House Building Hysteria

House Building Hysteria
By Nicholas Newman
The South East Region is sup-posed to be under threat from ra-pacious developers. Who plan to build a massive urban city that will totally cover the so far empty areas of the South East of Eng-land’s countryside? At present 85 percent of the land in our region is free from development.

Instead the facts reveal that less than 15 percent of our region is devoted to one form of develop-ment or another. So if all current new development plans to build the 39,000 homes a year, come to fruition, then only an additional 0.14 % of our green and pleasant land will need to be built upon each year.

Instead we should be more con-cerned at the shortage of rural so-cial housing, which is forcing the rural poor to leave the country ar-eas for the urban areas. In effect you could argue that a form of ethnic cleansing is taking place in the countryside. The rich in effect through market forces are forcing the poor to leave the countryside for the cities. It is estimated that at least 80,000 new social dwellings had to be built in the period 1990 and 1995, but only 17,700 new social housing units were provided between 1990 and 1997, in Eng-land.

Unfortunately, plans to attempt to resolve these vital issues, for af-fordable homes built by housing associations, have to be approved by parish councils, in order to re-ceive government funding. These were often dropped because rich recently NIMBY newcomers in-comers oppose any new plans to build construction that disturbs there newly acquired rural idyll.

For more information
http://www.wildlife-country-side.detr.gov.uk/ruralwp/index.htm