My life in London's houseboat slums
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
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.
Just to clarify: you mean they wouldn't have liked it if they had known that you were a banker?
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.
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.
They achieved nothing, apart from being a nuisance.
"We're the 99%" fantastic, we knew that already.
"We want equality" what specifically do you think you're entitled to?
Yes, some people have more than others. That doesn't mean people are entitled to more things.
This is not to mention the larger scale efforts to provide debt relief and outreach.
My point is that the police turning a blind eye to the occupy protests using public space in an illegal way, and effectively claiming that land for themselves, is evidence of the privilege of these protestors. If the poster had pitched his tent in other circumstances, the police would have made him take it down.
Also, I don't think you comprehend how privilege even factors into this discussion. You can't just use the word "privilege" as some sort of trump card that defeats any argument.
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?
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.
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.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Built-Environment/Housing/...
That is bonkers. It's just really weird.
The Tower Hamlets evidence pack has some eye-popping statistics. (Tower Hamlets are building more social housing than anywhere else in the UK)
They have 23,500 households on the waiting list for social housing.
48% of those are in category 1 or 2 which means they have medical need, or are homeless or overcrowded.
9500 households are over crowded. 1228 households are under occupied with 271 having 2 or more bedrooms than they need. (I think a bedroom is anyroom that can fit a bed in it.)
BSS requirements, for reference: http://www.boatsafetyscheme.org/media/194782/2013ecp_private...
People do (understandably) become attached to the area they live in. In particular, being born and growing up in London means that an individual's family and social group is likely to be there. While it's sometimes inevitable that people have to move, it's a bad state of affairs where individuals born in a city are being priced out of it due to broken housing policy.
Spouses can also end up meaning a life in a less desirable place. For example, my partner's in a career that can only really be done on-site and in London. That means I have to live here too. Less of a problem for unskilled workers, maybe.
And it's worth bearing in mind that work is pretty difficult to find in many cases – even inside London. A relatively sleepy town in Cornwall is going to have fewer jobs available, and they'll offer lower incomes.
But I guess the biggest objection is that this doesn't really get to the core of the problem – there is a load of underused housing stock in London, there's insufficient supply of cost-effective housing, and there is consistent government policy in place which encourages people to move to London. That's a really unstable situation and we need to make moves towards fixing it.
Does your spouse stop you getting a train or a tube to work as well?
No, but that makes little difference in practice, because savings on property are rapidly eaten up by transport costs and additional commute times.
Politically, London will never have a unified council because it would wield too much power over the presiding government. This is effectively what led to the downfall of the GLC (Greater London Council) - in the early 1980s the socialist GLC antagonized the Tory government to the point where Thatcher ended up forcing it to be abolished.
London produces so much of the GDP it would be very easy for a centralized London council to hold the national government 'to ransom' (this happens to some degree now with the London Assembly, but since the Assembly has little power over issues such as housing it's not as pronounced as it could be).
The upshot of this is you end up with a pretty crazy system whereby someone at one end of the street could pay twice as much council tax as someone at the other end (in the case of, say, Wandsworth - which has one of the lowest council tax rates in the UK, and Merton - which is more around the average). I would agree having a centralized London council would be far better than the current system, but there's no way it will ever happen.
There were reasonably robust Adverse Possession laws in the UK, but they've been <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting_in_England_and_Wales#... wound back</a> in favour of, surprise, surprise, absentee landlords.
Returning to the situation where owners who simply hoard vacant properties risk losing it to squatters would likely remedy much of the problem.
In addition, the waterway authorities don't really want more 'liveaboards'; they place a lot of demands on waterway infrastructure yet it's difficult to charge them much (for legislative reasons, and getting legislation changed is a slow and unlikely process).
Sometimes. Sometimes it's the best option available. Sometimes people move to London believing they have a job and it turns out badly. And sometimes people make bad decisions.
> 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?
There's little popular support for it, particularly under a conservative government - historically the party of property owners. The English are very protective of their houses and would fight anything that was perceived to reduce the rights of homeowners.
> 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.
Hence the eviction in the article. I think it's legally harder to treat something (legally) mobile as a home. And any law to tighten the regulation of mobile homes would probably be opposed by guardian-reading liberals as oppression of the traveller community.
> 4. Where are the government programs, volunteers, etc. that you usually see in other cities building low-cost housing?
Some exist. But their popularity is limited - voters are happy to see their house prices increasing, and no-one wants to live next to people who, as the article admits, party loudly late into the night, use a lot of drugs, and live in unsanitary conditions.
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.
Yes, a crisis.
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.
If you buy the house you will never have to pay rent ever on the other hand if you rent you may rent for the rest of your life and adding up all the money you spend on rent over your life would more then pay for the house.
A typical house in London is worth about say £300000 an you're usuall rent for a house like that if you're lucky would be about $1200 but more like £1500 if you want to be realistic.
That means that if you rent for more then 21 years (if you're the luckiest guy in london and find one with a rent at £1200) you have already payed for the house (if we ignore inflation and other things).
Regardless in the long run purchasing the house is the way to go however very few banks a willing to give out that kind of money so only the people that are already rich can pull it off.
So, rich people have enough resources to live in London, but not to live in London cheaply either.
You can not ignore inflation and yield of alternative investments for these kinds of arguments.
It's like saying there's a crisis when it comes to affordable supercars.
The UK / London housing market is anything BUT a free market.
You say "It's the Guardian" like it's a special case and the other rags that fill the newsagents of Britain are pure as the driven snow.
The Guardian is just the Daily Mail of the left. Also notoriously sloppy when it comes to facts, spelling, etc.
The Guardians bias is basically:
BAD - Big companies, government, tories, rich people, MPs, bankers, anyone in power.
GOOD - The 'oppressed' masses, political correctness, the poor, publishing stolen state secrets etc
The Daily Mail just publishes carp. Here is an example compare the numbers to the headline
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2337208/Speed-camera...
This does appear to come from the 'society' section though, which I think is more of a magazine section. Magazine sections tend to be opinion pieces.
My Girlfriend lives on a house boat in battersea and its beautiful and bigger than most flats we have looked at. The moorings are crazy expensive though hers is a bout 650 per month of sunk cost - then obviously plus the cost of the boat and cost of oil to heat it (no gas to central heat).
I feel sorry for this guy but as someone points out, there is council accommodation exactly for this reason (wage =/= rent).
I can't say I've seen anything like the ones described in the story in my time on the water, with the exception of one 25ft fibreglass that was pretty much abandoned save the odd homeless person who used to sneak on it.
I'm actually amazed that the Canal and River Trust would even give a license for such a boat.
Most boaters I know have lovely boats and are incredibly proud of their homes.
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.
So you could make the system more intense, and less extense; concentrate the investments in tube upgrades on the centres.
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.
Except it's not that surprising because we see people renting out garden sheds and lock-up garages as housing.
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.
Similar to NYC / SF prices if you do the conversion.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/london-houseb...
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.
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.
Some people are good at creating and utilizing social networks.
Other people are good at finding high paying jobs.
This from the point of view of a tourist, though. I guess English citizens have some preferences/reductions?
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.
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.
Poverty is not (or should not) be a comparative thing to what other people make but a relation of income and living costs.
Around 30-40% of the population struggle to make ends meet in London. Appalling, I know. Another 20-30% just get by without much trouble. The rest have extra to save and spare.
I suspect it's similar in San Francisco and New York but I don't know these cities enough to make a proper comparison.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
I wouldn't enjoy living there, but it seems better than the boat.
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).
Scary the future isn't brighter. Or maybe the interlopes are getting darker ?
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.
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.
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.