There’s not enough room!

This post is inspired by an assertion by many politicians that the UK is ‘full up’. I vaguely remember writing on this subject before but seeing as this is a new blog I might as well go over it in more detail and splatter statistics all over the place.

Firstly I’ll start by quoting the current urban land mass: 8.9%
This means that 91.1% (223,195 Square Kilometres) of the UK is not urbanized. The first wave of Gordon Brown’s visionary Eco-Towns project will add 19,500 homes by 2020 (construction begins in 2016). These measures do not go far enough: they do not aim to make the most efficient houses possible, the homes will only rate 4 on the code for sustainable homes, not the maximum which is 6. They are taking too long to start building (considering this proposal was launched in 2007, that makes it 9 years before they start building). Lastly, it’s using green-field land, and ordinarily this isn’t a problem as long as they maintain a high enough population density to keep the settlements efficient.

The counter-argument to “there aren’t enough houses” is “build more houses”. If town planners supported radical policies, experimented a bit and were not refused by politicians who do not want to appear unpopular then all the worries about population growth boosted by rampant immigration would be quickly put to rest. The Office of National Statistics claims that 190,000 immigrants will contribute to the UK’s population each year. A good policy would be to set a house-building quota to meet the demand. As I’ve shown above it’s not like there isn’t any space to build these new houses. If you’re worried that more building will use up enough agricultural land to hinder the land from providing enough food for the cities then look into vertical farming.

Now comes my second proposal: that dwellings empty for more than 2 years be allocated residents who need a place to stay. According to this site there are 788,445 empty homes in the UK. My very rough calculation of the homeless population of the UK is 232,000 (the average number of homeless people per thousand is 4, divide the UK population by 1,000 and then multiply by 4). According to these figures there would be three empty homes for every one homeless person. It leaves 556,445 homes as a buffer for immigrants who need a place to stay before the government finishes it’s radical housing projects.

This proposal was inspired by George Monbiot’s assertion that squatters were socially useful (and necessary). It’s even quite hypocritical of me to propose it as the parents own a second home in France which we renovated to a perfectly habitable condition for about 3 people. It is uninhabited. When I suggested that it should be inhabited I was met with harsh opposition? Why? Because it’s okay for the bourgeoisie to act progressive in between complaining about house prices as long as it doesn’t affect them. From a my lofty position on the left which supports the abolishment of private property such a proposal is actually very moderate.