Housing policy forum – 2024

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I was on a previous housing policy forum in 2017.

Links to my notes from then are at the end of this post

Cost of housing in York

  1. A new house in York costs almost £200K more than a similar one in Middlesbrough.
  2. A plot of land in the York area big enough for a house costs less than £1K at agricultural prices. It becomes worth the best part of £200K when planning permission for a house is granted.
  3. House price rises in York have risen 70% over the past 20 years. That’s roughly the same as UK inflation (mean 2.7% a year). However houseowners, who took out mortgages will have benefited in real terms because the value of this debt will have decreased in real terms by 40%.
  4. Housing affordability estimates are calculated by dividing house prices by average annual earnings to create a ratio, The “affordability ratio”. It was 6.22 in 2003 rising to 8.8 in 2023 – but was 3.71 in 1997. A large increase occurred in 2001 to 2003.
  5. Rents in York have risen by 10% over the past year and York is being touted as a good place for buy to rent because of its holiday property opportunities. Without decisive action this trend can be expected to continue taking more housing for long term lets off the market.
  6. Nationally, we see the rise of the assetocracy, where the inheritance of property assets divides the UK into haves and have-nots. See Bank of Mum and Dad: why we all now live in an ‘inheritocracy’, Assetocracy: the inversion of the welfare state and The Plan Is To Make You Permanently Poorer where Gary Stevenson writes “This is ordinary families losing their homes and they will they will never have houses again. Their kids won’t have houses.

Greenhouse emissions in York

  1. In York, carbon emissions per person in high emitting areas are 4 times those in low emitting areas. This is in line with other evidence showing carbon emissions are strongly correlated with affluence. (See the JRF publication Distribution of Carbon Emissions in the UK: Implications for Domestic Energy Policy.)
  2. The local plan has seversal proposed developments which will provide housing for high emitters – affluent two car households. e.g. Langwith, Elvington Airfield, which is billed as “ a garden village” and “a more sustainable development”.
  3. The “remaining carbon budget” is “the net amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) humans can still emit while keeping global warming below a given limit with a given probability, taking into account the effect of other anthropogenic climate forcers ”. Affluent areas in York will exhaust the 1.5C budget in two years and exhaust the 2C budget in less than 10 years.
  4. The climate disaster is approaching. To reduce carbon emissions sufficiently, these must be cut:

  1. Car driving. The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee noted “In the long-term, widespread personal vehicle ownership does not appear to be compatible with significant decarbonisation.”
  2. Flying.. Hansard (2 May 2007) recorded that “emissions from flights departing the UK contributed approximately 13 per cent. of total UK emissions in 2005 when the radiative forcing index is used.” The radiative forcing index increases the impact of CO2 alone because of other climate effects of flying.
  3. High carbon foods (beef, lamb, cheese).
  4. Carbon emissions from buildings (construction and in use).

A proposal

The cost of housing in York, is driven by market forces. To bring down the cost of housing, many, many more dwellings need to be built. This could have unfortunate cause a fall in house prices, which could, initially, leave house owners with negative equity – an economic disaster for them.

York residents contribute little to the global climate disaster which is overtaking the world. For every York resident there are roughly 40,000 other people in the world. The effects of York residents’ emissions are swamped by the rest of the world. It is perhaps for this reason that the Draft Local Plan allows for developments that will cause high emissions., (despite the climate .requirements in the National Planning Policy Framework).

That said, if world emissions continue as predicted, real climate disasters can be expected. There is, of course, the argument that York should shoulder a fair share of the “carbon reduction” burden but, if the rest of the world doesn’t, this will make little difference to the outcome.

To have any meaningful impact, plans for York must show the world how it is possible to live pleasant lives within planetary boundaries. As mentioned earlier, that means much less car driving, flying, eating beef, lamb & dairy. Also we must build and heat buildings differently. I have made a proposal, A car free plan for a Greater York, as a starting proposal. This plan ignores local authority boundaries so would need support from national government.

By making all new houosing car free, there will be a reduced effect on the value of existing houses, largely avoiding the negatative equity threat to them. Also by placing new car free housing next to existing settlements, it will generate facilities which will make it easier to abandon cars – local shops and services, good public transport and routes for active travel.

Postscript: Climate (& Other) Dangers

The solutions given above, need more political powers than than are available to York Council. More resources and a wider view are needed. As outlined in their 2019 resolution on net-zero, York Council should ask for these extra powers. Future threats make a wider view necessary.

In January 2021, the UK’s Climate Change Committee published an Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk, where it mentioned “low likelihood, high impact events”. The first was the failure of the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Current (AMOC). The AMOC brings enormous quantities of heat from the world’s southern oceans to the North Atlantic. A collapse of the AMOC would be devastate UK agriculture:

Although a collapse of the AMOC before 2100 was judged unlikely, the impacts of a collapse would be substantial, including for the UK and Europe (Jackson et al., 2015). For example, the loss of UK arable farming and agricultural output in response to changes in temperature and precipitation patterns associated with a collapsed AMOC could be an order of magnitude greater under climate change with an AMOC collapse than without it (Ritchie et al., 2020). See Climate change impacts on ocean circulation relevant to the UK and Ireland.

Recently a group of climate scientists have come to the collusion that a collapse this century has been underestimated:

While the collapse of the AMOC was once considered “low probability,” the likelihood of it happening is increasing. In fact, it’s becoming so concerning to oceanographers that 44 of them, from various countries, wrote and published a call to action, warning that the risk of the AMOC reaching a disastrous tipping point is “greatly underestimated” and will have “devastating and irreversible impacts.” 44 Scientists Just Warned Us About a Catastrophic Ocean Current Collapse

AMOC collapse is no longer a low likelihood event.

Another of the CCC’s “low likelihood events” is “Changes to the Jet Stream due to Arctic warming, leading to persistent and amplified ‘waviness’, leading to changes to UK weather patterns.” There is some debate about this “waviness” factor but there is no doubt that the jet stream is weakening: Weather patterns are becoming less predictable and more severe such as the recent floods in Spain and recent wet weather in the UK, which has affected food production. Mailport reports that “the 2024 potato harvest in the UK is shaping up to be one of the most challenging in recent memory” and:

Unpredictable weather has been a recurring theme, with both droughts and excessive rainfall affecting yields and quality. In 2020, for example, dry conditions led to lower yields, while 2024’s wet conditions have disrupted harvesting and increased risks of rot.

Recent evidence has significantly increased the likelihood of changes in UK weather patterns.. The UK CCC noted changes in weathe patterns will cause “widespread and large reductions in arable farming output”. This undermines UK’s food security – as does the recent “rain in Spain” because much of UK’s fresh produce come from Spain.

There are also geopolitical dangers that may affect our lives in the UK. These possibilities, including more wars, is be outside the scope of a discussion of housing policy but the world, the “western” world at least, is becoming increasingly isolationist. “More isolationist” means we become more local., with less dependence on international trade. Consumption in the UK should be generated by more production in the UK. This should be reflected in York’s economy. What relevance is housing policy to this situation?

Making more in York

As noted earlier, rents in York are on the rise. They constitute an increasing proportion of the expenditure of the young and the poor. The website Home.co.uk gives current average property rents in York as £22,000 per year. (The median is lower at £15,600 per year.) A worker on minimum wage, working a 40 hour week earns £23,800 per year.

There are 85,458 households in York and 7,404 social houses and 20% of York dwellings (17,110 dwellings?) are privately rented. The private rented sector swamps the socially rented or affordable sector. It is expensive to live in York. This necessitates high wages. Accompanied by recent increases in employers national insurance contributions, this means it is harder to start new businesses at a time when more local production is needed because of climate and other threats – particularly in food production.

We should be spending much less on climate destroying consumption and much more on building a resilient infrastructure for uncertain future. That means less car driving, flying in planes and consuming imported and high carbon foods We must create new, resilient, low carbon lifestyles – for the world to follow.

Housing articles from 2017

I was on a previous housing policy forum in 2017 for which I started to write several articles. Unfortunately, I took so long that the housing policy forum had disbanded long before I finished these pieces but little has changed since then:

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