Remember the housing boom?

The BBC have published an article on the number of ghost estates in Ireland. These are housing developments where the houses are empty. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8653949.stm 

It seems that there are 621 of these estates; approximately one in every five house in Ireland is unoccupied. By way of comparison, they say that the number of unoccupied houses in the UK is 1 in 32. According to the 2001 census there were 24.14 million households in the UK and the Office for National Statistics projected that this number would rise to 25.3 million in 2006 and 26.2 million in 2011. Given the current economic climate, let’s go with the 2006 figure. At a rate of 1 in 32, that means the UK has over 800,000 empty houses.

So why were told a few years ago that tens of thousands of houses had to be built to house our ever increasing population? I recall saying at the time that I haven’t seen too many families wandering the streets looking for somewhere to live. I was told it was because many children couldn’t afford starter homes; that there were a large number of immigrants from the new European states; and that the number of break ups and divorces meant that there was pressure for a lot more houses.

It is understandable that the banking crisis has meant that funding for developers has dried up and that construction on some of the large estates that surround Leighton Buzzard, Aylesbury and Milton Keynes has come to a halt. But where have all these people gone? I’m sure many economic migrants have gone home, or elsewhere, but where are the rest of them?

The BBC report states that if all of the people in Ireland’s social housing list were housed, there would still be hundreds of thousands of houses left empty. They ask, who was supposed to live in these ghost estates, even if there was not an economic downturn. You would therefore think that over 800,000 empty houses would put a fair dent in the UK’s socal housing list.

Don’t get me wrong. If someone wants houses built, I’ll design them. But I’m still puzzled. On what basis was it decided that all of these houses were needed? Not just put up as a speculative developments for profit, needed . And if they were needed before the construction industry slowed down, where are all the people they were being built for?

I think we should be told.