George Monbiot
Tuesday November 27, 2007
The Guardian
Article here

It sounds preposterous: 3 million new homes in England alone by 2020. My instinct is to fight this project. It threatens Britain's countryside, the character of our towns, our water supplies and carbon targets. Today the housing and regeneration bill, which will help to implement this building programme, has its second reading in the House of Commons.

Where should we stand? Is the housing crisis as acute as some people have claimed? Or has it been whipped up by the House Builders Federation, hoping to get its claws into the countryside? To find out whether these homes are really needed, I asked the charity Shelter to take me to meet some of the people it works with in London. I had no idea. I simply had no idea.

Reading this article I was filled with a mixture of sadness, hope and a bit of builder's buzz.

Amid the stories of vulnerable people living in truly miserable conditions, the overwhelming message is that these houses need to be replaced, and fast. Not just upgraded, but replaced with more than one house for every one torn down.

(While schemes like this in Kildare are a help, and a more frequent occurrence in Ireland due to local authorities reappraising their housing "stock" with the help of GIS systems and databases, it is hard to fix that which is fundamentally wrong in the first place. It cannot be economical to update houses built 40 years ago to acceptable modern standards.)

That's what building is about, the excitement of taking on an enormous challenge, making it happen, getting the work done, nearly getting it right, making a few quid in the process, and bringing new buildings to people who need them.