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Comment by d0 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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 live on a boat and don't pay mooring fees. I'm a "continuous cruiser" which means I move my boat every two weeks to a new location. All of my fellow boating friends do the same and most of us have pretty nice boats. And yes, the boats described in the story are very rare.

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.

It's not on a Canal and River Trust waterway. It's the Thames above Teddington Lock, which is controlled by the Environment Agency. Historically the EA has fewer powers on rivers (because it doesn't own the riverbanks) than CRT/BW does on canals.

The boats in this article are moored about 1/4 mile from where I am right now. This particular riverbank is owned by the council - it's essentially a strip of parkland. As far as I understand, mooring is free, but you're not supposed to stay more than a few days. Certainly not the years this small floating shanty town has been growing there. That's why the article mentioned that the council has been taking legal action to move these boats on.

Hi there, I'm hoping to cover this story for channel four news. Would be great to talk to you. I'm at kate.conway@itn.co.uk thanks so much

It's the Guardian. Its heavily biased reporting, warped to fit in with their agenda.

Their agenda here is completely reasonable. Successive UK governments have failed to address a crisis in housing.

Yes, a crisis.

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.

How can rich people live in London cheaply?

We arguably rich people have the funds necessary for living in London cheaply in the long therm.

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.

If you buy a house, you miss out on all the other things you could do with that money, eg earn a return on the bond market. (That's what economists call opportunity costs, and they are realy.)

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.

There is only a 'crisis' if you don't believe in a free market.

It's like saying there's a crisis when it comes to affordable supercars.

Free market! London housing!? The politicians are all getting second homes funded by the taxpayer. The banks went bust but got bailed out by the taxpayer. "Emergency" low interest rates for the last 5 years.

The UK / London housing market is anything BUT a free market.

Not sure you understand quite what free market means.

I know that many of the banks would not be around if we had true free market conditions.

I agree, and the banks should have been allowed to fail. There should not have been any bail out. But that's a completely different argument to the one of "is there cheap enough housing".

I don't believe that there can be such thing as a free market in housing. Supply is controlled, necessarily so, by the regulation of land.

What's their agenda? And what newspaper doesn't have an agenda?

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.

Not at all. I agree, all newspapers have a bias to some degree.

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

Some Gaurdian articles are well done. George Monbiot always provides references to his.

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...

The Guardian is often extremely left-wing and by far the worst of the broadsheets at letting their opinion bleed through into their news pieces. Just different types of editors than the others. Doesn't mean the other broadsheets don't push agendas, it just that the reporting tends to be less emotional and the manipulation is subtler.

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.

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.

A friend of mine (who is well known in the London tech community, and might pop up here) has lived on a house boat within spitting distance of London bridge, it's not a 'slum' but rather cheap, centralised accommodation.

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