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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: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:21AM (4 children)
I see where you get your theory, but it's not borne out by reality.
In real life, NYC slumlords became a real problem in the post-zoning era because they couldn't raise rents, didn't want to spend money, couldn't (easily) evict tenants - in effect, they became prisoners of their own property. Gentrification actually broke this spiral because as gentrifiers moved in, and took over available apartments, and valuations rose, and people moved around, rents tended to get reset.
In other cities where there isn't such a big problem with rent control, and such tight zoning restrictions, slumlords are more usually the lazy landlord than the actually perverse one, and renters have more options for mobility.
In a lightly regulated but active property market, slumlords tend to find themselves without tenants. In NYC, they tend to be a real problem.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:03PM (3 children)
That was due to excessive and poorly thought regulation coupled with a demand far exceeding supply. NO regulation is an excess in the other direction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:11PM (2 children)
Sure, but nobody is proposing (or permitting) no-holds-barred firetrap creation in London. Or NYC, for that matter. All they did in London was to reduce the relevant set of regulations as, in effect, an emergency provision to try to raise the housing stock; a problem that has plagued London for ages. Most of the people who would move into these areas are just too young to know an era when regulation was not the chokehold over housing stock alterations in London.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:44PM (1 child)
I'm not so sure. They're effectively doubling the number of people flooding the hallways and stairs if/when there is a fire. Has anyone modeled the evacuation to see if it can even work?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:20PM
No, check the background. These are office buildings. They're specified for full cubes of people. And the authorities didn't just open the floodgates, in regulatory terms - they just eased them.
Is it perfect? No, but they have some other, really big fish to fry.