BillyTheRetard

@michaeljswalker I would like to see a reinvogration of state capacity generally. Like the Swiss Canton system, I'd like to see competing local authorities empowered to raise (or cut) a land value tax and spend it how they like - including on council house building.

@HoustonPuddle affordable mandates reduce supply, as does the defunding of local authorities so they can't afford to mass build council homes. I support a package (mass social building, plus less restrained private development) that would lead to mixed communities and housing abundance. Do you?

Some thoughts on current housing debate - Attacking social housing due to "unproductive" tenants comes is cruel and will make it harder for YIMBYs to win consensus in the places they want to build. - The discourse on left that says increased supply doesn't matter for prices is empirically wrong, and suggests a commitment to ideology over evidence. - Cities with expanding populations need new housing for every class. If middle class professionals plus international students can't live in new high-rises, they will be competing for - and pushing up the price - of existing housing stock. - Speculative development being the only game in town won't provide enough supply as it is pro-cyclical. Oligopolistic developers will only build on mass when prices are stable or rising. - Public authorities need better funding to contribute to a mix of housing stock, especially in downturns. Status quo creates zero-sum game of chicken where private developers and council wrangle over how much "affordable" or social housing should be included, with the result often being that nothing gets built. - Our needs based social housing system, plus massive waiting lists, means millions of people struggling with housing costs will never be able to acquire social housing. Simply saying "we need more social housing, and nothing else really matters" is not providing them with a solution to their legitimate housing grievances.

@michaeljswalker Then you are doing the same thing as those who say supply doesn't matter for prices. Ideology over evidence. The academic literature is quite clear that Affordable Mandates act as a tax on building and reduce supply. You're doing the easy bit, now do the hard bit.

@HoustonPuddle I think local authorities and housing associations should be properly funded to build social housing. If that happens, sure, get rid of the mandates. But that isn't happening now!

Aydin Dikerdem not content with creating a homelessness crisis in Wandsworth by collapsing house-building by 95% in 2 years, now encourages Peckham to do the same. x.com/AydinDikerdem/…

@rosegrayston We should ask developers to build new houses using Affordium instead of Luxurium? Got it. Very good. Super clever. That'll fix it.

@AaronBastani @normanelliottuk "share of wealth / assets in hands of billionaires is much higher today than in my lifetime." Source? Most data I can find says the opposite.

@normanelliottuk share of wealth / assets in hands of billionaires is much higher today than in my lifetime. Their effective rate of tax is extraordinarily low - much, much lower than you or me. The incentive to build wealth needs to be based on productive growth, not tax dodging rentierism.

The figure you need to be thinking about is the deficit, which is circa £100 billion a year. But it’s also true that you can worry about bond markets less when you don’t rely on them financing day-to-day spending. Which is partly why we need a wealth tax on the ultra rich.

@shivmalik @Michael_J_Hil Does yours operate under a cross-subsidy model? If so, what’s the outright or implicit subsidy paid by market rate units?

@Michael_J_Hil We’ve literally got a plan for this Michael that we’re actioning. Technically they’re cooperative homes but it’s as close as you get to a functioning plan.

Has anyone written anything good on how we could build hundreds of thousands/millions of new council houses?

@ScottGoetz_ Alton Estate. Cut a 1108 home regeneration down to 600 because it meant he could increase the affordable share from 24% to 57%. Wonder how much extra homelessness he caused from this alone? standard.co.uk/news/london/al…

@HoustonPuddle Which case was that?

Worth bearing in mind Aydin is personally responsible for more homelessness and immiseration in Wandsworth than anyone or anything else. Under his tenure, he collapsed house-building by 92% from 1260 annual starts to 100. x.com/AydinDikerdem/…

Aydin's shirking responsibility by claiming that his disastrous changes only began public consultation in Jan '25. But he previously boasted about big changes "before we changed our planning policy" due to "very clear signalling to the market". x.com/AydinDikerdem/…

Aydin callously blames the London market collapse on the failures of his disastrous tenure. But MHCLG data shows Wandsworth fairing far worse than average: London borough starts fell 81% between 2022/23 and 2024/25 while Wandsworth fell 96%. x.com/AydinDikerdem/…

Wherein Aydin thinks inheriting a pipeline of 1926 starts and collapsing it to 571 within 2 years reflects well on him. He blames this on a sunk market - but MHCLG data show London starts fell 81%, but Wandsworth fell 96%. He dealt unique damage. x.com/AydinDikerdem/…

@CJAWorrall Private enterprise starts fell 98% from 1,070 to 20 under Aydin. 20 starts for a borough of 337,000 people.

Wandsworth rejected 50% social housing shemes (on more than one occassion) under Labour.

@watling_samuel This is how Wandsworth housing starts faired under Aydin, btw. The temerity required to be lecturing people after killing house-building for an entire borough is astonishing.

And are these "very obvious social democratic policies that improve housing" in the room with us now?

@SebMilbank No-one is more culpable for creating homelessness and immiseration in Wandsworth than Aydin. Under his tenure house-building collapsed by 92% (from 1260 to 100 starts) due to him being so anti-development and pushing for a 50% "affordable" housing mandate.

Let's play this out. Suppose I secure a low paid but essential job in Aydin's borough. Can I apply for a council flat? Well first off I have to live there for 3 years in an area with an average rent of 2,600. I'll probably have to get a flat share.

@slam8000 @Alishacmlewis @milesbemberg Great. So we should radically expand supply and stop subsidising demand.

@HoustonPuddle @Alishacmlewis @milesbemberg Around 40-45% of the housing benefit bill goes to the private sector.

Seeing a lot of *very* strong opinions on social housing policy from people who’ve never had to support a tenant in unsafe conditions, help someone secure emergency housing, or figure out how we actually finance and secure planning permission to deliver enough of the right homes.

@Alishacmlewis @milesbemberg What on earth do you think happens in other countries with no or low social housing? We have double the OECD average rates of social rent. We spend more on housing benefit than any other OECD country. You are just so intellectually incurious. Do some googling.

@milesbemberg None of you people have a serious answer to where those ‘unproductive people’ - especially the disabled, those with complex mental health needs, those with substance issues, and people you simply *can't* house anywhere else because nobody else will have them - actually go to live

@BernoulliDefect @CJAWorrall Yup, the tide is turning. You'd have never seen something like this on Reddit - even a year ago: reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/c…

@CJAWorrall Worse: It’s middlebrow and dated. This stuff is purely a remnant of millennial progressivism, and smart young people who are ahead of the curve reject it.

This is the kind of high-browed, turtle-necked opinion that has accelerated unsustainable levels of welfare class dependency over decades.

@Alishacmlewis Just how arrogant... deriding people for "strong opinions" all the whilst advocating for economically illiterate slopulist tosh of which all available evidence tell us makes things horrendously worse...

@Alishacmlewis You have consistently called for a 40% affordable housing mandate on all new developments. All available peer reviewed evidence tells us this will make new development so unviable it reduces supply and in turn makes housing more unaffordable. You are not a serious person.