[Politics] Benfield Valley - Action needed now from locals !!!

[Guinness Boy]

How many empty flats do you think there are in Crawley?

There are 261,000 empty properties nationwide, so use either your imagination or your maths skills and work it out for yourself.

While you’re at it look up “example” in the dictionary.

 

[beorhthelm]

Aye. They're terrible.

Don't get me wrong, my point isn't that we don't need houses. We obviously do. I've got two teenagers, I don't want them staying here forever because they can't get a place of their own. And homelessness is a terrible thing.

But as I replied to the other guy, with a QUARTER OF A MILLION unused / empty homes in this country, the answer isn't simply to build more and screw the infrastructure and car use implications.

your teenagers will look forward to out of the area for their northern terrace or dilapidated house when the time comes. thats where most the number of unused houses are, along with some expat owned, inbetween rents, building works.
infrstucture isnt a good objection, the surgeries and school places follow population. there's no call for them to be built without people wanting the service, so the housing has to come first. that means infill in towns and cities, and some 1000+ green belt developments. or more generational living.

 

[Happy Exile]

The Timpson family, who seem like very decent humans, did some work around what could be done by regenerating dead high streets by converting longterm empty retail and office units to affordable housing and bringing people (and income) back. The estimate was something like 20,000 homes created with low investment and done relatively quickly before work begins on the harder to convert property. A drop in the ocean, but it's short sighted to keep finding new land to build on when there is more than one practical solution available and being ignored.

 

[Creaky]

There are 261,000 empty properties nationwide, so use either your imagination or your maths skills and work it out for yourself.

While you’re at it look up “example” in the dictionary.

And the vast majority of those empty properties are hundreds of miles away from Brighton. Come on use your common sense to calculate why there would be any significant number of what you called, "warm flats" just lying empty in Crawley.

 

[Guinness Boy]

And the vast majority of those empty properties are hundreds of miles away from Brighton. Come on use your common sense to calculate why there would be any significant number of what you called, "warm flats" just lying empty in Crawley.

I’m guessing, but I’m pretty sure you don’t have the numbers either.

 

[Husty]

We need housing - NIMBYS OUT

This, this and this. Of all the places you’d expect to NOT find NIMBY’S, it’d be NSC. And yet…

 

[Husty]

No. We need housing in appropriate places with the additional services - schools, GPs, public transport etc - to support them. One without the other is pointless.

 

[Guinness Boy]

View attachment 170432

Nice meme copying. Well done

 

[Husty]

I’m guessing, but I’m pretty sure you don’t have the numbers either.

How many suitable other sites for a Brighton and hove Albion stadium were there NATIONWIDE? Probably a great site up north somewhere? Why didn’t all settle for that one? Why’d we have to ruin the natural character of falmer village?

 

[Husty]

Nice meme copying. Well done

You don’t have a decent reply because you realise it’s bang on and you’re a nimby

 

[Guinness Boy]

How many suitable other sites for a Brighton and hove Albion stadium were there NATIONWIDE? Probably a great site up north somewhere? Why didn’t all settle for that one? Why’d we have to ruin the natural character of falmer village?

Why are you equating a home for a family with a football stadium?

 

[Husty]

Why are you equating a home for a family with a football stadium?

They both wanted to be in Brighton?

 

[Guinness Boy]

They both wanted to be in Brighton?

Yeah, it’s exactly the same case

 

[clapham_gull]

The Timpson family, who seem like very decent humans, did some work around regenerating dead high streets by converting longterm empty retail and office units to affordable housing and bringing people (and income) back. The estimate was something like 20,000 homes created with low investment and done relatively quickly before work begins on the harder to convert property. A drop in the ocean, but it's short sighted to keep finding new land to build on when there is more than one practical solution available and being ignored.

They are doing that quite a bit round here, albeit not that affordable. Shops are being replaced by housing.

For an inner city in this country, that's actually quite cool. You get more of that Amsterdam feel where homes and shops co-exist.

Areas feel busier, somewhat safer too and paradoxically the shops are busier because people are living next door.

 

[Psychobilly freakout]

I’m in favour, you never know, the women’s football stadium could be popped in there somewhere

 

[Creaky]

I’m guessing, but I’m pretty sure you don’t have the numbers either.

Are you really guessing that the number is significant?

My suggestions regarding empty properties, which includes any already up for sale or rent, is that after one year unoccupied council tax is doubled, tripled the following year and so on. At some point the owners are going to either hand over the property to the council or be forced to do so by the courts. This includes holiday homes that are empty for the majority of the year and those kept as "investments".

 

[Guinness Boy]

You don’t have a decent reply because you realise it’s bang on and you’re a nimby

To be fair, it’s good to see NSC’s man of the people (never wrong, apart from Solly March) on the side of big business for once.

Let us know when you move in.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Are you really guessing that the number is significant?

My suggestions regarding empty properties, which includes any already up for sale or rent, is that after one year unoccupied council tax is doubled, tripled the following year and so on. At some point the owners are going to either hand over the property to the council or be forced to do so by the courts. This includes holiday homes that are empty for the majority of the year and those kept as "investments".

Four years before they’re even renovated? Alternative being a social rent to a homeless family? Ok then.

 

[Weststander]

I don’t disagree with that. As often, the binary nature of debate spoils nuance.

The number of empty properties needs to be reduced in conjunction with a sensible entire infrastructure build in other places.

Lobbing up flat pack on green belt that will be bought for over market price by idiot DFLs helps no one except the developers.

Always the thin end of the wedge with concreting over flora. When the old West Hove Golf Course was moved, you can bet the then Hove Council promised that the Sainsbury’s would be the sole development EVER.

Similarly I know for a fact that opponents of the Brighton Bypass, before it was bulldozed through precious chalkland ecosystems, were promised that housing would NEVER be allowed to creep up to the new A27. I knew they were lying, it would be too much of a temptation years later to bulldoze greenfields.

 

[Coldeanseagull]

What is classed as 'affordable' housing?
Accommodation provided by council or housing associations that people that work can afford and not take 80% of their wages to keep a roof over their heads, or cheap council or housing association housing, where they put the rest who can't work so easing the burden of people on benefits? Then there are those who won't work, who expect to be housed, paid to not do anything etc, etc.
Like it or not, there is a class system in this country.
So back to my original question, what would be affordable, and for whose benefit?