humpty dumpty housing

[james armstrong]

'Housing equity fell off 'the Wall',
     Supply and prices had a great fall,
Mervyn King's hussies and Gordon Brown's men,
Cannot put houses together again.
Self Builders can."

The housing campaigner who asked 
- the Office of Fair Trading to enforce the Competition Act against landbanking giant housebuilders,
-Councils to stop doing business with building contractors who have been found  by OFT to have rigged bids for  public contracts 
who supports  the Barker Review recommendation for the government to capture windfall planning gains -but said a land tax should be imposed in land not in cash
- who advocates a special planning category giving preference to self occupying self builders of vernacular style houses
- who discovered that the Barker Review of House supply  had inadvertently omitted the contribution made by  self build 
now, in a response to the Eco Towns consultation document  "Living a greener future", proposes setting aside ten percent of the sites for the proposed 50,000 
new houses  for  would be self occupier - self builders who conform to a  design code providing houses in traditional and vernacular styles.
The proposal was launched at the Green Fair and Scythe festival in Somerset on Sunday by  "SOS Build"  - Self occupy Self Builders.
Rosie Boycott, the ex editor of the Independent on Sunday  quoted the example in Chicago led by the Mayor there where 2million  square yards of gardens had been formed on the roofs of the city.
James Armstrong  who speaks for the SOS Build!  network of self building groups, excusing the doggerel says,
 "My poetry is as expert as the government's housing proposals, and I have built one more house than all the Housing Ministers whose houses  are not real but  'planned'.   There is a tsunami of self builders ready to make a significant contribution to housing supply  which can counter the march of the ghastly mono design 'estates'.    


Consultation document "  Eco Towns, Living a greener future    "



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