#7: Affordable Housing
This row of 1970s built, three bedroom houses can be found on Lamble Street in North London, not far from Hampstead Heath. Designed by architects Benson and Forsyth for Camden Council, it is a single row of nine, three storey, three bedroom houses incorporated into the larger Mansfield Estate.
There is a car pool underneath the main living quarters, which are accessed by a staircase. The split level interiors are lit by skylights, with a roof terrace/garden above. The bedrooms, living rooms and bathrooms are spread over the three floors.
All in all, they are modest sized homes for a small family, designed in the brutalist style (although much less harshly than some contemporary designs). Walking past them in the street, you probably wouldn't look twice; it's just another one of post-war London's housing schemes. However, the average price for one of these houses (as of late 2015) is around £3,000 per month in rent, or to buy, between £800,000 and £1,000,000. Which brings me to my point: affordable housing.
Now, by London's standards, especially within the golden glow of northern Zones 1-3, £800k to a cool £1m isn't even overly pricey. And more to the point, these small, modern houses could just as easily be a Victorian terrace, an Edwardian Lutyens-inspired Arts & Crafts house, a Georgian town house or a modern industrial conversion. Whatever the aesthetics of the bricks and mortar, the fact is that they are all extortionately (over)priced.
London survives through its lowest paid inhabitants: The street cleaners, the nurses, teachers, the Latvian immigrant serving you your inflation-busting mocca-locca-hocca-whatevery-spresso. Cab drivers, the guys in high-vis in cherry pickers changing light bulbs in a street lamp. Students. Whoever they are, the low paid, often invisible, people are what keeps London ticking for the super-rich to enjoy. The "vibrancy" and atmosphere of this city is what draws these people to it and makes them "invest" (although what they actually contribute to society with their flashy cars and brief summer stop-overs is a matter for debate). Their money is toxic to the people who live here all year round.
And herein lies the issue: by treating these brick and mortar structures, of all denominations, variations, designs and styles etc. as investments, they are creating a Disneyland of impossibility in which nobody on even a respectable salary (teachers and doctors are struggling to live within the city now) can afford to find a home.
The houses pictured above are interesting, maybe one day even architecturally important, but they are not worth £1m. They aren't worth a fraction of that. The notion of them as a home is where the value lies. Everyone wants a home, but people seeing London's property as a cash-cow, or an accessory about which they can brag, has pushed the simple goal of having a place to live out of the reach of almost everyone who actually lives and works in the city. The fact we even have the term "affordable housing" in the language highlights just how ridiculous the situation is becoming.
Of course, the young and poor are disproportionately affected. Pushed into ghetto-like flat-shares with an endless carousel of tenants coming and going with each rent increase, this demographic is becoming increasingly transient and insecure. Forced ever further away or into decreasingly habitable premises with each rent hike, it's no surprise there is a proliferation of sheds in gardens, adverts for beds in cupboards, and a rise in homelessness across the capital.
Ultimately, the bricks, facades, timbers and lintels may stay the same, and when you walk past a building all may look calm and respectful externally, but the reality is that behind most walls and doors there is now a group of people struggling to survive, spending upwards of half their salary on a room to sleep in, just so they can go back to work to pay for the next night.
I have taken a lot of pictures across London of various types of housing, but no matter where I am and what the building is, the issue is the same: the cost of living here in your own home now far exceeds the financial abilities of most people in London.
This precariousness damages community, it damages longevity and loyalty to a specific area, but most of all it prevents people from ever feeling like they can call somewhere home. And that's what these buildings shown above are meant to be; homes.
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