Some General Election Thoughts

With just a couple of weeks left to the General Election heres some non partisan thoughts round issues that have been talked  about.
One area the politicians having being talking about is homelessness and housing with a main difference between the emphasis on building home for first time buyers by the Conservatives and Building 100,000 homes to rent by Labour.
To me it shouldn't be a binary choice because we know there is insufficient new build  for the UK's population and at the same time there is  a shortage of affordable property to rent, especially of an acceptable standard.
A common problem with both proposals is there is a shortage of construction workers  which already is causing delays to developments and even a shortage of bricks so I don't feel labour's proposal is achievable  as it is and there would be issues with expanding privately owned property.
I think we need to revisit prefabricated housing such a that produced in Scandinavia   where the quality workmanship is built in at the factory being pre-plumbed and wired and is effectively assembled on site. which is quicker and doesn't require as many skilled hands that we don't have.
Labour are talking about Rent Control - limiting ("Capping") rents  which are very high in some areas but what concerns me is that the minute that is starts being put into effect, private landlords who invest in property for a reward will simply send the residents to the streets which happens even now if they feel they can get more from tenants.
To be at a point to even considers needs a rebalencing   of the private/public rental market and a long period of state investment which may take more than one parliament to get anywhere near.

The Environment is important and is a world wide issue which as an industralized nation we have and continue to add to but we do have a problem when it comes to building measures to minimize our impact into.
We are losing ground to housing developments that don't tie into transport networks  which means we lose trees, visual amenities and add more Co2 while allowing brownfield sites to lay dormant. This area is badly impacted by nondescript spawl as it is.
Building on such older used sites need to be competitive  financial as greenfield site.
The sorts of measures some advocate toward dealing with global emissions would have a major impact on peoples livelihoods and if such are necessary, people are going to need to assisted during that change and into new work.
Making people impoverished isn't any nicer for saying 'it's for the environment's good'  

Ours is a mainly urbanized country but even in inner cores high car ownership exists for reasons such as poor transport even in say Dudley, in the Black County due to poor bus services that make a fifteen minute car trip over an hour  with multiple connections, you can't get to Walsall by train without going on a round trip via Birmingham from Wolverhampton and it's no better across Greater Stoke on Trent as I know personally.
In order to reduce the impact of those car trips when comes to congestion and Co2 we need to make fast, efficient public transport a reality rather than in effect fining people making necessary journeys with congestion charging.
My area doesn't even a passenger transport transport executive so in effect bus and train companies make the decision about to provide  ignore social and other needs like getting people about when infrastructure remains stuck at a level that is Edwardian at best and pre Victorian at worst frequently jammed which makes public transport less reliable.