London housing crisis coming to a crunch
LONDON: Londonersaregettingdesperate over rising rents, with residents and students taking to the streets and social mediaoverthecrampedconditionstenants are forced to accept.
With house-building lagging well behind thepopulationincreaseinwesternEurope’s biggest city, prices are soaring beyond anything affordable.
“The situation is becoming untenable,” said retired teacher John Ford, 60, who joined a 2,000-strong protest this month against the government’s new housing bill, which would radically alter public housing and the rights of its tenants.
“My nephew is a young surgeon. He cannot afford, on his salary, to buy a house in London. So this crisis is beginning to eat into the middle class,” he said.
Latest figures show the average London housepricewas514,097pounds(US$740,400, 678,500 euros) in December, up 12.4 per cent in 12 months, compared to a 6.4 per cent increase to 188,270 pounds across England and Wales.
The London-wide median rent is 122 poundsaweek for a room in a shared home; 276 pounds for a one-bedroom property and 402 pounds for a threeb e d r o om home.
Many “generation rent” young professionals, whose parents bought comfortable homes in their early 20s, have given up on their dream of ever affording a property in London. Students are also feeling the crisis bite. At University College London, more than 150 students have gone on a rent strike. One UCL block has rooms costing as much as 262 pounds a week.
At this month’s protest outside Downing Street,twoUCLstudentscarriedasymbolic home-made housing ladder, with all but the very top rungs knocked out.
“I don’t see any prospect of owning a home – certainly not in London,” said its co-creator, doctorate student Liam Shaw, 24.
London’s population is at a record high of 8.6 million and growing at around 100,000 a year.
Some 25,994 new homes were built in London in 2015, down nine per cent on the previous year.
“Peopleinthelowest-paidjobshavetolive on the outskirts of London,” Green Party leader Natalie Bennett told AFP.
“We’re now hearing of junior doctors, nurses and teachers having to commute from outside.”
Commuting from outer London is not without cost in time and stress, let alone money. An annual travel pass from the city limits costs 2,364 pounds.
Part of the problem is wealthy foreign buyers snapping up high-end new developments as a safe investment and leaving them empty while they accrue value.
“Buy-to-leave is dreadful. But the real issue is what’s being built: homes designed for just that,” said Bennett.
“Let’sprovidegenuinelyaffordable,secure homes for people.” Some are proposing innovative solutions to the situation.
RupertHunt,founderofflatsharewebsite SpareRoom.com, is opening up his own plush home in trendy Shoreditch to lodgers paying whatever they can afford, in a bid to encourage others. — AFP