Housing crisis

We hear a lot about the housing crisis. About how older people are hogging far too big a share of the available housing, swanning around in their grand family houses when the birds have long flown. About how suburban types in suburban estates go to war over anybody else who wants to build a new house or enlarge an old house anywhere near them. About how shenanighans in the city have pushed house prices up to levels which decent hard working young couples cannot hope to afford. About how waves of EC inspired migrants have soaked up all the cheaper accommodation and are now pushing out into proper accommodation. Not to mention the late Iron Lady who tweaked the arrangements then in place for the provision of social & affordable housing.

Against this fevered background, interesting to come across the blocks of houses illustrated, maybe twenty or thirty houses altogether, standing idle and getting on for derelict on the edge of one of the housing estates now occupying the sites of what used to be the Epsom asylums. Blocks of houses which until fairly recently used to house people who worked at same asylums. Roughly at gmaps 51.336435, -0.287394.

Just to the north of them, on the other side of Cuddington Glade, are more blocks of once similar houses, which I think also used to house such people but which, a couple of years ago or so, were the subject of major refurbishment and are now fully occupied by other people. No idea who actually owns them.

But why have my blocks been left behind? How did they come to fall out of the plans for flogging off National Health land and property to the private developers? Were they occupied at the time, at least in part, and it was not convenient to eject the occupiers?

Presumably somebody owns the land, perhaps some obscure organ of the National Health which worries about odd bits of property. Perhaps some obscure organ of local government? Perhaps some obscure organ which has lost most of its staff to some round of public spending cuts or other and simply does not have the manpower to tidy up all these bits and pieces.

But what if I got bored with blogging and decided to start up as a developer? How much blood, sweat and tears would I have to spend to prise these houses out of the paws of whoever has got them now and be able to get on with bringing them back up to standard and then selling them on for a handsome profit? How much money would I have to stump up, on a punt, to get the thing moving, with no guarantee of ultimate riches? One can see how such opportunities are apt to fall to either people who have already got a lot of money or people who are very young and very eager; not the sort of thing for old stagers such as myself at all.

Perhaps I should write a strong letter to our local free paper.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/search?q=derelict+1&max-results=20&by-date=true.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/search?q=derelict+2&max-results=20&by-date=true.

PS: the references being to the last of the various posts recovered by the tricky pointers. The idea was that a tricky pointer would sort the post intended to the top, but I have only succeeded in sorting it to the bottom. Can't see how to change it just presently; perhaps the answer will come to me during the day.