Data crunching – Boat Livin’

It’s a week before payday. You’re broke. Everyone’s broke, apart from your friends who are financiers or lawyers. They don’t even look at their bank accounts until they have to have some work done on the kitchen in the house in Walthamstow they just bought. Ignore them.

You don’t have any money, and in seven days half of your paltry new wages are going to fall out of your account like the spider-encrusted bottom of a damp box. And on what? Your rent of course! A huge wad of your hard earned cash disappearing into the ether, over to a faceless landlord or vacant estate agent, neither of whom have much interest in check out the massive crack in the ceiling you’ve pestering them about for weeks.

You know what would be better than this? Living on a house boat, of course!

Visualising the housing crisis in London

All the stats and data surrounding the housing crisis can be a little overwhelming, so a London renter has brought attention to the issue by making box graphs around the streets of the capital. His charts visualize the UK housing crisis in a very real, and unavoidable way. The graphs by Arman Naji show the steep rise in homelessness, house prices and average rents using stats he’s collected.

Images of the graphs can be found on the Street Graphs Tumblr page, or you can find them around London:

Statistical highs and statistical lies

Guest post written by Dan Douglas, former reporter for Inside Housing (recently freelance) 

What was the biggest headline this week for renters? Probably The Guardian’s horror story on “record-breaking evictions” for renters… up 51% in five years, dontcha know? 

Gosh. Wow. Bad. Ouch. Except… it wasn’t entirely true. 

Video: Roost Reflections – Madame Lillie’s, Stoke Newington

Galleries that are also live-in rental spaces aren’t necessarily anything new – Peckham’s Flat Time House, formerly the home and studio of John Latham, was one for many years –  but their multi-practice art-cum-living spaces sure are interesting. Thus, Roost travelled to Stoke Newington in North London, to meet Chris Rawcliffe, a curator and the founder of the conceptual modern art initiative Project Number. Chris has been holding PN exhibitions and shows ever since 2010, at Madame Lillie’s – the tumbledown gallery and house he lives in on Cazenove Road. In this video, he explains a little about the history of the building and his tenure there, gives us a brief history of PN, and tells us about one of its most memorable shows (smoke intentional).

(Many, many thanks to Chris and Leanne Hayman for having me skulk around their house for so long.)

Roost’s 15 best lights: Roost round up

As anyone worth their salt in interior design will tell you, good lighting is the key to making your home look like a million dollars. And as a fellow Rooster, they are also the perfect way to brighten up your home without stepping on your landlord’s toes.

8 Tweets that show the importance of renter solidarity

Pack up, Move out, No! is a media campaign that aims to raise awareness about the housing crisis and renters rights in London.

Short term holiday let in a truly insane property? Try Living Architecture

Living Architecture is an organisation dedicated to “the promotion and enjoyment of world-class modern architecture” (their words), initiated by the idea that outstanding, ground-breaking building design should be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in it.

It’s also an initiative best-known for allowing the potter and tapestry-maker Grayson Perry to design his 100-per-cent-bananas ‘A House for Essex’, and also factoring the philosophy demi-god (and Harry Styles’ pal) Alain De Botton as creative director. Each house is designed by a different, leading firm, with contemporary processes and materials (the interior design isn’t bad either), but the organisation isn’t just a showcase for bizarro building design – that means perilously cantilevered barns, rooftop boats, rural piles with Bond-villain interiors and austere, windswept beach houses, amongst others. Every property can be rented, and pretty cheaply too.

Redefining affordable housing

Guest blog written by Dan Wilson Craw, Communications & Marketing Manager at Generation Rent.

“Affordable” is a word that has caused much confusion and anger in housing circles since the old government reformed the grant system for social housing.

To be deemed affordable and thus qualify for state subsidy, new homes must be offered to tenants at a maximum of 80% of local market rents. To call this affordable betrays a staggering lack of awareness. In the real world, 80% is not much cheaper than the expensive rents set by the free market; it is not affordable to people on average incomes in expensive areas, let alone those on low incomes whom subsidised housing is supposed to prioritise.

So when government MPs pat themselves on the back about rates of affordable housebuilding, they’re not actually talking about homes that are going to help Britain’s neediest.

Photo: http://www.geograph.ie

The possibility of affordable being defined by house prices – subject to the same inflationary effects as rents if not more so – is as bonkers as the government’s policy. It is hard to believe that any politician can credibly define affordability in relation to anything other than wages.

The response from the housing minister, Brandon Lewis, would be amusing if it weren’t so enraging. He said redefinition of affordability could “undermine” the delivery of affordable housing. This is like saying that reclassifying horses as unicorns would be damaging to unicorns.

Ultimately language only goes so far, and any government that wants more homes to be affordable to people on low incomes must use public cash to build them. If we’re to believe the buy-to-let industry, there’s no better investment than property.

Photo: G Y Gabor

Redecorate to pay less for a better rental

Guest blog by Seeds and Stitches authors, a blog by writer/stylist Hannah Bullivant and artist/maker Davina Drummond about the creative pleasures of DIY in rentals. Edited by Thomas Cox. 

You don’t need tons of STUFF around to be happy. You don’t need that much space.

Living in a more simple way could be really good. Living in close community with others meets a deep human need; one that collectively we are not meeting.

The road ahead for housing

Guest blog written by Victor da Cunha, Chief Executive at Curo.

After a long night of black coffee and the occasional powernap, I first want to say congratulations to all new and returning MPs, both in our region and across the country as whole.