The Off Topic Topic

[Tamas]

I mean crap like this Sheilbh, here they are selling a "ground floor flat" in this building for 300k:

[Josquius]

That could actually be OK providing it's the entire ground floor and then the first floor is another flat.
With their own doors of course.
It's a pretty common thing in the north east to have tyneside flats that have always been this way.
It's more when they cut up the inside of a house that the stupidity comes. Like if that one house was 4 studios with a shared hallway and one front door.

[Sheilbh]

I still don't really see the issue if there's more demand in that area for sort of starter flats than for detached homes (which might have shifted since that was built). I have rented the equivalent of the top floor flat there and it was fine

My only issue was that the man with the ground floor flat had the garden

[Richard Hakluyt]

Tyneside flats are purpose-built and are reasonably spacious. The ones I lived in had two large bedrooms, decent living room and kitchen and a proper bathroom....and the rent was £10 a week 

[Josquius]

Rh and Tyneside flats - though having to go through the kitchen to get to the bathroom freaked my girlfriend out to no end. I was originally looking at buying one until I found my house and I'm thankful I did in hindsight.

Sheilbh/tamas-The bother is you constantly see expensive houses being built. The aim in construction is solidly at the top of the market and then let the rest trickle down, even if it means shaving a few square pegs to fit into round holes.
Instead it should be made good economic sense to actually build for the bottom of the market.
Small flats for young single people are the key shortage point in the UK, and this has knock on effects for larger and older groups.
You just don't see this to the same extent elsewhere where studios are actually built.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I mean you live in a Tyneside flat if you are young and/or poor; they seem vastly preferable to what passes as a flat down in London nowadays though.

[Sheilbh]

Although to go back to that Barrett Britain piece in the Economist - Barrett houses aren't that expensive (the average is basically about the level of the UK average) and they are exactly the type of family home Tamas was mentioning.

Isn't that just driven by local demand? Where do young single people who want a one bed flat want to live v where do families want to live and they're different?

I agree on a lot of developers just targeting the top of their market - but I'm not sure that's linked to flats v houses. And I think the issue is that "affordability" is tied to average prices in that area rather than being more like genuine social housing - but I just don't think those properties should be sold. I'd be far happier if instead of having to build 30% (which I think is below target) "affordable" properties, the developers had to build 30% properties for the council.

[Tamas]

What's the problem? Well, nothing, if you accept the chronic lack of housing as a given. Then, carving up a mid-sized family home into tiny flats, effectively having strangers living together in conditions never meant for strangers living together, while at the same time removing a family-sized home from the market, is perfectly fine.

But if you still think that an island absolutely covered in unused land could afford to build more homes, crap like the above are the open wound to remind you of the undignified serf-like existence everyone but a slimming middle class are going to live.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I've always believed that the best way to help the masses is to pursue low unemployment and affordable housing; with those two conditions in place most people will do fine. Do the Tories want most people to do fine though? I think they may have done in the 1951-64 period and the Heath years, not any longer though.

[Sheilbh]

What's the problem? Well, nothing, if you accept the chronic lack of housing as a given. Then, carving up a mid-sized family home into tiny flats, effectively having strangers living together in conditions never meant for strangers living together, while at the same time removing a family-sized home from the market, is perfectly fine.

But you're not living together. As I say I lived in the top flat of house like that (though terraced) and it was fine. We shared a hallway with the guy who lived downstairs. There were two bedrooms at the back, a bathroom, living room and kitchen. The street was a mix of families in whole houses and young people who lived in flats from the converted houses (some literally living with strangers because it would be a flatshare).

I really don't see the issue - or the difference between splitting that house up and splitting up one of those four storey terraces.

But if you still think that an island absolutely covered in unused land could afford to build more homes, crap like the above are the open wound to remind you of the undignified serf-like existence everyone but a slimming middle class are going to live.

I absolutely think we need to build more houses - and I'd support concreting over most of the countryside to do it. But I just don't see how that's an attack on our dignity.

I agree with Tyr that the bigger issue is if they've split that top floor into two or three flats - but from the outside those seem like perfectly reasonable flats for a young couple getting their first house or a flatshare. You know you work up to the family house.

[The Brain]

If there's a shortage surely it's better to cram people together than having people live on the street?

[Tamas]

I also lived half a year in a small house divided up into 3 tiny studios which was fine (well, I had the attic for myself), the point isn't whether it is physically possible to live in such an arrangement. If I was looking for something to rent maybe I'd take it less to the heart but I am looking for something to buy and for that I find that "flat" insulting.

I find such buildings so obviously designed for an entirely different setup used as a mini block of flats as a clear symptom of something seriously wrong with the housing market. So, my disgust and hate is directed more at the conditions leading to the creation of that so called living space, more at the very specific "living space" in question.

[Sheilbh]

I've always believed that the best way to help the masses is to pursue low unemployment and affordable housing; with those two conditions in place most people will do fine. Do the Tories want most people to do fine though? I think they may have done in the 1951-64 period and the Heath years, not any longer though.

I've always loved the line from a New Zealand Labour PM that "there are four things that matter to people: they have to have somewhere to live, they have to have food to eat, they have to have clothing to wear, and they have to have something to hope for." Which I think Liz Kendall tried to use in her leadership campaign but was attacked as uninspiring

But I think it kind of is the basics of politics - somewhere to live, somwhere to work, something to hope for. Sort that out for people and they can really live.

I'd exclude the Heath years - they were in theory just Thatcherism, except Heath was incompetent (and an awful person). But that's also partly that his failure is key to how we get here - just like Jim Callaghan blocking In Place of Strife is key. Heath and Castle maybe showed alternative, softer futures of dealing with industrial relations issues and the general sense of crisis: they both failed which led to a more existential approach.

I think Thatcher is slightly different because I think she genuinely believed in her approach being right for people in the long-term (which is what we all pretend we want politicians to do: have convictions, don't worry about short-term popularity, focus on long-term issues ). But since here I think Tories generally do want people to do fine - I think their imagination and their understanding of people is limited. I think they are basically like those journalists - and in the case Johnson, they literally are that journalist - who write about private school fees as a "middle class" issue as if anyone in the middle class could afford - at the low end - £9k a year per kid.

[Sheilbh]

For what it's worth - my bugbears on this are that I generally hate studio flats in this country which are tiny and I LOATHE landlords/estate agents renting flats (to flat-shares/room-mates) with no living room.

[Tamas]

For what it's worth - my bugbears on this are that I generally hate studio flats in this country which are tiny and I LOATHE landlords/estate agents renting flats (to flat-shares/room-mates) with no living room.

The thing is (still about "flats" like the above one), there is absolutely no reason why detached houses should be repurposed as mini blocks of flats except entirely artificial constraints on supply.