Property News · May 15, 2022

We’ve done it before, others do it now – a national housing plan is not beyond our wit | Rowan Moore


The powers that created new towns can be used to build homes just where they’re neededAs tokenistic and implausible policies go, it’s hard to beat the concept of “street votes”, flagged up in last week’s Queen’s speech in order to “fix the country’s housing problems”, as the Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat put it. The idea is that mini-referendums can be held whereby residents of a given street can, if an “overwhelming” majority agrees, decide to enlarge and extend their properties and develop back alleys or other scraps of land.This might sound fine in theory, but the detail is vague, probably because there are many devils in it. How do you draw the boundary that says who votes and who doesn’t? What is the definition of “overwhelming”? Who organises and pays for these votes? As the countryside charity CPRE has pointed out, a mini-boom in loft conversions and back extensions is likely to lead to more residential space for those who already have enough, rather than for those in dire need of somewhere decent to live. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…We’ve done it before, others do it now – a national housing plan is not beyond our wit | Rowan Moore

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