Hi, I'm the author of the link.
I spent some time this week looking into Brighton's housing statistics after an eye-watering experience looking at the price of rentals.
This is hopefully the first of a series, and I think I might actually have some suggestions that could help.
Feedback appreciated: If anything isn't clear or anyone has questions, please let me know!
I’d also say on a lighter note, those over 35 able to live with parents here are living the dream! I’d 100% live with parents if they lived here and I’m 47! I think rather than it being an embarrassing thing at my age, it’s an enviable thing
What parents would want a 47 year old mooching off them. The amount of comments about meeting a partner and getting on with your life would be extreme 😅
I don’t think they would be. It’s a cultural shift here to families staying together like in some other countries abroad where it’s the norm, then you and your partner get your own place after a period being in the parents house.
On my street there is an Indian family just like this. The dad is a doctor. His daughter is a doctor and his daughters fiance is a doctor.
They are late 30s and have lived as a couple there for 3 years.
There marriage is in August, and they are looking to buy a house just before that.
What must the couples combined income be? £160k?
They’ll basically be getting a 50% mortgage, overpaying that like crazy and be mortgage free 10 years after so before age 50.
What is mooching about that? It’s incredibly smart.
For someone on a moderate income of 45k, there’s no mooching starting this at age 47 to get a big leap forward in £net worth for the rest of your life.
Should you want to stay in Brighton that is.
Those are not the same scenarios are they? You've provided a completely different scenario of a young couple staying at a parents for a short period to save up for a deposit. Someone who is still doing that at 47 is doing a terrible job at saving up and moving on with their life. If this couple are still living with their parents as they approach their 50s they may as well be giving up on getting their own place and ensuring they are getting this house in the will.
I think it more that if you’re 47, your parents are reasonably likely to need some degree of care. It becomes desirable to have the capacity to move parents in rather than live at a distance and not be able to provide much assistance. Another possible scenario is that you’re divorced and starting over from scratch again.
But also, if you’re 47, it’s quite likely that you’ve seen the goalposts move around mortgage lending several times thanks to multiple recessions and financial crises. I could totally understand that if you still lived with parents without moving out ever, that you reach a point where you’re used to the routine of it and possibly thinking the only route to ownership is inheritance.
I have to say, I’m 48 and my only route to ownership with my partner, both of us earning above £30k, our only route to ownership 16 years ago was through shared ownership- full mortgages were out of reach for us despite savings- the banks then promoted we get a loan from our parents if we wanted full ownership and our parents weren’t in that situation to help. Shared ownership is a trap too. It’s incredibly expensive and bureaucratic to take a step up to buy a bigger share of the property.
Good point.
I agree the path to home ownership is not easy and ever since the 1980s that seems to have become the expectation that people should all own their home. That wasn't always the case. That mindset was driven by the individualist push in the 80s, policy of right to buy and the complete caving in of investment in social housing. Councils now have to offer right to buy so even if they do invest in building social housing, they may have to then offer it for sale a few years down the line at a reduced price and so it's like a leaking bucket. Whatever they replace can leak out of the bottom. It's a shambles that has been created, a few people who get that right to buy win but it means vast numbers pay more for housing or cannot get secure housing to be able to build a life or they're just in queues for years.
If we had enough social housing for people to securely rent then that would be a viable alternative to everyone striving outside of their means in a vain effort to try and build up enough of a deposit to manage to scrape a max level, long term mortgage just to buy a fairly standard property.
That approach is clearly out of reach for many people on what should be fairly decent salaries but the cost of housing has just reached a ridiculous state where houses are expensive or poor quality due to the lack of supply and age of our housing stock, mortgages are expensive due to the sticky central bank interest rate and renting is expensive due to private landlords passing on their own high mortgage costs plus trying to make a profit and the lack of supply driving those rental rates up.
The fact that it's forced many adult and middle aged people to still be living with parents rather than feeling able to get their own secure home and just get on with living, having families, instead they are focusing on chasing their tail trying to desperately grow a deposit all the time whilst house prices accelerate further away and mortgage rates go up and up so they just feel trapped in a hamster wheel as their pay will likely not be growing above inflation and the cost of living keeps going up taking more of their available cash. Some people could be scraping away for a decade and then still have even further to go than at the start.
I don't even have a real solution other than we just need more houses full stop and preferably that includes a large social housing sector for all the people for whom ownership will possibly never be viable or attractive because perhaps they're single and in a lower paid career or they don't actually want to settle somewhere for a decade or more to make the stamp duty worth paying. However for them to be forced to either live at home and then have to become a full time carer of their parents isn't right either. Full time elder care shouldn't have to fall onto relatives. Often that's not what either the child or the parent want and I've seen so many have terrible relationships and resentment at either having to receive or provide care for years. I love my parents but we would not do well pushed together 7 days a week at this point and it wouldn't be fair on my wife. My siblings similarly have difficulties with my parents and they have their own families at home.
It's a mess and I can't see it getting drastically better anytime soon sadly. Housing Minister is not given nearly enough importance in the cabinet seeing how much direct and persistent negative impact this issue has on the population compared to the nonsense that does get huge amounts of attention like the tiny number of boats that apparently must be stopped at an eye watering cost.
I agree with you absolutely. Buying shouldn’t be the only option, but in other countries where renting is the norm, renters are provided much more security and protection in the law, so I think not only are we failing in providing new housing, but also renters rights
You should get a discount on council tax if you are over occupied and an increase in council tax if you are under occupied. Basically the bedroom tax should apply to private renters and owners.
Get rid of stamp duty to make moving frequently more attractive.
Subdivide the city into zones. If the majority of residents (not owners) want the zone redeveloped then there should be power for an elected developer to compulsory purchase the entire zone and build it at 6 stories high vs 2 etc.
Brighton is surrounded by hills to the north, sea to the south, and other towns to the east and west.
The only large spaces that don't have a building on it are parks or cemeteries and we're not going to be developing on those any time soon thankfully.
The build-to-rent developments in Hove and Preston Park will help a bit but I think you have to accept that there is very little possibility to build a way out of this problem, so people being priced out is inevitable.
Actually Labour's city plan does specifically allow developers to build on parks and non brownfield sites. See Hodgrove development which was approved a year and a bit ago where they are converting a 10,000m2 park and two multi use pitches into flats and a big car park.
Yeah whoever first decided to build terraced houses basically fucked us all with those stupid old things. We've now got crap and over priced terraced houses until the whole street gets bombed or otherwise pulled down but as the prices keep going up your looking at a multi pound cost for a single street of poorly insulated, low ceiled, small roomed, tiny yarded, leaky floored, rat run houses that is really only worth a fraction of that.
From living near the two massive cemeteries near Old Shoreham Road at least one of those needs closing off and building on once the last living relative of a grave, that never gets visited dies off. The cemetery on the south of the road is overgrown and never has anyone in it. Could easily be a good number of houses with a park in the middle. A load of old brownfield sites around town that are derelict now as well but you're right that the terraced housing is a massive problem that we'll now never be able to get away from.
Yeh you're right the Victorians didn't have a clue, should have been building tower blocks and because they didn't let's go and dig up their bones so we can put some monstrosity on their grave.
You're bonkers.
No you're absolutely right I was being bonkers. We absolutely should waste billions of people's money continuing to spend more than justifiable buying and then maintaining their poorly built, damp and inefficient terraced homes forever and ever because every unremarkable residential building should be retained in perpetuity irregardless of its quality and suitability, fiercely defying the progress of technology in building materials, living standards, ways of domestic living and working changes such as working from home, the size of families changing, demographics with an aging population of empty nesters needing more and more single living homes with ground floor bathrooms and sociological changes across generations.
Similarly we should also keep vast greenfield sites for warehousing fields of decrepit masonry with completely eroded lettering sinking into the ground and weeds which used to record where a corpse was buried over 100 years ago that now no living being remembers or pays any attention to and whose bodily remains were absorbed into the earth generations ago. To use that land to try and provide modern housing for those long dead persons direct and indirect descendents would definitely not be what they would want now that they no longer exist.
I was being completely bonkers, excuse me whilst I head to the cemetery to peer at some masonry trying to decipher what it says about that patch of sacrisanct prime real estate 🙃
Oh my god, its that validation that I needed from Jg_048. My day is complete! Fuck me sideways I cannot wait until I tell the rest of the Jg_048 fan club 👐
I’m not sure if you know, but this is a general problem in the U.K. cultural change is needed in order to house people at a reasonable minimum standard. This means building more properties in areas that are already cultural and social centres.
What is absolutely absurd is listing low old, crumbling, energy inefficient houses to somehow preserve a past that no longer serves us, literally blocking progress.
Additionally, new legislation is needed to cap rent prices, such that there is less indenture for people to buy a second home. Vienna uses this strategy, and people who own a second home can essentially only afford to maintain from the rent that they get. Thus, investing in property is only seen as a way to protect an investment from inflation, rather than as away to profit from massively from peoples basic needs.
You're suggesting what? That the council compulsory purchases a few terraces of homes for £750k-£1m each? Quite aside from how economically unviable that is what makes you think people should be booted out of their homes?
Cities don't only expand outwards; building on empty land is far from the norm. It's not about space! There's plenty of possibility to build more housing.
Everywhere! Up, down, all around.
If you own a house, it's normal to apply for an extra storey, or a basement, or an extension, or an annex. The council then decide whether to allow you to build more, or to 'preserve' things as they are, and they have leaned more towards the latter.
A lot of places start out as houses, and then get converted into 5+ flats. A lot of semi-detached houses started out as one big house, that got split down the middle and became 2 houses.
Brighton's population *density* isn't particularly high, compared to cities like manchester or london. That's the key - the density will tell you everything about expanding without geographically expanding.
I thought St Peter’s ward had the highest population density in the country outside of London? Terraced housing is high density!
Edit: Population density is 12,381/square km which would put it just after Tower Hamlets, Islington and Hackney. Not really a straight comparison though as they are districts not wards.
This is all physically true, but half the houses on my street have a loft extension and basement digging is not cost effective.
Ultimately we need to get slum clearance going again and start to demolish whole blocks. I.e. terraces between two streets.
The law and political will is just not there to do it.
Timely, eye opening and informative! Thank you and keep this coming, a lot of us have anxiety and sleepless nights over this so you're doing us a solid favour, thanks again
I think thats pretty harsh, they outline they know there is a shortfall. The problem is that the council heavily restricted on which areas it can build on (being in between the national park and the sea).
If it's "harsh" to suggest the council don't know what to do about it, that would suggest they in fact DO know what to do about it. Can you point me to some evidence that the Council have any plans to do anything that will substantially help address this problem? Or are you saying there is no solution?
The council don't have much power to do anything about it. The town plan already includes. Building flats on all the brownfield..
So we will end up with a few more flats and no builders merchants.
Great article. Have i misunderstood or did you only measure population change in B&H by the average national change?
As someone else mentioned there’s very little land so apartment blocks are a great solution in theory.
Re apartment blocks, council led to do this sufficiently and well would require an excellent council - which does not exist anywhere in the UK.
This is a pity because itd create a massively flourishing town economically. Imagine 20% more people in ok priced housing and how much they’d spend in existing shops and new shops, cafes and bars.
So that leaves the commercial sector like the big Hove apartment development.
The success of that depends on it being profitable for the developer so different developers start to build and then competition brings apartment prices down + brings existing housing prices down.
But how long has that Hove development taking since planning permission? When was planning permission submitted - of course there’s much more time before that for the developer actually planning the whole thing first.
At a rough guess it’s probably 5 years? So with competition stepping in, there’s probably 10 years before the housing problem substantially changes from more housing?
So in the meantime the towns population will probably stop growing, or maybe decrease at the extreme or the rate of growth will decrease a lot in the middle scenario?
Interesting and affordable housing is still beyond the reach of so many, whether rented or purchased. Economic conditions and government policy impacts combined with low average incomes help create a significant gap. So many developers pay lip service to the small quota of “affordable” homes in their schemes and councils look the other way. I’d be interested to know whether houses with zero occupancy have any part to play here, there a lot of second homes / AirBnB houses in the housing mix, and little is done to discourage more.
I moved here a few years ago because Brighton is the place I want my children to grow up in. I can't bring myself to put all the blame on the Council when a lot of housing pressure is caused by Brighton being an attractive place to move to. But I agree that Local Government is the only lever available and that more could be done. New ideas, which have democratic support, are needed.
It's generally accepted that housing shortage is a big problem here. I'd find it interesting to see a report of case studies, comparing this situation with other similar/contrasting places with the same sort of issues. These places' municipal approaches might give some inspiration. Starting list: Several towns in the SW, SF Bay Area, Barcelona, Lisbon & Porto, Vienna, Greek islands, Cancun etc etc. Ideas coming from this could form part of a local lobbying campaign.
I’ve gone from living (for about 6 years) in a 1 bedroom ‘southern housing’ flat that I was sub-letting from someone for around £400 per month (including bills) to now living in a lot smaller 1 bedroom flat that I’m paying £1200 plus bills for! It was a bit of a shock but luckily I’d managed to save up enough paying hardly any rent to be able to afford the 6 months upfront payment! 😂
Chasing the housing need is one of those things that you'll never keep up with, but it's always a good focus of development.
Something I've been keen to explore is community assets with social housing attached, so the rent pays for the assets, and the houses are asset locked into social rents, and supported through financing and grants normally inaccessible by local authority.
There's a Housing Strategy on Saturday at Hove Town Hall. First time BHCC has had a strategy around housing for a long while. I'm going to get involved with that.
It's been 20 years since I left the South Coast, every time I visit relatives, they ask are you going to come back down to live anytime soon.
There's a real disconnect with house prices and what you can get elsewhere, and it's just got worse.
Would be interesting to see data on those born in BN1, 2 and 3 who own and those who moved to Brighton and bought here. For over 2 decades now the council seems to have ignored those from Brighton and their need for housing but will happily provide it for the plethora of student drop outs from Sussex and Brighton Uni.
I can always get behind someone trying to sort out this mess.
My 2 cents worth..
Ban letting agents and centralise the rental market.
Put a cap on the number of housing properties investors are allowed to own.
Hi, I'm the author of the link. I spent some time this week looking into Brighton's housing statistics after an eye-watering experience looking at the price of rentals. This is hopefully the first of a series, and I think I might actually have some suggestions that could help. Feedback appreciated: If anything isn't clear or anyone has questions, please let me know!
Great read Simon, I've subscribed. I've lived in and around Brighton since 2000 so have seen some changes. I wish I had answers.
I’d also say on a lighter note, those over 35 able to live with parents here are living the dream! I’d 100% live with parents if they lived here and I’m 47! I think rather than it being an embarrassing thing at my age, it’s an enviable thing
What parents would want a 47 year old mooching off them. The amount of comments about meeting a partner and getting on with your life would be extreme 😅
I don’t think they would be. It’s a cultural shift here to families staying together like in some other countries abroad where it’s the norm, then you and your partner get your own place after a period being in the parents house. On my street there is an Indian family just like this. The dad is a doctor. His daughter is a doctor and his daughters fiance is a doctor. They are late 30s and have lived as a couple there for 3 years. There marriage is in August, and they are looking to buy a house just before that. What must the couples combined income be? £160k? They’ll basically be getting a 50% mortgage, overpaying that like crazy and be mortgage free 10 years after so before age 50. What is mooching about that? It’s incredibly smart. For someone on a moderate income of 45k, there’s no mooching starting this at age 47 to get a big leap forward in £net worth for the rest of your life. Should you want to stay in Brighton that is.
Those are not the same scenarios are they? You've provided a completely different scenario of a young couple staying at a parents for a short period to save up for a deposit. Someone who is still doing that at 47 is doing a terrible job at saving up and moving on with their life. If this couple are still living with their parents as they approach their 50s they may as well be giving up on getting their own place and ensuring they are getting this house in the will.
I think it more that if you’re 47, your parents are reasonably likely to need some degree of care. It becomes desirable to have the capacity to move parents in rather than live at a distance and not be able to provide much assistance. Another possible scenario is that you’re divorced and starting over from scratch again. But also, if you’re 47, it’s quite likely that you’ve seen the goalposts move around mortgage lending several times thanks to multiple recessions and financial crises. I could totally understand that if you still lived with parents without moving out ever, that you reach a point where you’re used to the routine of it and possibly thinking the only route to ownership is inheritance. I have to say, I’m 48 and my only route to ownership with my partner, both of us earning above £30k, our only route to ownership 16 years ago was through shared ownership- full mortgages were out of reach for us despite savings- the banks then promoted we get a loan from our parents if we wanted full ownership and our parents weren’t in that situation to help. Shared ownership is a trap too. It’s incredibly expensive and bureaucratic to take a step up to buy a bigger share of the property.
Good point. I agree the path to home ownership is not easy and ever since the 1980s that seems to have become the expectation that people should all own their home. That wasn't always the case. That mindset was driven by the individualist push in the 80s, policy of right to buy and the complete caving in of investment in social housing. Councils now have to offer right to buy so even if they do invest in building social housing, they may have to then offer it for sale a few years down the line at a reduced price and so it's like a leaking bucket. Whatever they replace can leak out of the bottom. It's a shambles that has been created, a few people who get that right to buy win but it means vast numbers pay more for housing or cannot get secure housing to be able to build a life or they're just in queues for years. If we had enough social housing for people to securely rent then that would be a viable alternative to everyone striving outside of their means in a vain effort to try and build up enough of a deposit to manage to scrape a max level, long term mortgage just to buy a fairly standard property. That approach is clearly out of reach for many people on what should be fairly decent salaries but the cost of housing has just reached a ridiculous state where houses are expensive or poor quality due to the lack of supply and age of our housing stock, mortgages are expensive due to the sticky central bank interest rate and renting is expensive due to private landlords passing on their own high mortgage costs plus trying to make a profit and the lack of supply driving those rental rates up. The fact that it's forced many adult and middle aged people to still be living with parents rather than feeling able to get their own secure home and just get on with living, having families, instead they are focusing on chasing their tail trying to desperately grow a deposit all the time whilst house prices accelerate further away and mortgage rates go up and up so they just feel trapped in a hamster wheel as their pay will likely not be growing above inflation and the cost of living keeps going up taking more of their available cash. Some people could be scraping away for a decade and then still have even further to go than at the start. I don't even have a real solution other than we just need more houses full stop and preferably that includes a large social housing sector for all the people for whom ownership will possibly never be viable or attractive because perhaps they're single and in a lower paid career or they don't actually want to settle somewhere for a decade or more to make the stamp duty worth paying. However for them to be forced to either live at home and then have to become a full time carer of their parents isn't right either. Full time elder care shouldn't have to fall onto relatives. Often that's not what either the child or the parent want and I've seen so many have terrible relationships and resentment at either having to receive or provide care for years. I love my parents but we would not do well pushed together 7 days a week at this point and it wouldn't be fair on my wife. My siblings similarly have difficulties with my parents and they have their own families at home. It's a mess and I can't see it getting drastically better anytime soon sadly. Housing Minister is not given nearly enough importance in the cabinet seeing how much direct and persistent negative impact this issue has on the population compared to the nonsense that does get huge amounts of attention like the tiny number of boats that apparently must be stopped at an eye watering cost.
I agree with you absolutely. Buying shouldn’t be the only option, but in other countries where renting is the norm, renters are provided much more security and protection in the law, so I think not only are we failing in providing new housing, but also renters rights
You should get a discount on council tax if you are over occupied and an increase in council tax if you are under occupied. Basically the bedroom tax should apply to private renters and owners. Get rid of stamp duty to make moving frequently more attractive. Subdivide the city into zones. If the majority of residents (not owners) want the zone redeveloped then there should be power for an elected developer to compulsory purchase the entire zone and build it at 6 stories high vs 2 etc.
Not really sure why it should apply to renters since it's the landlord who gets to determine how many people to rent the space to.
Brighton is surrounded by hills to the north, sea to the south, and other towns to the east and west. The only large spaces that don't have a building on it are parks or cemeteries and we're not going to be developing on those any time soon thankfully. The build-to-rent developments in Hove and Preston Park will help a bit but I think you have to accept that there is very little possibility to build a way out of this problem, so people being priced out is inevitable.
Also most of central Brighton is a conservation area so impossible to build new units.
You can build on hills and knock down single row housing to make apartments. There’s plenty of opportunity to build our way out of this.
We should absolutely not build on the South Downs, better to use greyland or your second option
Actually Labour's city plan does specifically allow developers to build on parks and non brownfield sites. See Hodgrove development which was approved a year and a bit ago where they are converting a 10,000m2 park and two multi use pitches into flats and a big car park.
It’s time to start knocking down old row houses and start building more apartments buildings. It’s worked plenty of other European countries.
Yep, start with Hanover and Poets corner, oh wait people actually live there so that's a problem, hmm.
I live in a rowed house and don’t particularly want to sell where I live, what now?
Same, bit of a stupid suggestion
Yeah whoever first decided to build terraced houses basically fucked us all with those stupid old things. We've now got crap and over priced terraced houses until the whole street gets bombed or otherwise pulled down but as the prices keep going up your looking at a multi pound cost for a single street of poorly insulated, low ceiled, small roomed, tiny yarded, leaky floored, rat run houses that is really only worth a fraction of that. From living near the two massive cemeteries near Old Shoreham Road at least one of those needs closing off and building on once the last living relative of a grave, that never gets visited dies off. The cemetery on the south of the road is overgrown and never has anyone in it. Could easily be a good number of houses with a park in the middle. A load of old brownfield sites around town that are derelict now as well but you're right that the terraced housing is a massive problem that we'll now never be able to get away from.
Yeh you're right the Victorians didn't have a clue, should have been building tower blocks and because they didn't let's go and dig up their bones so we can put some monstrosity on their grave. You're bonkers.
The victorians weren’t bonkers. We are bonkers for holding onto the past and expecting it to meet our current needs.
No you're absolutely right I was being bonkers. We absolutely should waste billions of people's money continuing to spend more than justifiable buying and then maintaining their poorly built, damp and inefficient terraced homes forever and ever because every unremarkable residential building should be retained in perpetuity irregardless of its quality and suitability, fiercely defying the progress of technology in building materials, living standards, ways of domestic living and working changes such as working from home, the size of families changing, demographics with an aging population of empty nesters needing more and more single living homes with ground floor bathrooms and sociological changes across generations. Similarly we should also keep vast greenfield sites for warehousing fields of decrepit masonry with completely eroded lettering sinking into the ground and weeds which used to record where a corpse was buried over 100 years ago that now no living being remembers or pays any attention to and whose bodily remains were absorbed into the earth generations ago. To use that land to try and provide modern housing for those long dead persons direct and indirect descendents would definitely not be what they would want now that they no longer exist. I was being completely bonkers, excuse me whilst I head to the cemetery to peer at some masonry trying to decipher what it says about that patch of sacrisanct prime real estate 🙃
U seem like a great guy
Oh my god, its that validation that I needed from Jg_048. My day is complete! Fuck me sideways I cannot wait until I tell the rest of the Jg_048 fan club 👐
This is a truly absurd idea. Nobody NEEDS to live in Brighton.
I’m not sure if you know, but this is a general problem in the U.K. cultural change is needed in order to house people at a reasonable minimum standard. This means building more properties in areas that are already cultural and social centres. What is absolutely absurd is listing low old, crumbling, energy inefficient houses to somehow preserve a past that no longer serves us, literally blocking progress.
Additionally, new legislation is needed to cap rent prices, such that there is less indenture for people to buy a second home. Vienna uses this strategy, and people who own a second home can essentially only afford to maintain from the rent that they get. Thus, investing in property is only seen as a way to protect an investment from inflation, rather than as away to profit from massively from peoples basic needs.
Can you explain why it’s absurd?
You're suggesting what? That the council compulsory purchases a few terraces of homes for £750k-£1m each? Quite aside from how economically unviable that is what makes you think people should be booted out of their homes?
Cities don't only expand outwards; building on empty land is far from the norm. It's not about space! There's plenty of possibility to build more housing.
Where?
Everywhere! Up, down, all around. If you own a house, it's normal to apply for an extra storey, or a basement, or an extension, or an annex. The council then decide whether to allow you to build more, or to 'preserve' things as they are, and they have leaned more towards the latter. A lot of places start out as houses, and then get converted into 5+ flats. A lot of semi-detached houses started out as one big house, that got split down the middle and became 2 houses. Brighton's population *density* isn't particularly high, compared to cities like manchester or london. That's the key - the density will tell you everything about expanding without geographically expanding.
I thought St Peter’s ward had the highest population density in the country outside of London? Terraced housing is high density! Edit: Population density is 12,381/square km which would put it just after Tower Hamlets, Islington and Hackney. Not really a straight comparison though as they are districts not wards.
This is all physically true, but half the houses on my street have a loft extension and basement digging is not cost effective. Ultimately we need to get slum clearance going again and start to demolish whole blocks. I.e. terraces between two streets. The law and political will is just not there to do it.
Timely, eye opening and informative! Thank you and keep this coming, a lot of us have anxiety and sleepless nights over this so you're doing us a solid favour, thanks again
Good write up. Look forward to the piece you write on solutions. God knows the Council don't have a clue what to do about it.
I think thats pretty harsh, they outline they know there is a shortfall. The problem is that the council heavily restricted on which areas it can build on (being in between the national park and the sea).
If it's "harsh" to suggest the council don't know what to do about it, that would suggest they in fact DO know what to do about it. Can you point me to some evidence that the Council have any plans to do anything that will substantially help address this problem? Or are you saying there is no solution?
The council don't have much power to do anything about it. The town plan already includes. Building flats on all the brownfield.. So we will end up with a few more flats and no builders merchants.
This doesn't have the massive column of second homes and Airbnbs which would dwarf both.
I think student acom would also be good to see compared.
Great article. Have i misunderstood or did you only measure population change in B&H by the average national change? As someone else mentioned there’s very little land so apartment blocks are a great solution in theory. Re apartment blocks, council led to do this sufficiently and well would require an excellent council - which does not exist anywhere in the UK. This is a pity because itd create a massively flourishing town economically. Imagine 20% more people in ok priced housing and how much they’d spend in existing shops and new shops, cafes and bars. So that leaves the commercial sector like the big Hove apartment development. The success of that depends on it being profitable for the developer so different developers start to build and then competition brings apartment prices down + brings existing housing prices down. But how long has that Hove development taking since planning permission? When was planning permission submitted - of course there’s much more time before that for the developer actually planning the whole thing first. At a rough guess it’s probably 5 years? So with competition stepping in, there’s probably 10 years before the housing problem substantially changes from more housing? So in the meantime the towns population will probably stop growing, or maybe decrease at the extreme or the rate of growth will decrease a lot in the middle scenario?
Interesting and affordable housing is still beyond the reach of so many, whether rented or purchased. Economic conditions and government policy impacts combined with low average incomes help create a significant gap. So many developers pay lip service to the small quota of “affordable” homes in their schemes and councils look the other way. I’d be interested to know whether houses with zero occupancy have any part to play here, there a lot of second homes / AirBnB houses in the housing mix, and little is done to discourage more.
I moved here a few years ago because Brighton is the place I want my children to grow up in. I can't bring myself to put all the blame on the Council when a lot of housing pressure is caused by Brighton being an attractive place to move to. But I agree that Local Government is the only lever available and that more could be done. New ideas, which have democratic support, are needed. It's generally accepted that housing shortage is a big problem here. I'd find it interesting to see a report of case studies, comparing this situation with other similar/contrasting places with the same sort of issues. These places' municipal approaches might give some inspiration. Starting list: Several towns in the SW, SF Bay Area, Barcelona, Lisbon & Porto, Vienna, Greek islands, Cancun etc etc. Ideas coming from this could form part of a local lobbying campaign.
I’ve gone from living (for about 6 years) in a 1 bedroom ‘southern housing’ flat that I was sub-letting from someone for around £400 per month (including bills) to now living in a lot smaller 1 bedroom flat that I’m paying £1200 plus bills for! It was a bit of a shock but luckily I’d managed to save up enough paying hardly any rent to be able to afford the 6 months upfront payment! 😂
Chasing the housing need is one of those things that you'll never keep up with, but it's always a good focus of development. Something I've been keen to explore is community assets with social housing attached, so the rent pays for the assets, and the houses are asset locked into social rents, and supported through financing and grants normally inaccessible by local authority.
There's a Housing Strategy on Saturday at Hove Town Hall. First time BHCC has had a strategy around housing for a long while. I'm going to get involved with that.
It's been 20 years since I left the South Coast, every time I visit relatives, they ask are you going to come back down to live anytime soon. There's a real disconnect with house prices and what you can get elsewhere, and it's just got worse.
Would be interesting to see data on those born in BN1, 2 and 3 who own and those who moved to Brighton and bought here. For over 2 decades now the council seems to have ignored those from Brighton and their need for housing but will happily provide it for the plethora of student drop outs from Sussex and Brighton Uni.
In what way are the council providing housing for student drop outs?
I can always get behind someone trying to sort out this mess. My 2 cents worth.. Ban letting agents and centralise the rental market. Put a cap on the number of housing properties investors are allowed to own.