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  • 31 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • Is demand that high? Is there a lack of supply?

    Looking at some homeless charities research (potentially biased, sure). There are ~1million empty properties in England. Only a 3rd of them are needed to “solve” the housing crisis. Which would imply there are currently 600,000 (ish) properties in England empty even if we ended homelessness. (naive and overstated … but yeah).

    [edit: added some sources] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g840ydlzvo https://www.actiononemptyhomes.org/ https://www.crisis.org.uk/ending-homelessness/about-homelessness/how-many-empty-homes-are-there-in-the-uk/

    From what I can see, people buying up properties as (monthly, not even over the lifetime of the mortgage) profitable holiday lets, people able to charge rent which is higher than the mortgage on the property. This is the fundamental problem.

    Rent should be cheaper than the mortgage. The landowner should be paying something towards the property. I’ve often had people argue that “[landlords] don’t make much money” (200quid a month), ignoring that at the end of the mortgage the landlord still owns the whole value of that appreciating asset.

    I kinda see some of the argument about state letting not being perfect. But at least if someone is paying the state a nominal amount each month for the property, they have the space to save for a home of their own. If someone is paying a private landlord more than the monthly cost of the mortgage, they have no space to save.


  • Not only that … the site isn’t up to scratch really. It’s not finished and just been pushed.

    What does “concessionary member” actually mean. Is there any policing of this? Why does the link in the emails sent out “https://api.secondstreetapp.com/m_c_t/<x>” not work? It could just be that secondstreetapp have been overloaded? Why is that link not just to the membership portal?

    Why does the main page and portal not link together to show they’re valid.

    I get what others here are saying. I’m not sure this is a scam, I’m also not sure this is not a scam site. But it’s not giving off vibes of quality and consistency.

    If Zarah has seen some internal conflict. Making that part of releasing the site, rather than this blindsided approach seems more prudent. This is farsical right now.














  • Performance art.

    Anything in the UK carried for the intent to harm another person is a weapon. I do lots of low impact woodland/forest work. Axes, saws etc. in my bag. If I carried them to a Birmingham park to murder someone they would be weapons and not allowed. If I carry them into a woodland I have a contract to manage, they are tools and allowed.

    These extra rules/laws don’t change the above. The swords could still have been outlawed as weapons by the legal system.

    But… doing this means the perl clutches can sleep easy knowing “something is being done”