James Higham asked this question on Shapps challenges housebuilders to embrace corporate suicide:
You know, when I see Homeownerist used in various contexts, Mark, I'm less able to comprehend what you really mean. Do you mean that anyone who took a mortgage and got on the housing ladder, paying through the nose each month is a Homeownerist and is therefore a bad person?
I personally thoroughly approve of people being able to own their own home, and have never proposed a policy which would make it more difficult, because that is what people want and what makes them happy. That in itself does not make them bad people.
What I do not approve of is people, once they have bought a home, doing their damnedest to make it more difficult for others to own a home, by a combination of (primarily):
a) Resisting any new construction, which is like going on holiday somewhere and complaining about all the bloody tourists.
b) Expecting the government to raise taxes on productive economic activity in order to bail out banks, keep interest rates low, reduce council tax and so on.
They always trot out the same tired excuses, that rising house prices somehow make us all wealthier; that we have to protect The Hallowed Greenbelt because of 'food security'; that allowing more houses to be built will put 'pressure on local services' (which is nonsense of course, if you build more houses then it's easier for nurses, teachers etc to afford, so they will be more likely to move to your area, ergo, new housing lifts the pressure on local services in equal and opposite measure).
I used to own where I lived (in fact I've owned three houses and four flats in my long and uneventful life) and I never, ever complained about Council Tax and I have never, ever signed a petition opposing planning permission for anything, although I did once successfully campaign to have a small space at the end of a local car park converted into a children's playground.
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9 comments:
Didn't you miss the bit about Home-Ownerists seeing their house as an investment? AFAICS, it's what distinguishes a HOist from a homeowner.
BTW, what would you call someone who views their house as an investment, but is not a NIMBY? (I have known a few of these types - usually long-established country folk, the NIMBY mentality being more characteristic of off-comers)
Agreed on most but:
"(which is nonsense of course, if you build more houses then it's easier for nurses, teachers etc to afford, so they will be more likely to move to your area, ergo, new housing lifts the pressure on local services in equal and opposite measure)"
Er.. so long as the infrastructure is built to get to work on and to work in. Roads, hospitals, schools etc
Trouble is the collection of the infrastructure fund is fraught with corruption never collects more than a quarter of what is needed and lately is not getting collected at all because developers are either blackmailing the LPA or crying poverty while pocketing billions in planning gain.
B, sure, I'm simplifying.
In reply to your question, I cannot imagine that such people exist, but if they do, they are Home-Owner-Ists.
"I never, ever complained about Council Tax"
MW, you obviously have never lived in Haringey.
Well, there's really two separate arguments here. The first is that a house forms the bulk of many people's wealth. Without necessarily "seeing their house as an investment", they do want to know that the value of their house is not going to be dramatically reduced by some external action, because they know that they might need to sell up and move elsewhere for work etc. Overall house price trends aren't important - but if your house halves in value with respect to similar houses because someone built a smelly factory next door, you have a problem. Your UK land PLC concept eliminates this risk.
The second issue is that homeowners tend to invest a lot of time and effort into customizing their individual home to their taste. This customization has little economic value, but represents significant sunk costs. In addition, homes acquire an emotional value (this is the corner I used to hide in as a child, that's the place on the floor where my son was born etc.)
People buy homes that they intend to be permanent, and invest their emotions in them on the tacit understanding that the character of the area will not change dramatically (at least, not out of step with nationwide changes).
Offering to buy the home I grew up in from me really doesn't compensate for building a big industrial park next door, as my home has rather more than its market value of worth to me.
If you build a couple of streets of houses similar to mine in the same area, I'm not going to be bothered, as it won't change the character of the area. Build a row of McMansions, and I might be concerned. Build a high-density housing estate, and I probably will be.
U, no I haven't, but had I bought a house in Haringey relatively cheaply (its price having been depressed by the higher Council Tax bills) then I would have kept my mouth shut.
As a matter of fact, I did buy a house in LB Waltham Forest (a borough which had a reputation for having high Council Tax), relatively cheaply in 1993, and I did in fact keep my mouth shut - what I paid extra in Council Tax I saved in mortgage repayments.
And where we are renting now (deep blue Tory area) the rents are not as high as you'd expect, because being a deep blue Tory area it gets relatively small grants from Central Government, so Council Tax is higher than elsewhere, ergo what we pay extra in Council Tax we save in rental payments, so I'm still keeping my mouth shut.
End of.
Anon: "Offering to buy the home I grew up in from me really doesn't compensate for building a big industrial park next door, as my home has rather more than its market value of worth to me."
Why on earth would a landlord deliberately depress his rental income by slapping a smelly factory in the middle of a nice residential area?
"If you build a couple of streets of houses similar to mine in the same area, I'm not going to be bothered, as it won't change the character of the area. Build a row of McMansions, and I might be concerned. Build a high-density housing estate, and I probably will be."
= You can build what you like, as long as i approve.
It's this attidude which has meant people like me (youngens) pay through the nose to buy if we choose to do so.
I had a similar argument with my parents recently. They bought a council house, that had been built in the 80's on what used to be green fields, they got it dirt cheap relativly speaking as well.
Now someone want's to build on the fields surrounding their housing estate, and they object.
I pointed out that they didn't object to the fields being built on when they purchased their house, and it's people like me who want a house who suffer.
Anon, exactly, thanks. That is the Achilles' Heel of Home-Owner-Ism, the fact that older people are not just impoverishing future generations, in a vague sort of way, but are deliberately disadvantaging their own children.
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