3 ms·

> You'd want to put them in kind of nondescript areas to avoid taking out the historic stuff as mentioned in the article and maybe pay out 50% above market to e

> You'd want to put them in kind of nondescript areas to avoid taking out the historic stuff as mentioned in the article and maybe pay out 50% above market to existing buildings in the way so they are not too pissed off but it could be doable. And, presumably, they'd be as cheap as possible, leading to higher probability of hazards like at Grenfell Tower?

baybal2 8y ago
Read the backstory. Isocyanate foam maker lobbied cheaper rockwool makers out of the country in UK, with all blessings from the "elites"
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
The council spent quite a lot of money on Grenfell tower, I seem to remember it worked out at £66K per flat.
tim333 8y ago
I was thinking more medium quality. A lot of London stuff seems to either be bad council construction or £1m+ extra lux.
sgt101 8y ago
24 floors (like Grenfell) will not happen again in London - at least in our lifetimes, foam or no foam, bad redesign or no redesign or one staircase or two. High residential is gone. On the other hand 8 to 12 floors is pretty dense and requires less surrounding space and infrastructure so works out quite well. What's needed in London is a change in the development law that mandates 3 good sized bedrooms, two baths and one large living / cooking area. This would provide liveable accommodation for families and would chop out the drivers for a house at any cost.
- holoduke 8y ago
  No a law is needed that prevent foreign individuals or other entities owning lots of property for the sole purpose of renting it out. Half of London is currently owned by them. And the normale working class is barely capable of paying the rent
  - sgt101 8y ago
    I agree about that law, Private Eye [1] has done a great job in making the facts about property ownership in the UK more transparent, I find it particularly abhorrent that property is being used for money laundering and tax evasion draining money away from some of the most needy in the world and then as a secondary effect making life difficult for average people in London and SE England. Actually buying to rent, while bad, isn't the biggest issue. Buying to speculate and drive up prices to flip for a cheap buck while driving others with less capital into penury is. The only good thing that Osbourne got through was the new taxes on property transactions, I think we need more - especially a tax on transactions done in quick succession. If there was a premium on a property being sold (say 5% of the transaction price) less than 24mths after it had previously been sold I think that would kill speculation stone dead. [1] http://www.private-eye.co.uk/registry http://www.private-eye.co.uk/registry
  - icebraining 8y ago
    So they'll need to create a bunch of shell companies?
    - sgt101 8y ago
      In the era of graph databases that doesn't work so well as it used to if transparency laws are set properly.

baybal2 8y ago

Read the backstory. Isocyanate foam maker lobbied cheaper rockwool makers out of the country in UK, with all blessings from the "elites"

tonyedgecombe 8y ago

The council spent quite a lot of money on Grenfell tower, I seem to remember it worked out at £66K per flat.

tim333 8y ago

I was thinking more medium quality. A lot of London stuff seems to either be bad council construction or £1m+ extra lux.

sgt101 8y ago

24 floors (like Grenfell) will not happen again in London - at least in our lifetimes, foam or no foam, bad redesign or no redesign or one staircase or two. High residential is gone. On the other hand 8 to 12 floors is pretty dense and requires less surrounding space and infrastructure so works out quite well. What's needed in London is a change in the development law that mandates 3 good sized bedrooms, two baths and one large living / cooking area. This would provide liveable accommodation for families and would chop out the drivers for a house at any cost.

holoduke 8y ago
No a law is needed that prevent foreign individuals or other entities owning lots of property for the sole purpose of renting it out. Half of London is currently owned by them. And the normale working class is barely capable of paying the rent
- sgt101 8y ago
  I agree about that law, Private Eye [1] has done a great job in making the facts about property ownership in the UK more transparent, I find it particularly abhorrent that property is being used for money laundering and tax evasion draining money away from some of the most needy in the world and then as a secondary effect making life difficult for average people in London and SE England. Actually buying to rent, while bad, isn't the biggest issue. Buying to speculate and drive up prices to flip for a cheap buck while driving others with less capital into penury is. The only good thing that Osbourne got through was the new taxes on property transactions, I think we need more - especially a tax on transactions done in quick succession. If there was a premium on a property being sold (say 5% of the transaction price) less than 24mths after it had previously been sold I think that would kill speculation stone dead. [1] http://www.private-eye.co.uk/registry http://www.private-eye.co.uk/registry
- icebraining 8y ago
  So they'll need to create a bunch of shell companies?
  - sgt101 8y ago
    In the era of graph databases that doesn't work so well as it used to if transparency laws are set properly.