Toby Lloyd
@tobylloyd
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Housing policy wonk, ex-spad, consultant. Writes stuff. Londoner, amateur urbanist. moving to blues*y - same handle there.
Hackney
Joined March 2009
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Now we’re talking. Easy, cheap, effective. Do this now.
This summer, Rotterdam will allow all businesses—from restaurants to hairdressers—to convert the parking spaces in front of their building into retail space. The owner may build their own deck, or borrow a free one from the municipality. No permit needed.
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Really recommend this
@BBCRadio4
series - looking at positive and radical solutions to the mess of our housing system. First one on Vienna is fascinating, Barcelona coming up soon. And i’m in the last one!
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Nice to see The Economist describe having less than 50% public housing as an obvious failing in a competitive capitalist city. They’re right - open, trading cities need to control land or the property market will eat your economy - but startling to see it asserted so casually.
Our Banyan columnist on the long-running rivalry between Singapore and Hong Kong:
"Recently the balance shifted. There is clearly no contest anymore. It is game over in favour of Singapore. As a consequence, Banyan has moved there."
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Really hope this is nonsense. A fire sale of public land - into a falling market - would be the dumbest possible way to revive the economy or the public finances, let alone build a positive legacy out of the crisis.
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The sorry, fascinating, saga of Starter Homes finally reaches its inevitable end: a thread.
Starter homes pledged by government in 2014, but none built, says watchdog
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This is amazing: you can instantly see what any street would look like if we prioritised people, greenery and active travel instead of cars and parking.
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Anyone interested in why we don't build enough affordable homes, and how to fix it, must read this
@FT
piece.
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It's not rocket science: “In one year, bike use in Paris is up 54 percent... the culmination of years of growing restrictions on cars, the introduction of bike-sharing services, and most recently the construction of bike lanes.”
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@benrileysmith
@Telegraph
Extending the Roght to Buy to housing association tenants had been in virtual every Conservative manifesto since the 1980s… which suggests you might need to look at why it hasn’t happened yet.
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Amazing new data - plus maps! - on how much land the big housebuilders own.
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Nice illustration. This isn’t even reducing driving: just using precious urban space better. How many junctions could be parklets, playgrounds or planters?
There are so many streets in Auckland that need this treatment
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Jeez. When we face crises in loneliness, climate change and housing affordability there's no excuse for building rubbish places. We know how to do better. Hoping the forthcoming 'Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission' will mark a step change.
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ALL affordable homes cut from luxury Battersea scheme on 'viability' grounds. This rules must be changed.
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I did
@bbcpm
prog this afternoon, debating the sudden outburst of cross-party interest in capturing land values for public benefit, with the
@iealondon
. It was terrifying: (17mins in)
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Jeez. Fully 84% of government spend on housing goes into inflating house prices - sorry, 'supporting the private market'
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It’s time to call the housing crisis what it really is: the largest transfer of wealth in living memory.
@L__Macfarlane
is on fire here: house price growth is a zero-sum game, as just land value inflation, not an increase in production.
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Planting more trees in our cities is simply one of the best things we can do for our health, our economy and our planet.
Seminal
@createstreets
compiles the evidence from around the world, and sets out what we need to do to green up Britain's cities.
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Latest planning stats are miserable... the housebuilding downturn is getting serious.
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Labour are combining the
@createstreets
approach to designing walkable, popular neighbourhoods with the effective delivery mechanism of the New Towns.
Housing developers could override local objections under Labour, says Starmer
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Two thirds of local authorities in England did not build a single new socially rented home last year.
#AffordableHousingStatsDay
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Ricardo's Law in action: efficiency gains that lower cost of goods are instantly absorbed by rising land rents. Result: only property owners actually get richer. 'Rising burden of housing costs shown by 60-year UK spending survey' via
@FT
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Why we must build more homes: in which I use my last ever Shelter blog to argue with lots of men on the internet.
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Good to see
@TheEconomist
doing a proper, in-depth series on housing. Only three pieces in, but so far it's far more intelligent and balanced than the standard media commentary. It even recognised the importance of tax systems and credit supply:
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Small crowded island? Fully 13% of England is green belt, 11% is developed. Great map here:
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It's happened: private renting has overtaken mortgaged homeownership in London. We're heading back to feudalism.
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It turns out landlords don’t set rents after all, the market does.... as landlords themselves insisted when their interest costs plummeted but they didn’t feel the need to pass the saving on as lower rents.
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Urban space is one of our most precious resources, but we waste far too much of it on needlessly wide, dangerously fast roads. Time to turn the roadbelt into new homes and great places.
Nice write-up of
@createstreets
report by
@dezeen
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Worst myth in housing and infrastructure debate is that landowners currently get a market price: they don't - they get a monopoly price, which is stifling growth.
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Fascinating thread. I had no idea about the long and conflictual history of play streets - shows there’s nothing inevitable about streets being dominated by cars. We can and must reclaim public space for people, and especially kids.
A thread on Play Streets - how society demonised children, briefly gave them places to play before shunning them for cars. And what might be next?
1835: Highway Act bans street games on Highway.
1860: 12-year-old George Dunn sent to prison for 5 days for playing in the street.
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'Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing’ made
@martinwolf_
’s best economics books of 2017! Get it here:
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Brilliant blog, in which
@jryancollins
nails the question of what drives excess house prices, interest rates or supply? Spoiler: it's partly both, but mainly credit supply.
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Let no-one say it can’t be done. We don’t have to accept ever rising traffic, congestion and pollution.
Overall, the reduction in cars traveling in Paris has been dramatic, dropping by 44%. “Out of 100 cars circulating in Paris in 2002, 56 remain.”
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Since the viability loophole was introduced into national planning rules in 2012, affordable homes delivered through S106 have plummeted.
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Great piece. I'm daring to hope that we might finally be able to have a sensible conversation about housebuilding, recognising the needs and trade-offs without descending in to simplistic binaries. About time!
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Exactly right. Government keeps failing to see the obvious political reality that it would end up paying the Bill eventually. Foot dragging pointlessly has increased the costs as well as the misery, making government look incompetent as well as cruel.
At some point in the last three years since Grenfell, the human impact of unsafe building materials got lost in a political spat about who should pay. Millions have been trapped, knowing that their home is dangerous & could bankrupt them. That mental torment is unforgivable.
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Three NEW schools to be demolished. Key line: ‘All the schools were built under the Department for Education’s £3bn modular framework, set up in 2020 to fastrack construction and deliver better value for money.’ Three years after Grenfell we were still cutting corners.
"It was forced to close after being open to students for less than two years over concerns it could collapse in an extreme event like heavy snow or high winds."
I do hope we're asking the right structural integrity questions for these high rise modular buildings going up!
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Tentatively returning to the policy Twitter after 18 months down the rabbit hole, and lo! the subversive counter-narrative that we don’t actually need to build lots of homes, as promoted with annoying brilliance by
@ianmulheirn
, is STILL gaining ground.
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Homeownership is the biggest chunk of wealth in the UK - and unlike other (more productive) forms of wealth it’s a zero-sum game: one generation’s wealth gain is another’s loss.
Here are 6 important challenges the UK economy faces as
#GE2019
approaches.
Young people have been struggling to accumulate wealth at the rate that their predecessors did. The biggest contributory factor has been the collapse in homeownership.
Read more:
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There is an amazingly strong consensus on how to make cities better: far fewer cars, more and cheaper homes, mixed-use neighbourhoods, places to meet people, and communities in control. Let's do it now!
The path to the post-Covid city via
@financialtimes
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Speculative housebuilding gives the community the worst deal possible, as developers compete to offer landowner most
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The plight of small builders is truly alarming. As we intervene so dramatically in the market, we have to make sure we don't just entrench the power of the biggest players at the expense of SMEs, building quality, or affordability.
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Launch of the report for No Place Left Behind: the Commission into Prosperity and Community Placemaking will be on the 20th September 2021 from 11am to 12.15pm. There will be a live stream of the event from the House of Commons. Tickets here:
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This is the viability loophole allows developers to get out of providing affordable homes we need.
#Newsnight
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This story is perfectly designed to wind me up. How about a petition to remove the golf course to provide housing, public parks and cycle ways?
A golf club has started an online petition to remove a protected cycle lane, so that the space can be used as “an overspill for parking during major competition days.”
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We need a rent holiday, urgently. If it’s right for mortgage holders, who are on average richer and more secure,it’s surely right for renters too.
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Such a classic film. Let no-one tell you this country is full, or we have no room for X - we just choose to devote so much of it to grazing cows and sheep.
Watch the
#UKin100seconds
. Each second = 1% of what the UK looks like from the air. Make sure you turn your sound on.
Seen it? Help change how we think about the UK. Share it with someone, look behind the scenes and find out more .
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Sick of hearing that renters 'love the flexibility of renting.' Only 2.5% actually do.
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This is amazing - and inspiring: what would you do with 700,000m2 of new urban public space?
Paris halves street parking and asks residents what they want to do with the space
#Paris
#Sustainability
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Blimey.
@NickBoles
isn't pulling any punches here:
- govt building 500,000 affordable homes
- new towns
- Community Land Trusts
- ending the housebuilder oligopoly
- compulsory purchase reform.... Excellent proposals all.
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Shocking but entirely expected. This isn’t even about politics but the Whitehall obsession with ‘value for money’, ‘assitionality’ and other abstract rules.
Gove’s department hands back £1.9bn meant to tackle England’s housing crisis
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So govt is rolling out the tired old cliche about 'slashing the red tape to build more homes'. Sigh. Bit sad really. What happened to the Sajid Javid of 2018 who recognised the need to change the developer business model as well?
Excl: Major revolution to relax planning permission to be unveiled by Tory Cabinet ministers at conference to turbo charge house building
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RIP Starter Homes. The irony was that there was the kernel of a good idea in there: Community Land Trusts have been doing great things with a similar approach for years. See for an example.
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@thetommoriarty
@Shins1874
@paulmasonnews
No, we're not. We've been campaigning on welfare for years. Wd love Labour to join our call to end LHA freeze.
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Confused by the range of 'affordable' housing products in London? Good
@IPPR
report summarises THIRTEEN varieties:
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Excellent news that the Govt is planning proper, and long overdue, regulation of standards in the Private Rented Sector. Right to see this as critical for levelling up - rogue landlords and substandard homes are a blight on left behind communities.
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Yes to all of this. Outrageous how much of our most valuable asset - urban land - is reserved for cars, a harmful, wasteful minority activity. Lockdown has given us a unique chance to redistribute urban space - the need for physical distancing makes it essential.
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With
@sajidjavid
's comments in The Times yesterday, and this from
@JohnHealey_MP
today some very welcome consensus may be breaking out on the need for land values to support public benefit and more affordable homes.
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Entitled drivers flouting the law with vandalism in response to modest changes to their freedom to mow down children, 1930s version
When introduced in 1935 as a means of protecting pedestrians, Belisha Beacons were targetted by vandals. In the first four months of their operation, 3,000 of the 15,000 beacons installed in London had been destroyed, reported The Telegraph.
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