WHAT are people seeking in their Housing needs for the future? Discuss.

When I was at university we had many an essay along these lines where the question was focused though the result was often open ended depending on the way that you wished to argue your points as part of the discussion. Though it was always important to provide a balanced view.

So what do people seek for the future? Typically to assess our future needs/desires, we need to address what has happened in the past either good or bad and look at what has happened today before we are able to predict our future needs. Though things are not necessarily black and white and ones opinions depend very much on ones experiences, ability to change and hope for the future.

In a brief summary, over the last century we have seen ourselves as a nation move from a predominantly rented sector as people were forced to rent after the wars, to a society where we were all encouraged to own our own property, especially during the Conservative Thatcher years, to a society today where house prices have outstripped first time buyers abilities to get onto the housing ladder. The generation of the 1970s are wealthier than they could ever have imagined and today’s children have an expectation that they will never independently be in a position to own their own property, in what today we have termed ‘generation rent’.

Ideally we should strive to have a society where those that wish to be able to own their own property can purchase at affordable prices, with two bedroom properties at say three or maybe four time salary, as used to be the case, achieved by a continued house building programme that holds supply slightly above demand as a restraint on house price growth.

Some would argue this is only achievable by returning to prefab style of construction making properties both cheap to build and environmentally efficient. However this need not be the case.

After all why should an acre of agricultural land be worth £5K an acre, when the same land is worth £1m if planning is granted for residential housing?

It is totally out of prospective.

Perhaps some form of capping is required which can then be passed on.

Likewise, we have many houses/second homes that remain empty for most of the year when the local authority have waiting lists into the thousands for social housing. Such properties should be made available to deter such practises.

We also need a fairer society for all where we do not see the richer getting richer and the poorer dominating everything else.

But a society of equal satisfaction, achievable goals and a sense of pride in which ever route we decide to go down.

To use a biblical context we see in Genesis how Adam and Eve were forced to toil in the Garden of Eden, as a result of eating the apple. Yet God had already provided paradise and we as a society if we all worked together could emulate a similar Garden of Eden for all our benefits, not just a selected few.