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News Release from: The Town and Country Planning Association | Subject: South east housing crisis
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 24 January 2005
Assembly urged to recognise housing
crisis
The Town and Country Planning Association(TCPA) has urged the South East England Regional Assembly (SEERA) to recognise the acute housing shortages in the region
The Town and Country Planning Association(TCPA) has urged the South East England Regional Assembly (SEERA) to recognise the acute housing shortages in the region and to significantly increase the number and quality of homes built to meet need and demand in the region The TCPA, the longest established planning and environmental organisation in the world, is alarmed by the current housing crisis
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 14 Oct 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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It explained that unless new housing is built there could be a shortfall of well over 300,000 homes by 2016.
Even the higher option of 32,000 new homes per annum offered in the SEERA consultation1 will fall a long way short of the number of homes people need and want in the Southeast, says the TCPA.
New homes must be provided in the areas where they are most needed: past mistakes of building homes in the wrong places, that remain unwanted, help nobody.
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New homes must be built sustainably, respecting their environment and taking every opportunity that new development offers to reduce climate change emissions through changing patterns of commuting and energy use.
New homes need infrastructure such as improved transport links and health and education facilities for existing as for future communities.
Local communities must also have a greater role in determining the kind of infrastructure needed for new homes in their areas.
The TCPA also believes that new homes must be built to high standards of design quality.
Unless we get the quality right, housing growth will not be acceptable to existing communities and will not create places where people actually want to live.
Speaking today, the Town and Country Planning Association's Director, Gideon Amos said: "We have for far too long tried to bury our heads in the sand when it comes to the massive shortage of homes in the Southeast".
" More homeless families - over 40,000 in London alone - more overcrowding and sky-high house prices are the results we now see, increasingly, all around us".
" Instead of ensuring homes are built to actually reduce this shortage - as we have done in the past - people in the Southeast are now being asked to cut back provision still further - flying in the face of common sense." The lowest of the three figures for new homes, favoured by many on the Assembly and now out for consultation, is only 25,500 per year - even lower than the 28,000 homes per year included in the current plan2.
The fact that only 80% of this is actually being built3 demonstrates how badly provision is falling in the face of rising need".
"Ironically, concentrating on restricting the provision of houses for sale on the market exacerbates social housing shortages, since the rising prices that result mean more and more people have to compete for a limited supply of 'affordable' homes".
" The problem is a national one and demands provision of both private and affordable housing." added Mr Amos.
The housing crisis affects us all.
In the short term housing shortages condemn those without homes to further periods of homelessness.
Long term housing shortages affect all those who need a home as prices increase".
"Our campaign is committed to working with all stakeholders, to winning the arguments wherever necessary, and to ensuring that the homes we create are in genuinely sustainable communities and constructed to the highest environmental standards" added Mr Amos.
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