Beds in sheds go legal
October 25th, 2012
UPDATE: Landlords solution to housing shortage live in a garage
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“Temporary structures that add low-cost housing to existing east London estates judged top in Building Trust International competition. Levitt Bernstein has defeated an 85-strong short list in the international contest to design low-cost, single-occupancy housing for urban areas. The studio’s winning proposal uses temporary structures to occupy redundant garages on housing estates in east London.”
BBC Archive – London
October 7th, 2012
This weekend I discovered some old films about London on the BBC website, and have been enjoying a look back to the 1950s and 60s. In case you enjoy this sort of thing too I’m posting this brief article to alert you to the fact that you can be reminded of childhood memories or find out what it looked like in our parents time and how London has changed since.
William Waldegrave and the 1988 Housing Act
October 4th, 2012
UPDATE: – Jules Birch has written a much better article on this subject (or here) and Part 1 here or slow link here.
This is not so much an article so much as more a collection of comments but it tells the story of a man, his decision and its outcome. None of it makes pleasant reading. It’s time to reduce the Housing Benefit bill not by moving families out of London to the sticks but by starting a process of restoring capital grants for low cost housing and actually building places for people to live instead of shuffling families around the country like so much livestock.
This year there has been a dramatic surge in the number of families being housed in B&Bs, with figures from the National Housing Federationshowing a 44% increase over the past year. For families with children, the rise has been even sharper – an increase of 60%, according to the homelessness charity Shelter. Almost 4,000 families are now living in hostels, and the most dramatic rise is in central London.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/oct/15/bed-and-breakfast-families-crisis
Subsidy – misuse of the word
October 2nd, 2012
One of the words used by right wing politicians with no interest in housing anyone who can’t afford to buy a house or pay ever increasing private rent, is the word subsidy. It is almost always used in a perjorative way to suggest that the supposed beneficiary is in receipt of some favour, advantage, or benefit bestowed upon them by a benevolent society when there is no such thing as a subsidy being granted, only misuse of the word.