Housing is stuck in the mud

The States has everything set up for it – a now extensive land bank in the north of the island, evidence of the housing problem and a target for how many homes need to be built.

And still… houses don’t get built.

No wonder people shake their heads and wonder just how big a ‘crisis’ has to be before something gets going in relation to housing.

Efforts are being made, notably on page three of today’s newspaper, but also for some time now, to pass the blame on to the Guernsey Housing Association.

But while it retains an ambition to build, it is not as growth-hungry as Jersey’s Andium Homes, for example, and is starting to consolidate and upgrade its current stock rather than take the lead for States on building more.

That’s a bit awkward, however, when the States has no ability or direction to build its own homes and can’t direct the private sector to do it either – though it can hope that removing GP11 helps.

But now too we’re in awkward position of wanting, nay, needing to see progress.

But with the belief that certain sites are to be freed up imminently, leaves us caught betwixt and between, with no will to progress any individual site as a priority, leaving house-building, once again, stuck in the mud.