Single Aspect Blog

Having been alerted to something going on by the increasing number of hits to my blog entry Crap flats and back to backs I’ve just done a quick web search and lo and behold work started on site in March. I’m six months late with the news but I don’t live in London or skim all my entries for updates.

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“Thatcher used a carrot to encourage the better off tenants to buy their council homes and Cameron is using a stick, his Bedroom Tax, to destroy the remaining tenancies.”

It’s difficult to read the observations of the Guardian commentator I quote below without concluding that nothing has changed. Now it’s worse because then they were planning it but now appear to be implementing it.

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UPDATE: Oct 2016 Property Week award boycotted by angry student judges

“Unless all students have access to safe, affordable accommodation at every institution and the means to pay for it, there is no cause for celebration, nor the ability for us to award a for-profit sector failing so many of our peers.”

UPDATE: July 2016 I received another email recently, again from Aspen Woolf, only this time I decided to pursue it. Feigning interest in Kingfisher Court I booked a call which occurred the following morning. I was very honest with the bloke, told him I write a housing blog, told him I had heard there is “no exit” (see comment end of page) and what did he have to say?

In short order he told me the product is “more suitable for people over 60 as an investment”. “Not suitable for people with a mortgage”. “A long term investment”.

When asked directly if there is an exit he told me “Yes of course, but they are harder to sell and there’s a £3000 out fee”.

So essentially the guy who wrote the comment at the end of this post was right. There’s an exit in theory but you’re not encouraged to use it and if you try it’s going to be more difficult than selling a house because you have to wait for somebody in a smaller pool of investors in student accommodation to buy you out.

Avoid like the plague would be my advice.

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UPDATE: The report has now been released or download it directly here

“The right to housing is not about a roof anywhere, at any cost, without any social ties. It is not about reshuffling people according to a snapshot of the number of bedrooms at a given night. It is about enabling environments for people to maintain their family and community bonds, their local schools, work places and health services allowing them to exercise all other rights, like education, work, food or health.”

This ought to be burned into the front door of the Government department responsible for housing, with a blowtorch, in order to remind them every day as they come to work of their responsibility to all the residents of the United Kingdom.

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In response to:- Do student housing standards need an overhaul? from Building Design online.

A well lit student room – Fitzwilliam Cambridge

In case you haven’t read or are not able to read the article it is an exchange between Michael Chessum President of University of London Union and Dav Bansal Director at Glenn Howells Architects in response to the question in the link above.

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