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Hundreds of tiny studio flats, many smaller than a budget hotel room, are to be squeezed into an eleven-storey block in north London as its developer takes advantage of the government’s relaxation of planning regulations.
Plans for Barnet House, used by the London borough of Barnet’s housing department, reveal that 96% of the 254 proposed flats will be smaller than the national minimum space standards of 37 sq metres (44 sq yards) for a single person.
The tiniest homes will be 16 sq metres – 40% smaller than the average Travelodge room. [...] In the surrounding area, studio flats of a similar scale to most planned at Barnet House sell for around £180,000 and rent for around £800 per month.
[...] Office buildings in Croydon have also been converted into studios with floor areas of as little as 15 sq metres under the Tory deregulation. Housing experts have attacked the relaxation of planning regulations as a “race to the bottom”, but ministers insist the measure is helping to deliver vital new housing, and point out that more than 10,000 new homes were created from office buildings last year.
Under the “permitted development” system, developers who convert offices into homes do not have to meet minimum floor area standards, considered by researchers to be important for health, educational attainment and family relationships. Neither do they have to include any affordable housing.
Source: The Guardian
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jcross on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:32AM (1 child)
Google is not your friend, 16 square meters is more like 172 square feet. It's pretty damn small, but I agree with some others here that if people want to pay for it, they absolutely should be allowed to. What I don't understand is how come liberals seem to spin this kind of stuff as people being cheated by greedy landlords and advocate for regulation, rather than seeing it as an efficient use of space and building materials, which is good for the planet. And the environmentalists always seem to be painting cities as evil centers of consumption, when they require massively fewer resources per person than modern suburban or rural development, with miles of roads, pipes, and power lines to serve a sparse population.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:17PM
wow that is the size of my home office that i use for work
truly, it takes money to make business expenses from which one makes money
but to your other point, people often want to pay for something like this if they are led to believe it is good via marketing, or its the only thing available.
i am not sure how you are equating urban centers with conservative thought, since the evil liberals seem to congregate in such urban centers, and then following your logic, complain about the conditions.
also no one mentioned liberals in this thread except for you and my reply to it. not sure why you must politicize it