A piece in today's Liverpool Daily Post revealed that a staggering 35% of the newly-built apartments in Liverpool city centre are lying empty!
According to the article (
http://tinyurl.com/357w7m), 4,756 apartments are to come onto the city centre market in the next 12 months, and a further 3,653 in the pipeline.
With the Capital of Culture celebrations just eight months away, rents in the city are going through the roof, and over 20,000 people were on the council's housing list as of last April ( http://tinyurl.com/2bh86w).
However, the council are refusing to build affordable housing, and are creating a market which is thriving on luxury housing and speculation.
Steven Beilin, managing director of BE Property Services, told the Post that:
He said: “There are around 27,000 new-build apartments in Liverpool and around 15,000 of these are not occupied. There are more and more being built and I estimate that we are going to end up with around 25,000 unoccupied flats in the city centre."
I'm not the world's greatest mathematician, but the sums seem quite simple. 25,000 nice new empty flats. About 20,000 of us waiting for affordable housing, plus all the builders working on them, many of whom are from Eastern Europe.
What's standing in the way of this common sense solution? Oh yeah, capitalism.
http://tinyurl.com/357w7m), 4,756 apartments are to come onto the city centre market in the next 12 months, and a further 3,653 in the pipeline. With the Capital of Culture celebrations just eight months away, rents in the city are going through the roof, and over 20,000 people were on the council's housing list as of last April (
http://tinyurl.com/2bh86w). However, the council are refusing to build affordable housing, and are creating a market which is thriving on luxury housing and speculation.
Steven Beilin, managing director of BE Property Services, told the Post that:
He said: “There are around 27,000 new-build apartments in Liverpool and around 15,000 of these are not occupied. There are more and more being built and I estimate that we are going to end up with around 25,000 unoccupied flats in the city centre."
I'm not the world's greatest mathematician, but the sums seem quite simple. 25,000 nice new empty flats. About 20,000 of us waiting for affordable housing, plus all the builders working on them, many of whom are from Eastern Europe.
What's standing in the way of this common sense solution? Oh yeah, capitalism.
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Make an offer
29.04.2007 09:48
simon
They're built to remain empty.
29.04.2007 21:53
The business model that creates thase flats dictates that the majority must remain empty in order for the entire project to be profitable.
Why?
1000 flats built, 800 bought off plan by an investment company.
This creates false a scarcity.
Other 200 then sell and give a value to other 800.
Investment company now owns equity in 800 flats.
Loans can be raised on equity to invest on the curancy markets.
Makes sense for company never to sell flats on the open market otherwise abundance is created and true market value revealed- hence loosing the equity and bankrupting investment company as loans are called in.
It's important in all this to see the difference between housing for families and communities eg. the 5000 built by Militant in the 80's and what we have here which is asset inflation modules.
HD
...and thus was a squatting movement born
30.04.2007 17:30
What happened in London in the 70s?
Only a very big, and well organised squatting movement, begun in Redbridge by families who badly needed somewhere to live but couldn't afford the inflated private rents and were faced with waiting a couple of decades for public housing.
Could the same thing happen in Liverpool? Maybe it ought to.
All the city council is currently doing about the shortage of affordable public housing is manipulate its banding system to make out that people who apply to its waiting list aren't really that badly in need of rehousing. An example is, they refuse to put single mums who are overcrowded through being forced to live with relatives into the overcrowding band, but put them in the general housing band, which is for people who don't really have much need to move.
Also, if anybody tries to apply as homeless to a One Stop Shop - including the one in Municipal Buildings - the staff find, or make up, some excuse for refusing to take the application.
I have to say I thoroughly despised Militant for their Stalinism and penchant for using violence against their political oponents. But I now wish they had managed to build many more council houses before they were "closed down" by central government.
Annie Citizen