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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, Insightful) by jcross on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:38AM (8 children)
And it makes sense because these apartments will be cheaper than budget hotel rooms. Or at least, if you manage to find a hotel room in London for 26 pounds per night (800 / 30 = 26), you're probably going to wake up in a dumpster with a scar where your left kidney used to be. Man, what a stupid comparison anyway; there's no natural reason why apartments should be bigger than hotel rooms in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:06AM (5 children)
Other than people living their entire lives in their apartments... You know that whole thing.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday March 29 2017, @09:07AM (4 children)
Other than people living their entire lives in their apartments... You know that whole thing.
If you're single, starting out or not, working full time, well, how much space do you need? As long as you have a kitchen in the apartment where you can prepare your meals and a bathroom with a shower one can live comfortably in a fairly small space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @02:02PM (3 children)
Ok I have to ask:
Who in their right mind would pay so much, for such a small space, regardless of how much they actually need?
People have to have a high enough income and a need for living space that greatly exceeds their capability to find more spacious housing elsewhere.
I do not understand why people are so willing to pay so much... for a tiny place. In Hawaii or other very desirable locations, it makes sense. The place is nice to live in, and one doesn't need to stay indoors for long, and many of those places allow for some element of self-sustenance via fishing.
Anyone old enough to afford a place like these apartments knows better than to live in one unless there are no alternatives.
Anyone young enough to not need anything larger could not reasonably afford it, unless there are a lot of great paying jobs for young childless people out there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:16PM (2 children)
You must not be familiar with London.
London has terrible traffic, a hideous street plan, big natural barriers (such as the Thames), a very high cost of living, a terribly oversubscribed housing stock, and very high wages (compared to most of the rest of the world).
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:08PM (1 child)
and very high wages (compared to most of the rest of the world).
Really? Maybe that excludes engineers, because everything I read says that software engineers there get about half of the pay of non-Silicon Valley software engineers here in the US. Why anyone would go into that field in the UK is beyond me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:11PM
thats why i asked.
i was offered a job there; to move from the US. It would have been cool except for that I would have lost money even in the short run. the standard of living seemed to circle around being close to areas one can drink at and safely return to bed from before having to return to work in a few hours.
i dont know how people graduate out of a life like that, but it seems there is little discussion about housing for middle aged people, just smaller rectangles for the growing amounts of young people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @12:36PM
Except that the hotel supposedly comes with a maid?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @12:42PM