We live right now, when people can not afford a home.
Millions of them are devoting a vast proportion of their earnings to the competition with others to put a roof over their heads, even to the extent that they have little left to spend on other things - the sort of things that I warrant, you and I were easily able to afford.
And why is this?
It is because we are importing so many people even legally - with visas - that our construction industry can not keep up with the number of homes required to even keep pace with the rising numbers, let alone the backlog of never constructed homes to house the ten or eleven million people who were not born in this land who have come here since the mid 1990s.
THIS is why your children if you have them, can barely afford a home, be it rented or bought on mortgage. THIS is why the multiple of salary allowed in the building society affordability test has risen from the three times annual salary that it was when i bought my first house to five or seven, depending on where the desired house is.
It is
not immigration that causes our housing problem, it is our terrible housing market.
West Germany in 1950 had a 51 million population. Then during partition they absorbed 3 million fleeing from East Germany.
In the 1960s they opened access to over two thirds of a million Turkish workers plus many others from elsewhere to n meet their labour needs, leading to 3 millions of Turkish origin in their population now.
Then re-integration of Germany meant absorbing a staggering 16.4 millions, not all with homes since the crippled economy of the East led to huge numbers moving into their West.
The EU's open borders added many more, then with Angela Merkel's blessing they absorbed vast numbers of immigrants fleeing the many conflicts of Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa.
The result? That former 51 million population became 84.5 million, without any housing problems.
That 66% increase completely dwarfs the 17% increase from the mid '90s of the 10 millions you complain of here. It also dwarfs our entire population increase from 1950 to date of 35%.
How did they cope? Because Germany has a sensible housing market based largely upon renting with controlled rents, showing that a well run country can easily cope with such fluctuations.
We once had a housing market like that, based on renting with controlled and easily affordable rents. As well as the investors providing that housing we also had charitable housing institutions, Guinness, Peabody and Nuffield being notable ones.
What happened? The Tories happened. A new Conservative government passed the Rent Act 1957. Coming into effect on 6 July, the 1957 act immediately decontrolled all dwelling houses.
My parents rent doubled instantly.
It was still just about affordable but left them worried, since my father was at an age when he could no longer get a full term mortgage and retirement on the pathetic pension at that time was looming in the not too distant future. That is why I bought a quality home for them to live in free of charge for the second half of their lives, so they were lucky. Huge numbers weren't.
Since then other Tory governments have wrought further damage with ill conceived decisons like right to buy, as you've acknowledged.
But it's not only government to blame, the British public's obsession with regarding a property as an investment rather then just being a home is also to blame , quite literally enthusiastically encouraging house price inflation by their actions.
We don't need to cut immigration and certainly shouldn't blame immigrants for our incompetence. We just need to undo the past and get back to a sensible controlled rent market. It's not just Germany doing that, much of Europe does too and even the USA has a huge rental market, nobody buys a home in New York.
So time to stop kicking the immigrants we need and can't manage without and time to put our house(ing) in order.
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www.channel4.com
We remember Dublin
english.elpais.com
I especially like the forthright Polish attitude to this.
