8 ms·

My life in London's houseboat slums

109 points by timw6n 13y ago

drcross 13y ago
Here's my personal story, some may find interesting- I was finishing my masters in the UK and split up with my ex girlfriend, this meant I had to get a job quickly to sustain myself because I had nowhere to live and no money. I visited some different groups of friends who were kind enough to let me stay for a few days on their couch but I couldn't risk outstaying my welcome. At the same time the Occupy protests were happening in St Pauls. I secured a short term contract in an investment bank, and stayed in a tent with the protestors while saving for a deposit to rent a room. I had to put on my suit and dash away from the camp in the morning before I was spotted, I'd then change before coming back in the evening. I washed in the local swimming pools. Looking back on it, it was nuts that I was able to finish my thesis. So yeah, rents are high, you need to know someone to make it in London.
- theorique 13y ago
  dash away from the camp in the morning before I was spotted Just to clarify: you mean they wouldn't have liked it if they had known that you were a banker?
  - rachbelaid 13y ago
    Just to explain, it was protest and demonstration against economic inequality that took place in London, precisly St Paul. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_London http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_London
    - theorique 13y ago
      Makes sense. If it's anything similar to Occupy Wall Street, wearing a suit would be taken to mean that a person is some sort of terrible exploiter of the proletariat.
  - smcl 13y ago
    Yes. My colleagues in London were advised to dress down during the protests to avoid drawing attention to themselves, I think this was fairly common at the time.
    - collyw 13y ago
      To be fair, if you had been found out, I think you would have deserved what you get for being such a glaring hypocrite. I am sure some people were giving up work to protest against a system. You were supporting that system, while using the protests as a place to stay.
      - yetanotherphd 13y ago
        >would have deserved what you get What do you imagine this would have been? What would a "fair" reaction of the protestors have been? The poster wasn't 'using' the protests, they were using a public park. It is hypocrisy of this movement to take over a public space and claim it for their own exclusive use, while not acknowledging that the fact that the police let them get away with this is a sign of their own privilege.
      - smcl 13y ago
        I think you have your wires crossed, I am just someone confirming the whole "you should dress down" advice - neither my london-based colleagues nor me (I don't even live in the UK) were living with the protesters during the occupy movement.
  - nailer 13y ago
    I remember visiting a similar protest, in my work clothes, to show support years ago. Being well dressed is taken as a sign you have some kind of malicious intention.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  good for you! I always found it unfair that left wing protestors are allowed to do illegal things, like camp in parks. They complain about privilege, while they themselves are afforded privileges that ordinary people (like you) don't have.
  - 1457389 13y ago
    This is misguided. The Occupy protests were often focused on providing privileges like housing, shelter, and amenities to those who didn't have access to it.
    - grey-area 13y ago
      Well, in this case they helped someone out directly with all of the above :)
      - 1457389 13y ago
        This is the irony that made me comment!
    - theknown99 13y ago
      They were also focussed on trashing a church. What lovely protestors they were. They achieved nothing, apart from being a nuisance.
      - nailer 13y ago
        They wanted the public space in front of the Goldman's building (the basis of which the development of the square was approved). Regardless of whether you support them or not (I don't) they certainly weren't "focused on trashing a church".
    - nailer 13y ago
      To be honest, I don't think they were focused on anything at all: people inside the movement will tell you that. "We're the 99%" fantastic, we knew that already. "We want equality" what specifically do you think you're entitled to?
beloch 13y ago
I really don't understand several things about this story. 1. Why move to London if you're an unskilled worker? Are opportunities elsewhere even bleaker? 2. London has a huge problem with absentee property owners because London real estate is currently a hot investment. It's a feedback loop. The more rapidly London properties appreciate, the more absentee owners there will be, and the more demand will rise. Why haven't bylaws been passed to curb this? For example, why aren't residences that are unoccupied by their owner for a significant portion of the year taxed at much higher rates? It would probably be necessary to offer a renter rebate to compensate for increased rents, but this would discourage the practice of leaving residences vacant. If this doesn't actually drive prices down, at least it would prevent them from continuing to rise. 3. Why aren't the barge-lords being treated like slum-lords when the barges they run are overcrowded, full of mould, etc.? I understand it's hard to legally enforce a tenant-landlord relationship when it's all under the table, but there must be something the police can do to hassle these guys until they improve conditions. 4. Where are the government programs, volunteers, etc. that you usually see in other cities building low-cost housing? e.g. Why isn't anyone building legal barges with decent living conditions to compete with the barge-lords?
- DanBC 13y ago
  1) You were born there. Your spouse lives there. Etc 2)!london is not monolithic; it has several local councils all with differing rules. They'd all need to agree and coordinate. I don't know why it isn't done better. 3) people living in slums ether don't know their rights; or how to enforce those rights. Sometimes their own legal status is dubious and they risk deportation. Even if they do know their rights, and how to enforce their right, and they can get the regulator to take action, and they're totally legal and above board, they may just end up without a home. Housing in the UK is weird and broken and at the low end there are some strong weirdnesses built into the system.
  - pjc50 13y ago
    2) Council tax has all sorts of central govt limits on it, including the banding system. They can't fix the problem of empty property on their own. 3) A houseboat is not a building, and is therefore exempt from all the laws about building minimum standards that were instituted the previous times London had a slum problem. I'm not sure if there even are any standards about living on a boat, only standards about in relation to the river and other water users. Housing in the UK is weird and broken. This is about 50% due to Right To Buy and the slow abolition of the council house.
theorique 13y ago
So for £230 per month in London, you get an unpleasant, unsafe, tiny, and marginal place to live. Given that it's one of the most expensive cities in the world to live ("typical" 2BR apartments in nice areas are more like £400-600 per WEEK), I can't say I'm surprised. The ways people are willing to trade off comfort to live in the center of things sometimes surprises me, but not that much.
- DanBC 13y ago
  In theory it also has a lot of regulation and enforcement, so it's a bit surprising that these kinds of slums still exist. Except it's not that surprising because we see people renting out garden sheds and lock-up garages as housing.
- barrkel 13y ago
  You can get a 3-room house with garden and parking for less than £300 per week. I know because that's what I have; 10 minutes by motorbike to Old Street, or 40 minutes by public transport. The wildcard is your qualification of "nice area". There's a very wide scale, and what would qualify as "nice" somewhere else will be a lot more expensive here. I've never felt physically in danger, though I have had motorcycles stolen.
  - theorique 13y ago
    As an admitted tourist, my most tangible reference point was my friend's place in Marylebone, for which I believe he was paying about £500 pw. It was a 2 BR in a quiet, clean building but not over-the-top luxurious. I suspect the price came from the central location in City of Westminster. Similar to NYC / SF prices if you do the conversion.
lukasm 13y ago
I really don't understand why people are looking at the wrong problem the whole time. Housing is not a problem, transport is. Commuting from outside London costs more than 500 pounds. UK transport (trains, tube) got the worst price to quality ratio in the world. You can rent a whole house for 1000 outside London, but the cost of transport is equivalent to nice flat in London (plus painful commuting[1]). Many agencies won't let you a flat if you make less than 36k, but that's below average and way below median. Any regulation or tax will we bypassed. Government should do the opposite, deregulate to reduce the cost of building new houses. Startup idea: Cheap, sustainable and safe transport for London. Investors are reluctant to buy properties outside London, cause of poor liquidity, hence cheaper and faster transport would solve that problem. Elon! help! [1] It's not only the time, but trains are so unreliable. 1mm of snow and everything stops. I can't image what would happen if there would be proper winter.
- eru 13y ago
  You could also just build higher in London, instead of building more around it.
  - neverminder 13y ago
    I agree. I don't understand this reluctance to do so. I think it has a lot to do with good old british resistance to change and sticking blindly to some ridiculous traditions (2 taps in the sink I'm looking at you)
    - lukasm 13y ago
      Sure, but the problem is with tube. It already works on its limits and higher destiny would require better city transport.
      - eru 13y ago
        Higher residential density wouldn't add that much strain---the destinations (ie workplaces) still have the same density, it's just that commuters don't travel as far on the tube. So you could make the system more intense, and less extense; concentrate the investments in tube upgrades on the centres.
Matsta 13y ago
I remember my friend moved to London a couple years ago. He said that tube tickets were taking up a large chunk of his income and barely had enough to pay for rent in his flat. He eventually moved back home to NZ 6 months later cause he was sick of being broke. I know a few other of my friends have moved to London with great success, but I think the trick is to lock-in a well paying job before you move over there.
- brc 13y ago
  No..the trick is to find some sort of network of friends before you go. I went to London with about 500 pounds of cash and no concrete job, on a one-way ticket. For a start - renting is out - you have to find someone who is willing to lend a couch. Living the highlife is out - no pubs for you. Your only status is to (1) clean the flat for the people who let you stay there and (2) look for jobs. This should be a full-time occupation until you find a job - any job. Your ability to continue to sponge off someone else is tied to how they feel when they get home tired and find you sitting on their couch, coupled with how quickly you can find employment and vacate said couch. Locking in a well-paying job before you get there is like saying you should find a good looking girlfriend before you start university. It's not going to happen unless you are very established somewhere already and get a transfer, or are internet famous for something. Or you are going to get sold a pup and end up locked into a crappy job in a crappy part of town. I found my first job within 10 days of landing, worked that for a couple of months, asked to be paid after 1 week and then spent the entire cash amount on a deposit for a short-term one-room flat, which took all my money so I ate pot-noodles for a week. Stayed there for 4 weeks until I amassed enough cash for a proper flat. By that time I found two other people who wanted to share and the three of us rented a decent place for a decent price. After that it was better jobs, more fun and a great time. I passed it on by helping other people out with time on the couch, coupled with strict rules on what goes on. In case you think that was a fluke, I repeated the same thing about 4 years later, only this time it took 8 weeks to find a job because the economy was more strained. I had (marginally) more savings this time but it was more tense. The hack for housing in London is finding a borough with low council taxes with the lowest transport zone you can afford, and if you have an established job, one which offers a short commute. And don't blow all your weeks surplus on a big friday night out including an expensive cab ride home. The only trick is being hungry for success in a city that doesn't seem to want to give it to you unless you fight for it.
digita88 13y ago
I was in a similar situation but I was not living in a houseboat slum but was technically squatting for a short while. The reasons people do this is varied - they could be saving up to be able to pay down a deposit to live (and trying to find a decent place here is bad enough!), they could prefer to live 'in' London instead of outside due to the cost of transport and also more opportunities in London and so on. There are other factors as well - for example you had to have a NI and have a bank account to get paid, and to get an NI/bank account you needed a place to stay. The thing here is that unless you are in the upper-middle income bracket then you are locked in the London rat race. London is good to live in for a few years but in terms of a lifetime here, it's not good or you find 'strategies' in evading council tax.
kimonos 13y ago
Thanks for sharing! I salute you for having survived this!
asgard1024 13y ago
Another interesting related article in The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-empty-properties-enough-house-homeless-continent-twice http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-em...
ansimionescu 13y ago
Add '/print' at the end of the link for a less shitty reading experience. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/london-houseboat-slum-rents-barge/print http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/london-houseb...
lucaspiller 13y ago
> Comfortable rooms appear on flatshare websites from time to time, at typical rents of £600 a month in areas such as Richmond. Even if you are working at minimum wage* you are earning over £900 after tax. Assuming you spend £100 a month to get to work, that's still £200 to spend on food, the pub, whatever else takes your fancy. You could also save more by not trying to live in one of the most expensive areas of London. When I was there (ok nearly two years ago now), I was paying under £400 a month for a rather comfortable (and warm) house share in South Wimbledon. It was zone 3, and took 25 minutes to get to work in central London. *A 'living wage' of £8.80 has been getting popular over the last few years, I'll use the UK minimum of £6.31 though. Also, yes I understand not everyone can get a full-time job, but bear with me for sake of argument.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  Many US landlords I've seen will require the renter's income to be 3x the monthly rent. Is that not common in London?
  - g_lined 13y ago
    Not in my experience. The requirement of 6 weeks' rent as a deposit is, however. I wouldn't be surprised if some ask for 8. This is partly what makes it so difficult to get in to the rental market for some people.
    - tomp 13y ago
      They might require as much as 6 moths (i.e. pay your rent in advance) if you cannot prove you have a (good?) job.
  - EliRivers 13y ago
    That would require many landlords to cut the rent, reducing profit; it's not uncommon for people to be paying half or more of their income on the rent.
  - lucaspiller 13y ago
    It varies. I only had to pay a month up front, but as others said it depends on the landlord and situation. I believe a month is most common in the UK.
mcdowall 13y ago
This seems a rather odd article, there are many useful sites (particularly in London) that enable you to search for properties in a much smarter way these days, check out the tools on www.findproperly.com , find spare rooms on www.spareroom.com or even act as a property caretaker on www.guardiansoflondon.com
d0 13y ago
That article is crazy: 1. I lived in a car in London for 6 months. It was pretty fine. McDonalds was my washroom. 2. These boats are rare. I mean really rare. This is not the norm. The boats and the moorings are damn expensive so this doesn't make sense even for the landlords. Even crappy moorings cost. 3. You can go to the council and get a bedsit if you're in this situation. Literally the next day. Might have to share with a crackhead for a week but that's life. 4. There are plenty of other places to go in the UK where the salary/housing cost ratio isn't crazy. I lived in Nottingham for a bit and had a 5 bedroom detached house in a nice bit for £500/month. £230/month will get you a 2 bed flat better than this. This is a sob story - nothing more.
- 72deluxe 13y ago
  Wow, the North is much cheaper than the Midlands and the South! My sister lives up North and housing is much cheaper than the Worcester area where I live.
- theknown99 13y ago
  It's the Guardian. Its heavily biased reporting, warped to fit in with their agenda.
  - kjjw 13y ago
    Their agenda here is completely reasonable. Successive UK governments have failed to address a crisis in housing. Yes, a crisis.
    - Fuxy 13y ago
      This is the exception not the norm. Most people don't live like this but i have to agree the prices for renting in London are completely crazy and don't even think about buying a house or getting a mortgage. I really wish i could buy a house in London (renting it out wold pay for the mortgage and some other bits) but there's no way in hell any bank would give me the amount necessary. Only rich people and the ones that got council housing will ever be able to live/work in London cheaply.
jackgavigan 13y ago
There's no denying that London's an expensive city but there are plenty of options available for those on a budget: http://www.gumtree.com/flatshare-offered/london http://www.gumtree.com/flatshare-offered/london
- gadders 13y ago
  Or even get a tube/train map and not live in London. Plenty of people commute to work and seem to cope OK. Living in London is no more a right than owning a Rolls Royce.
  - polymatter 13y ago
    Commuting doesn't actually save you any money in most cases. Transport costs eat most of those savings. The thing that commuting gets you is access to a nice area with nice family homes close to good schools.
- onion2k 13y ago
  The cheapest on the first page is £300/month - about 25% more than the £230/month mentioned in the article. The second cheapest is £360/month - almost 50% more. If you're trying to demonstrate that there are alternative cheap places to rent, I'd say you failed. And all of those rentals will require at least a month's rent up front, which is the main point that the article was addressing - starting out renting is beyond the pocket of many people.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Filtering for <£60, there are still a few rooms in that site, some of which are "no deposit"; e.g. http://www.gumtree.com/p/flats-houses/very-cheap-short-term-share-rooms-no-deposit/1049970881 http://www.gumtree.com/p/flats-houses/very-cheap-short-term-... I wouldn't enjoy living there, but it seems better than the boat.
  - jackgavigan 13y ago
    "Found 43,415 Flatshare, Rooms to Rent ads in London" Gumtree displays 55 ads per page. So, after looking through ~0.25% of the adverts, you concluded that there was nothing cheaper than £300/month? Wow, that's pretty thorough! It took me less than five minutes to find a hostel-style roomshare for £7 per night (less than £220 per month).
michaelt 13y ago
While they're in parliament, MPs can expense mortgage payments on a second home. This isn't entirely unreasonable - it means you can be elected even if you're not already rich enough to own a second home in London as well as your home in your constituency. But it does have the unfortunate side-effect that rising London house prices put cash in MPs pockets. What we need is to do away with expense payments and instead give MPs a per diem, based on today's expenses and rising with CPI. That way, keeping a lid on housing, transport and council tax prices will be in their interests.
- DanBC 13y ago
  MPs get paid over £60,000 per year. If they cannot live on that they need to think about the nurses, teachers, etc who get paid less. They don't need a second house in London. They do need London accommodation. It is bizarre that millionaire MPs get paid public money in the form of expenses on top of their wages to buy a second home in London.
  - michaelt 13y ago
    I can understand expecting MPs to live in their constituency, and also that they need some London accommodation. If you're proposing it could work like a university halls of residence, I agree with that. My thinking with a per diem is any change would need MPs support, and they'd go for a per diem more easily than a cut in their benefits, however deserved it may be. The origin of paying MPs was in the Chartist movement [1] - back when MPs were unpaid, no-one who relied on a salary to feed their family could get into parliament; only rich landowners who didn't have to work for their income could afford to be MPs. The intent of paying MPs is to allow working class and middle class people to stand for election. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism
  - collyw 13y ago
    It is also produces a conflict of interests. If they own two homes, why would they have the incentive to make prices affordable for the general population on normal wages.
muyuu 13y ago
I can't imagine why so many people making under 2000 GBP after tax move to London. Especially younger people with no roots anywhere, why on Earth moving here under these conditions? Part of the problem is the influx of recent young immigrants from other EU countries where they have it even worse and they seem to default to London when many cities in the UK would be much better at least as a starting point.
- falsedan 13y ago
  Do you mean, making under £20k after tax?
  - muyuu 13y ago
    Something like under £20k after tax is "war economy living conditions" in London.
  - lmm 13y ago
    Might mean 2000/month?
    - muyuu 13y ago
      Yep, I didn't realise I didn't mention it was per month.
- DrJokepu 13y ago
  Because why would you move a thousand miles just to live in Nottingham? World cities such as London have something to offer to everyone, not just professionals with established careers and this is exactly what makes London special and exciting. I remember at the beginning of my career I was living in London on a £25K salary for two years and I was just fine. Don't be elitist.
  - muyuu 13y ago
    Firstly Nottingham is fine and there's plenty to do there. But you have places like Bristol, Bath or Manchester where life and especially housing is much cheaper than in London and they have a lot to offer. Personally I like Liverpool as well, Edinburgh, even Newcastle, but for some reason they are not popular and they are deemed as insecure (when in reality, living in a dump in the East end in London is definitely more insecure than living in a cheaper place up North, South-West, Wales, etc anywhere but London and the South-East). This "London or bust" mentality is not only ignorant - there's a lot to the UK other than London - it's financial suicide for people on low salaries. > I remember at the beginning of my career I was living in London on a £25K salary for two years and I was just fine. Don't be elitist. Firstly, I don't know when this was but now you are definitely poor on that salary here in London. And if you have the choice to make a similar salary elsewhere then it's absurd not to do it because of some "The Secret of my Success" pipe dream. You can always move to London later in your career. Secondly, I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to make absurd decisions. I'm just calling them what they are. The rent differential alone is higher than the pay differential let alone all the remaining living costs. At the same time, many jobs don't pay more than in other places and yet there are flocks of people coming to do these. Their hardship is the direct result of their poor decision making.
gadders 13y ago
I think the thing this article fails to mention is the perfectly adequate Public Transport system there is around London. I would think the number of jobs where you physically have to live in London would be very small. For everyone else there is Tube/Train/Bus/Coaches. Complaining you have no money because you chose to live in Central London is like complaining you've got no money for food because you spent all your salary on payments on a Ferrari.
personlurking 13y ago
Best comment I read from the article.. "That middle bit there, as you put it; "....it's depressing how easily you get used to the slugs, the dampness, the cold and the filth".......that's what is counted on. This separation of living standards, it's manufactured. Yes there are some random elements mixed in, but by and large everything is engineered to be this way. Government, banks, housing moguls....they know they have people over a barrell, they know people just have to get on. They also know that if they keep it this way for long enough, not so awful as to make people revolt but awful enough to serve their greed, people will get used to it. It will become expected. Then people will feel lucky for having the things that should be standard for everyone, not one person excluded. You are indeed lucky, good Sir, but you feel that way because of what you've been put through. They made the System, and the System has made you this way because that serves a purpose. That purpose is to keep the rich rich, the poor poor and to make everyone believe that that's precisely the way it should be."
- nailer 13y ago
  That sounds an awful lot like a conspiracy theory. How about: someone has a boat, and the government lets them moor cheaply in central London. They make money renting it, out of natural human self interest.
  - personlurking 13y ago
    I'm just sharing someone else's comment. The idea that the rich like to get richer and make the poor, poorer is pretty commonly thought.
    - nailer 13y ago
      Yes, but being common doesn't make it sensible or worth sharing here.
shultays 13y ago
I stayed in a hostel for £5 each day (3-4 years ago) while in London. Wouldn't that plus a locked container somewhere be cheaper? Surely beats a car or a boat
- sireat 13y ago
  5 quid sounds unbelievably cheap for a hostel in London. Unless they have some special rule for not letting people stay longer than few days, they would be swamped.
johnchristopher 13y ago
This article reads like the background of a William Gibson novel (VL). Scary the future isn't brighter. Or maybe the interlopes are getting darker ?
c4newskate 13y ago
Anyone know Sam Forbes?! kate.conway@itn.co.uk

109 points by timw6n 13y ago

Here's my personal story, some may find interesting- I was finishing my masters in the UK and split up with my ex girlfriend, this meant I had to get a job quickly to sustain myself because I had nowhere to live and no money. I visited some different groups of friends who were kind enough to let me stay for a few days on their couch but I couldn't risk outstaying my welcome. At the same time the Occupy protests were happening in St Pauls. I secured a short term contract in an investment bank, and stayed in a tent with the protestors while saving for a deposit to rent a room. I had to put on my suit and dash away from the camp in the morning before I was spotted, I'd then change before coming back in the evening. I washed in the local swimming pools. Looking back on it, it was nuts that I was able to finish my thesis. So yeah, rents are high, you need to know someone to make it in London.

theorique 13y ago
dash away from the camp in the morning before I was spotted Just to clarify: you mean they wouldn't have liked it if they had known that you were a banker?
- rachbelaid 13y ago
  Just to explain, it was protest and demonstration against economic inequality that took place in London, precisly St Paul. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_London http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_London
  - theorique 13y ago
    Makes sense. If it's anything similar to Occupy Wall Street, wearing a suit would be taken to mean that a person is some sort of terrible exploiter of the proletariat.
- smcl 13y ago
  Yes. My colleagues in London were advised to dress down during the protests to avoid drawing attention to themselves, I think this was fairly common at the time.
  - collyw 13y ago
    To be fair, if you had been found out, I think you would have deserved what you get for being such a glaring hypocrite. I am sure some people were giving up work to protest against a system. You were supporting that system, while using the protests as a place to stay.
    - yetanotherphd 13y ago
      >would have deserved what you get What do you imagine this would have been? What would a "fair" reaction of the protestors have been? The poster wasn't 'using' the protests, they were using a public park. It is hypocrisy of this movement to take over a public space and claim it for their own exclusive use, while not acknowledging that the fact that the police let them get away with this is a sign of their own privilege.
    - smcl 13y ago
      I think you have your wires crossed, I am just someone confirming the whole "you should dress down" advice - neither my london-based colleagues nor me (I don't even live in the UK) were living with the protesters during the occupy movement.
- nailer 13y ago
  I remember visiting a similar protest, in my work clothes, to show support years ago. Being well dressed is taken as a sign you have some kind of malicious intention.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
good for you! I always found it unfair that left wing protestors are allowed to do illegal things, like camp in parks. They complain about privilege, while they themselves are afforded privileges that ordinary people (like you) don't have.
- 1457389 13y ago
  This is misguided. The Occupy protests were often focused on providing privileges like housing, shelter, and amenities to those who didn't have access to it.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    Well, in this case they helped someone out directly with all of the above :)
    - 1457389 13y ago
      This is the irony that made me comment!
  - theknown99 13y ago
    They were also focussed on trashing a church. What lovely protestors they were. They achieved nothing, apart from being a nuisance.
    - nailer 13y ago
      They wanted the public space in front of the Goldman's building (the basis of which the development of the square was approved). Regardless of whether you support them or not (I don't) they certainly weren't "focused on trashing a church".
  - nailer 13y ago
    To be honest, I don't think they were focused on anything at all: people inside the movement will tell you that. "We're the 99%" fantastic, we knew that already. "We want equality" what specifically do you think you're entitled to?

beloch 13y ago

I really don't understand several things about this story. 1. Why move to London if you're an unskilled worker? Are opportunities elsewhere even bleaker? 2. London has a huge problem with absentee property owners because London real estate is currently a hot investment. It's a feedback loop. The more rapidly London properties appreciate, the more absentee owners there will be, and the more demand will rise. Why haven't bylaws been passed to curb this? For example, why aren't residences that are unoccupied by their owner for a significant portion of the year taxed at much higher rates? It would probably be necessary to offer a renter rebate to compensate for increased rents, but this would discourage the practice of leaving residences vacant. If this doesn't actually drive prices down, at least it would prevent them from continuing to rise. 3. Why aren't the barge-lords being treated like slum-lords when the barges they run are overcrowded, full of mould, etc.? I understand it's hard to legally enforce a tenant-landlord relationship when it's all under the table, but there must be something the police can do to hassle these guys until they improve conditions. 4. Where are the government programs, volunteers, etc. that you usually see in other cities building low-cost housing? e.g. Why isn't anyone building legal barges with decent living conditions to compete with the barge-lords?

DanBC 13y ago
1) You were born there. Your spouse lives there. Etc 2)!london is not monolithic; it has several local councils all with differing rules. They'd all need to agree and coordinate. I don't know why it isn't done better. 3) people living in slums ether don't know their rights; or how to enforce those rights. Sometimes their own legal status is dubious and they risk deportation. Even if they do know their rights, and how to enforce their right, and they can get the regulator to take action, and they're totally legal and above board, they may just end up without a home. Housing in the UK is weird and broken and at the low end there are some strong weirdnesses built into the system.
- pjc50 13y ago
  2) Council tax has all sorts of central govt limits on it, including the banding system. They can't fix the problem of empty property on their own. 3) A houseboat is not a building, and is therefore exempt from all the laws about building minimum standards that were instituted the previous times London had a slum problem. I'm not sure if there even are any standards about living on a boat, only standards about in relation to the river and other water users. Housing in the UK is weird and broken. This is about 50% due to Right To Buy and the slow abolition of the council house.

theorique 13y ago

So for £230 per month in London, you get an unpleasant, unsafe, tiny, and marginal place to live. Given that it's one of the most expensive cities in the world to live ("typical" 2BR apartments in nice areas are more like £400-600 per WEEK), I can't say I'm surprised. The ways people are willing to trade off comfort to live in the center of things sometimes surprises me, but not that much.

DanBC 13y ago
In theory it also has a lot of regulation and enforcement, so it's a bit surprising that these kinds of slums still exist. Except it's not that surprising because we see people renting out garden sheds and lock-up garages as housing.
barrkel 13y ago
You can get a 3-room house with garden and parking for less than £300 per week. I know because that's what I have; 10 minutes by motorbike to Old Street, or 40 minutes by public transport. The wildcard is your qualification of "nice area". There's a very wide scale, and what would qualify as "nice" somewhere else will be a lot more expensive here. I've never felt physically in danger, though I have had motorcycles stolen.
- theorique 13y ago
  As an admitted tourist, my most tangible reference point was my friend's place in Marylebone, for which I believe he was paying about £500 pw. It was a 2 BR in a quiet, clean building but not over-the-top luxurious. I suspect the price came from the central location in City of Westminster. Similar to NYC / SF prices if you do the conversion.

lukasm 13y ago

I really don't understand why people are looking at the wrong problem the whole time. Housing is not a problem, transport is. Commuting from outside London costs more than 500 pounds. UK transport (trains, tube) got the worst price to quality ratio in the world. You can rent a whole house for 1000 outside London, but the cost of transport is equivalent to nice flat in London (plus painful commuting[1]). Many agencies won't let you a flat if you make less than 36k, but that's below average and way below median. Any regulation or tax will we bypassed. Government should do the opposite, deregulate to reduce the cost of building new houses. Startup idea: Cheap, sustainable and safe transport for London. Investors are reluctant to buy properties outside London, cause of poor liquidity, hence cheaper and faster transport would solve that problem. Elon! help! [1] It's not only the time, but trains are so unreliable. 1mm of snow and everything stops. I can't image what would happen if there would be proper winter.

eru 13y ago
You could also just build higher in London, instead of building more around it.
- neverminder 13y ago
  I agree. I don't understand this reluctance to do so. I think it has a lot to do with good old british resistance to change and sticking blindly to some ridiculous traditions (2 taps in the sink I'm looking at you)
  - lukasm 13y ago
    Sure, but the problem is with tube. It already works on its limits and higher destiny would require better city transport.
    - eru 13y ago
      Higher residential density wouldn't add that much strain---the destinations (ie workplaces) still have the same density, it's just that commuters don't travel as far on the tube. So you could make the system more intense, and less extense; concentrate the investments in tube upgrades on the centres.

Matsta 13y ago

I remember my friend moved to London a couple years ago. He said that tube tickets were taking up a large chunk of his income and barely had enough to pay for rent in his flat. He eventually moved back home to NZ 6 months later cause he was sick of being broke. I know a few other of my friends have moved to London with great success, but I think the trick is to lock-in a well paying job before you move over there.

brc 13y ago
No..the trick is to find some sort of network of friends before you go. I went to London with about 500 pounds of cash and no concrete job, on a one-way ticket. For a start - renting is out - you have to find someone who is willing to lend a couch. Living the highlife is out - no pubs for you. Your only status is to (1) clean the flat for the people who let you stay there and (2) look for jobs. This should be a full-time occupation until you find a job - any job. Your ability to continue to sponge off someone else is tied to how they feel when they get home tired and find you sitting on their couch, coupled with how quickly you can find employment and vacate said couch. Locking in a well-paying job before you get there is like saying you should find a good looking girlfriend before you start university. It's not going to happen unless you are very established somewhere already and get a transfer, or are internet famous for something. Or you are going to get sold a pup and end up locked into a crappy job in a crappy part of town. I found my first job within 10 days of landing, worked that for a couple of months, asked to be paid after 1 week and then spent the entire cash amount on a deposit for a short-term one-room flat, which took all my money so I ate pot-noodles for a week. Stayed there for 4 weeks until I amassed enough cash for a proper flat. By that time I found two other people who wanted to share and the three of us rented a decent place for a decent price. After that it was better jobs, more fun and a great time. I passed it on by helping other people out with time on the couch, coupled with strict rules on what goes on. In case you think that was a fluke, I repeated the same thing about 4 years later, only this time it took 8 weeks to find a job because the economy was more strained. I had (marginally) more savings this time but it was more tense. The hack for housing in London is finding a borough with low council taxes with the lowest transport zone you can afford, and if you have an established job, one which offers a short commute. And don't blow all your weeks surplus on a big friday night out including an expensive cab ride home. The only trick is being hungry for success in a city that doesn't seem to want to give it to you unless you fight for it.

digita88 13y ago

I was in a similar situation but I was not living in a houseboat slum but was technically squatting for a short while. The reasons people do this is varied - they could be saving up to be able to pay down a deposit to live (and trying to find a decent place here is bad enough!), they could prefer to live 'in' London instead of outside due to the cost of transport and also more opportunities in London and so on. There are other factors as well - for example you had to have a NI and have a bank account to get paid, and to get an NI/bank account you needed a place to stay. The thing here is that unless you are in the upper-middle income bracket then you are locked in the London rat race. London is good to live in for a few years but in terms of a lifetime here, it's not good or you find 'strategies' in evading council tax.

kimonos 13y ago

Thanks for sharing! I salute you for having survived this!

asgard1024 13y ago

Another interesting related article in The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-empty-properties-enough-house-homeless-continent-twice http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-em...

ansimionescu 13y ago

Add '/print' at the end of the link for a less shitty reading experience. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/london-houseboat-slum-rents-barge/print http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/london-houseb...

lucaspiller 13y ago

> Comfortable rooms appear on flatshare websites from time to time, at typical rents of £600 a month in areas such as Richmond. Even if you are working at minimum wage* you are earning over £900 after tax. Assuming you spend £100 a month to get to work, that's still £200 to spend on food, the pub, whatever else takes your fancy. You could also save more by not trying to live in one of the most expensive areas of London. When I was there (ok nearly two years ago now), I was paying under £400 a month for a rather comfortable (and warm) house share in South Wimbledon. It was zone 3, and took 25 minutes to get to work in central London. *A 'living wage' of £8.80 has been getting popular over the last few years, I'll use the UK minimum of £6.31 though. Also, yes I understand not everyone can get a full-time job, but bear with me for sake of argument.

nitrogen 13y ago
Many US landlords I've seen will require the renter's income to be 3x the monthly rent. Is that not common in London?
- g_lined 13y ago
  Not in my experience. The requirement of 6 weeks' rent as a deposit is, however. I wouldn't be surprised if some ask for 8. This is partly what makes it so difficult to get in to the rental market for some people.
  - tomp 13y ago
    They might require as much as 6 moths (i.e. pay your rent in advance) if you cannot prove you have a (good?) job.
- EliRivers 13y ago
  That would require many landlords to cut the rent, reducing profit; it's not uncommon for people to be paying half or more of their income on the rent.
- lucaspiller 13y ago
  It varies. I only had to pay a month up front, but as others said it depends on the landlord and situation. I believe a month is most common in the UK.

mcdowall 13y ago

This seems a rather odd article, there are many useful sites (particularly in London) that enable you to search for properties in a much smarter way these days, check out the tools on www.findproperly.com , find spare rooms on www.spareroom.com or even act as a property caretaker on www.guardiansoflondon.com

d0 13y ago

That article is crazy: 1. I lived in a car in London for 6 months. It was pretty fine. McDonalds was my washroom. 2. These boats are rare. I mean really rare. This is not the norm. The boats and the moorings are damn expensive so this doesn't make sense even for the landlords. Even crappy moorings cost. 3. You can go to the council and get a bedsit if you're in this situation. Literally the next day. Might have to share with a crackhead for a week but that's life. 4. There are plenty of other places to go in the UK where the salary/housing cost ratio isn't crazy. I lived in Nottingham for a bit and had a 5 bedroom detached house in a nice bit for £500/month. £230/month will get you a 2 bed flat better than this. This is a sob story - nothing more.

72deluxe 13y ago
Wow, the North is much cheaper than the Midlands and the South! My sister lives up North and housing is much cheaper than the Worcester area where I live.
theknown99 13y ago
It's the Guardian. Its heavily biased reporting, warped to fit in with their agenda.
- kjjw 13y ago
  Their agenda here is completely reasonable. Successive UK governments have failed to address a crisis in housing. Yes, a crisis.
  - Fuxy 13y ago
    This is the exception not the norm. Most people don't live like this but i have to agree the prices for renting in London are completely crazy and don't even think about buying a house or getting a mortgage. I really wish i could buy a house in London (renting it out wold pay for the mortgage and some other bits) but there's no way in hell any bank would give me the amount necessary. Only rich people and the ones that got council housing will ever be able to live/work in London cheaply.

jackgavigan 13y ago

There's no denying that London's an expensive city but there are plenty of options available for those on a budget: http://www.gumtree.com/flatshare-offered/london http://www.gumtree.com/flatshare-offered/london

gadders 13y ago
Or even get a tube/train map and not live in London. Plenty of people commute to work and seem to cope OK. Living in London is no more a right than owning a Rolls Royce.
- polymatter 13y ago
  Commuting doesn't actually save you any money in most cases. Transport costs eat most of those savings. The thing that commuting gets you is access to a nice area with nice family homes close to good schools.
onion2k 13y ago
The cheapest on the first page is £300/month - about 25% more than the £230/month mentioned in the article. The second cheapest is £360/month - almost 50% more. If you're trying to demonstrate that there are alternative cheap places to rent, I'd say you failed. And all of those rentals will require at least a month's rent up front, which is the main point that the article was addressing - starting out renting is beyond the pocket of many people.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Filtering for <£60, there are still a few rooms in that site, some of which are "no deposit"; e.g. http://www.gumtree.com/p/flats-houses/very-cheap-short-term-share-rooms-no-deposit/1049970881 http://www.gumtree.com/p/flats-houses/very-cheap-short-term-... I wouldn't enjoy living there, but it seems better than the boat.
- jackgavigan 13y ago
  "Found 43,415 Flatshare, Rooms to Rent ads in London" Gumtree displays 55 ads per page. So, after looking through ~0.25% of the adverts, you concluded that there was nothing cheaper than £300/month? Wow, that's pretty thorough! It took me less than five minutes to find a hostel-style roomshare for £7 per night (less than £220 per month).

michaelt 13y ago

While they're in parliament, MPs can expense mortgage payments on a second home. This isn't entirely unreasonable - it means you can be elected even if you're not already rich enough to own a second home in London as well as your home in your constituency. But it does have the unfortunate side-effect that rising London house prices put cash in MPs pockets. What we need is to do away with expense payments and instead give MPs a per diem, based on today's expenses and rising with CPI. That way, keeping a lid on housing, transport and council tax prices will be in their interests.

DanBC 13y ago
MPs get paid over £60,000 per year. If they cannot live on that they need to think about the nurses, teachers, etc who get paid less. They don't need a second house in London. They do need London accommodation. It is bizarre that millionaire MPs get paid public money in the form of expenses on top of their wages to buy a second home in London.
- michaelt 13y ago
  I can understand expecting MPs to live in their constituency, and also that they need some London accommodation. If you're proposing it could work like a university halls of residence, I agree with that. My thinking with a per diem is any change would need MPs support, and they'd go for a per diem more easily than a cut in their benefits, however deserved it may be. The origin of paying MPs was in the Chartist movement [1] - back when MPs were unpaid, no-one who relied on a salary to feed their family could get into parliament; only rich landowners who didn't have to work for their income could afford to be MPs. The intent of paying MPs is to allow working class and middle class people to stand for election. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism
- collyw 13y ago
  It is also produces a conflict of interests. If they own two homes, why would they have the incentive to make prices affordable for the general population on normal wages.

muyuu 13y ago

I can't imagine why so many people making under 2000 GBP after tax move to London. Especially younger people with no roots anywhere, why on Earth moving here under these conditions? Part of the problem is the influx of recent young immigrants from other EU countries where they have it even worse and they seem to default to London when many cities in the UK would be much better at least as a starting point.

falsedan 13y ago
Do you mean, making under £20k after tax?
- muyuu 13y ago
  Something like under £20k after tax is "war economy living conditions" in London.
- lmm 13y ago
  Might mean 2000/month?
  - muyuu 13y ago
    Yep, I didn't realise I didn't mention it was per month.
DrJokepu 13y ago
Because why would you move a thousand miles just to live in Nottingham? World cities such as London have something to offer to everyone, not just professionals with established careers and this is exactly what makes London special and exciting. I remember at the beginning of my career I was living in London on a £25K salary for two years and I was just fine. Don't be elitist.
- muyuu 13y ago
  Firstly Nottingham is fine and there's plenty to do there. But you have places like Bristol, Bath or Manchester where life and especially housing is much cheaper than in London and they have a lot to offer. Personally I like Liverpool as well, Edinburgh, even Newcastle, but for some reason they are not popular and they are deemed as insecure (when in reality, living in a dump in the East end in London is definitely more insecure than living in a cheaper place up North, South-West, Wales, etc anywhere but London and the South-East). This "London or bust" mentality is not only ignorant - there's a lot to the UK other than London - it's financial suicide for people on low salaries. > I remember at the beginning of my career I was living in London on a £25K salary for two years and I was just fine. Don't be elitist. Firstly, I don't know when this was but now you are definitely poor on that salary here in London. And if you have the choice to make a similar salary elsewhere then it's absurd not to do it because of some "The Secret of my Success" pipe dream. You can always move to London later in your career. Secondly, I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to make absurd decisions. I'm just calling them what they are. The rent differential alone is higher than the pay differential let alone all the remaining living costs. At the same time, many jobs don't pay more than in other places and yet there are flocks of people coming to do these. Their hardship is the direct result of their poor decision making.

gadders 13y ago

I think the thing this article fails to mention is the perfectly adequate Public Transport system there is around London. I would think the number of jobs where you physically have to live in London would be very small. For everyone else there is Tube/Train/Bus/Coaches. Complaining you have no money because you chose to live in Central London is like complaining you've got no money for food because you spent all your salary on payments on a Ferrari.

personlurking 13y ago

Best comment I read from the article.. "That middle bit there, as you put it; "....it's depressing how easily you get used to the slugs, the dampness, the cold and the filth".......that's what is counted on. This separation of living standards, it's manufactured. Yes there are some random elements mixed in, but by and large everything is engineered to be this way. Government, banks, housing moguls....they know they have people over a barrell, they know people just have to get on. They also know that if they keep it this way for long enough, not so awful as to make people revolt but awful enough to serve their greed, people will get used to it. It will become expected. Then people will feel lucky for having the things that should be standard for everyone, not one person excluded. You are indeed lucky, good Sir, but you feel that way because of what you've been put through. They made the System, and the System has made you this way because that serves a purpose. That purpose is to keep the rich rich, the poor poor and to make everyone believe that that's precisely the way it should be."

nailer 13y ago
That sounds an awful lot like a conspiracy theory. How about: someone has a boat, and the government lets them moor cheaply in central London. They make money renting it, out of natural human self interest.
- personlurking 13y ago
  I'm just sharing someone else's comment. The idea that the rich like to get richer and make the poor, poorer is pretty commonly thought.
  - nailer 13y ago
    Yes, but being common doesn't make it sensible or worth sharing here.

shultays 13y ago

I stayed in a hostel for £5 each day (3-4 years ago) while in London. Wouldn't that plus a locked container somewhere be cheaper? Surely beats a car or a boat

sireat 13y ago
5 quid sounds unbelievably cheap for a hostel in London. Unless they have some special rule for not letting people stay longer than few days, they would be swamped.

johnchristopher 13y ago

This article reads like the background of a William Gibson novel (VL). Scary the future isn't brighter. Or maybe the interlopes are getting darker ?

c4newskate 13y ago

Anyone know Sam Forbes?! kate.conway@itn.co.uk