zero people die of starvation today in capitalist countries; Unless for their own reasons they choose not to eat
And world food programs funded by capitalist countries means more people die of obesity than hunger globally. You're welcome
@@Arthur_King_of_the_Britons Uhh, so we're just going to pretend that all those capitalist famines didn't happen?
I love to see the consistent improvement in production value. You've become one of my favourite video-essaists and I can't wait to watch your Nebula documentaries, when I finally get to subscribe.
If houses are an investment, then tenants should get paid for living there and keeping watch of landlords' "investments".
They rarely do though, why is my flat mouldy, and reeks of cig Smoke? Ah, because the previous renter created tropical, humid conditions for his Venus fly traps in his flat and smoked inside. Does this "Person" have to repair the damage he caused? No! Is he the reason smoke trails are in the floor and in the bathroom? Yes! Has her ever cleaned the flat? No! Could he be evicted for that? No, that would be "unhumane".
@@user-co7fo uh why is person in quotes??? that's vile, implying someone isn't a person. you should be ashamed
@@steamvyrus6249 i cannot fathom how you can live in a house or flat for several years and leave it completly moldy, basically never clean, destroy the wooden floor with a humid climate, leave the Windows in complete neglection, smoke inside so much that the ash is engraved in the floor, ... How can you live like that, how can you leave something like that in comlete neglection. I mean the shower had heavy calciferous traces up to one meter high and the water is soft. I am a chaotic Person, but come on...
Maybe Audrey II was planted there, the conditions were perfect.
But you are right, that was too harsh.
I paid half the price than my brother did for a 3 bedroom house because mine is a 1975 ex-council. The place is so sturdy, the only issues I have come up against are the result of previous owners' questionable DIY, and my place is about 50% bigger than his new build
When I moved out of my private rental, we were paying £200/month less than it then went on the market for after we moved out
1997 - House prices on average 3.6 times annual salaries
2022 - House prices on average 9.1 times annual salaries
Under John Major, net immigration ran at around 50,000. Within a year, Tony Blair quintupled it to 250,000 per year. Since then It's gone up and up.
population 1997 - 58 million
2022 - 68 million.
a 17% increase in population will drive up prices into a scarce economy.
Having worked as a delivery driver in Plymouth, seeing all of these little streets again brought me great joy
The unaddressed issue is, why are firms building housing able to keep prices high. With cars, TVs, and in other sectors, firms compete, and this pushes down prices. Why is this no happening with housing?
Scarcity. Building is getting cheaper, but due to scarcity, people are willing to pay more.
Turns out demand doesnt drop when you increase the price on something that people need to reliably survive.
That is why developers are not building enough. If they did and prices fell due to more housing on the market, they would have to work more and spend more for the same profit margin. So they don't.
As someone who moved away a decade ago, I'm enjoying all the shots of Plymouth in the background
Hit 240k today. Appreciate you for all the knowledge and nuggets you had thrown my way over the last months. Started with 24k in August 2024.,,.
I would really love to know how much work you did put in to get to this stage
I will be forever grateful to you, you changed my whole life and I will continue to preach on your behalf for the whole world to hear that you saved me from huge financial debt with just a small Investment, thank you Jihan Wu you're such a life saver
As a beginner in this, it’s essential for you to have a mentor to keep you accountable.
Jihan Wu is also my trade analyst, he has guided me to identify key market trends, pinpointed strategic entry points, and provided risk assessments, ensuring my trades decisions align with market dynamics for optimal returns.
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Most rich people stay rich by spending like the poor and investing without stopping then most poor people stay poor by spending like the rich yet not investing like the rich but impressing them. People prefer to spend money on liabilities, Rather than investing in assets and be very profitable
In the first ad break I got an ad for the extremely fancy new build-to-rent 'co-living space' in my neighbourhood. Studio apts with murphy beds and communal kitchens, starting from €2000 per month. The private rental market is wild.
As usual, to fail to mention the impacts of mass immigration to your videos. you're looking at one (small) dimension of a multi-faceted problem. I cant take this seriously.
Without immigration we'd have a smaller labour pool and our care/medical sectors would have ceased functioning
Explain to me how that would have helped us build houses?
@@DeoMachina maybe you can house all 1 million people per year who come into the country? there's certainly no room for them where I live.
Also over the last four years the NHS has employed lots more people quite a few of them immigrants, but productivity has not increased. so this country is taking on more immigrants, but they’re not even doing anything. 🤷♂️
Thanks Tom. It's honestly depressing how the political will to get mass council housing built is [likely] only going to come once the generation who bought the previous stock have exited. I wish people weren't so selfish and could see how supporting public housing initiatives could improve the economy. It doesn't make sense for exorbitant rents to be funneled to increasingly wealthy landlords, while the country suffers from lack of investment in local infrastructure, and the young get their incomes effectively cut in half.
Huh! Who'd have thought that the solution to housing crisis is, building more houses? Amazing right?
No, the answer is for the government to take the lead instead of leaving it to the market. Neoliberalism does not work, never will. You need a strong government to intervene.
Exactly, council housing too! And then make it so they can't be sold at a discount, then flipped for by the previous tenant for massive profits and/or turned into a rental.
@@theinternetbutlerie Subsidized Building
Not in America. There's sooooo much empty space here, literal skyscrapers empty, but corporate buying and greedy private landlords have made it impossible. Unless you're making in the ballpark of 120k/annually, your chances of home ownership is low. And the other factors used to determine who buys is fat more complicated and strict. A friend of mine literally had the money to outright buy but was still rejected. Space isn't the issue in most places, it's affordability.
We bring in a million immigrants every year. It is not possible for us to build a million homes every year to accommodate them nor is it desireable.
I'm old (ish). I thought things were tough for my generation. The easy opportunities dried up a few years before I was able to take advantage of them. But things are much harder for young people now. I was eventually able to own a decent home. I fear the next generation won't own one until they inherit mine, assuming no disaster happens to kill even that chance.
On the topic of someone being able to make their rented property their home, I can't even decorate. My contract stipulates I can't put up posters, flags, or anything of the sort at risk of losing my deposit. This was the only property that gave us a viewing, or even acknowledged our request - out of 20. I feel like I'm living in someone elses house and I had no choice in the matter.
For a glimpse at their pettiness, the bathroom light is automatic, and has a switch to turn it off and on. Because the light is automatic, the letting agency decided to cut off the cord for the light switch. Why? They won't tell us. Can you give us the light switch back? "No" they say. "It's automatic, why would you need a switch?". Shit is on constantly.
It could be worse. I don't have black mould, I have heating that works (despite the lack of double glazing or wall insulation), I'm not going to be evicted. But this is the bare bare fucking minimum. It's not that I can't get on the housing ladder. It's not that I'm paying more than my parents mortgage. It's that landlords, and especially letting agents, seem to be completely vindictive for absolutely no reason. My previous landlord still hasn't returned my previous deposit of £750 (a lot of money for me right now!) because they don't have to yet. We don't just need more housing, we need housing without the callous indifference to the people who live in it.
Too many scumbag landlords. Not all are though.
Were getting fined for being in a house with and extra bedroom and because the property is adapted for the last three years since my mum passed. We are still waiting to be moved.
Now do Canada...........(we're actively curb stomping the concept of affordable shelter).
"for many in our parents generation home ownership was a fairly achievable aspiration" the property market in the UK is the pinnacle example of pulling the ladder up behind you
The stupidity of the Thatcher years and subsequent failures to at least keep up on building houses is staggering. Leave it to the private sector. They, in their profit mindset, will solve everything, without cutting costs or quality. Trust me bro!
I found myself shouting to the video on how stupid these people were.
Adding more housing, whether public or private, will not solve the housing problem. The main problem is the "housing ladder" itself. Placing generational wealth on the speculation and flipping of real estate is not appropriate and leads to perverse incentives, one of the worst being NIMBY culture. Reintroduce the People's Budget and start the process of collecting land value for the community and nation.
I've noticed the increase in production quality, but today I feel the need to assist. Those full page image print outs, that ain't cheap.
Jokes aside, I love your work, many thanks and I'll be watching BOOMERS soon.
Half way in and I feel so depressed and hopeless.
as a younger swede i didn't know the exact details of the right to buy council housing and figured "yeah if you lived there for a long time you should be allowed to your home!" didn't know it was 3 years and no minimum age of the building utter insanity. it should be something like lived there 10 years and the building is 30 years old. poor people need to get on the housing latter. the council needs to shed older properties as growing public housing until it is all housing is a bad idea.
the fact UK people were this personally greedy is utter insanity to me.
I am not a swede but live in Sweden and honestly it seems odd to me how the 1 million homes project in Sweden failed yet the council housing in the UK worked. I guess the British did it slightly better than Sweden
The people at the top of the wealth ladder in the UK have always been obscene. There families here passing millions down generation after generation and paying no inheritance tax because they have worked out ways round it.
I'm lucky enough to have lived in a 1922 council house for 25 years. We bought it a decade ago. Its a fantastic house, looks good, family sized, decent garden. Both our kids were born in the front room!
Nye Bevan wanted housing freely available to all at a reasonable cost so that all the people of the UK could experience each others lives and troubles, promoting social cohesion and empathy.
Margaret Thatcher wanted housing to not be freely available because of the possibility that might work.
"a policy that would kill the hopes and dreams of working families"
Maggie sounded rather excited while saying that
Keep up the good work Tom . Excellent content.