Slums of Tomorrow
Benedict saw this article on the BBC website some time ago (ahem, it sort of shows you how badly behind I am in my correspondence - sorry, Ben...) and wondered whether this could happen to us.
The gist of it is that in their greed to build as many new homes on as small a piece of land as possible, developers are making places that are just too small to live in.
I've been looking at the brochure for the new development at Lovell's Wharf. And I'll give the PR people their due - after reading that lot even I suddenly fancy living there.
But just take a closer look at those room plans. Where's the storage space? Where do you put your ironing board? The bin? The skis you use once a year? Some of the apartments have a 'utility room' (cupboard) but most, from my scrying, don't.
The gist of it is that in their greed to build as many new homes on as small a piece of land as possible, developers are making places that are just too small to live in.
I've been looking at the brochure for the new development at Lovell's Wharf. And I'll give the PR people their due - after reading that lot even I suddenly fancy living there.
But just take a closer look at those room plans. Where's the storage space? Where do you put your ironing board? The bin? The skis you use once a year? Some of the apartments have a 'utility room' (cupboard) but most, from my scrying, don't.
Now, admittedly, I've never been much of a minimalist - but you'd need to have some kind of disorder to have little enough clutter to keep these places tidy.
Same goes for those little rabbit hutches they're building along Woolwich Road where the old Jet Garage was. On the plans for them, (which I can't seem to find just now) the artist has kindly removed Woolwich Road, replacing it with trees, and taken away the bus garage behind the block. Of course there is no trace of the giant road sign immediately outside one of the appartments...
I loved one of the comments on the BBC website, where some wag had scribbled over the room plan outside one block in Bristol - "Flat shown is actual size."
So what do you think? Could you learn to be tidy, as long as the view was good and you got to live in the best town in the world?
Labels: Debates, Development in Greenwich
posted by The Greenwich Phantom at
08:34
30 Comments:
I agree that the lack of storage space is a pain for many new build properties - indeed, I am increasingly convinced that the designers don't actually live in flats.
I am fortunate that I have a reasonable storage area in the utility cupboard - but by best storage zone is actually under the bed.
People moving into small flats should buy beds with a lot of clearance underneath - as it can hide tons of rarely needed junk.
I also wonder why so many 2-bed flats have to have an on-suite bathroom. Yes, it's nice - but to be honest, the square footage could be better used, and two bathrooms just means two lots of cleaning (or in my case a room that rarely gets used).
I won't start on how daft I think it is to design bathrooms without cupboards!
I have noticed a number of these "holiday homes" being built in different places.. I always look at a place and ask, "Where do you keep your wellies?"
Why does the name King Sturge make me giggle?
I always picture a large gentleman (think Johnnny Vegas) emerging from the smallest room in the house and announcing 'I've just left a King Sturge in there'.
Which, funnily enough, coincides perfectly with my view of estate agents.
Of course, there is a solution to these overly small flats - don't buy them. Now the market has slowed down, you'd hope people won't be panicked into buying the first thing they see.
Another trick that our developer friends use is to furnish the "Show Apartment" with cunningly designed furniture - stuff that is 3/4 of the size of "normal furniture". This makes the rooms look bigger because everything in them is the same scale (and because of this you dont notice - until you try to get your Chesterfield into the room on Moving In Day and realise that it won't fit).
still, if you dont actually THINK about the practical matters like ironing boards and wellies and all your books and where you're going to put the dirty laundry, but let the view and the address seduce you, more fool you.
Slums of tomorrow - there is of course a well documented history of development. Victorian speculative builders put up large houses in marginal areas which were almost immediately sub-divided to become the sort of slums that 20th century legislation on housing standards and public housing was set up to deal with. Much of this legislation was abolished in the 1980s in order to encourage 'development' by speculative builders. The only consolation is that Georgian speculative building has emerged from its slum phase to become desirable................... so hang on!
The problem is that neither Lovell Wharf nor Woolwich Road are especially glamorous environments - it'd have to be a glorious flat to be worth the effort.
its all very well to dismiss these types of flats when you have options but for some of us, this is the only way we can get a foot on the housing ladder. i would never have been able to afford to buy or even rent by myself without this type of flat and i'm in a decent secure job! the homes are far from perfect, but for a single person just starting out, the apartments do their job. i admit though that there are too many now being built in the area.
"The only consolation is that Georgian speculative building has emerged from its slum phase to become desirable................... so hang on!"
Regretably, Advocate, very few of us will be able to hang on the requisite two centuries....
If getting on the 'housing ladder' means having to live like a gerbil then I'd rather rent. I moved to Greenwich earlier last year and, as the comments above mention, all the new builds have absolutely no storage. How can one unpack when there's nowhere to unpack into?
Happily I came across somewhere built in 1770. Admittedly, there's no walk-in wardrobes (not especially popular in the day) but the rooms are so huge that it's easy enough to keep everything tidy and out of the way.
Luckily Greenwich is full of old piles so I'd suggest that before spending a mint on a shoe box in Fish Finger Wharf.
Alternatively, buy a caravan and park (hide) it stealthily on the heath.
Hear hear Sandwich.
Anonymous: "is the only way we can get a foot on the housing ladder"; what is this obbsession with "getting on the housing ladder"?? We're the only country in Europe where this mentality exists. Just relax - you don't need to own a house. Let some other idiot take care of all the maintenance bills, bank the cash you would otherwise squander on needless surveys, legal fees and stealth agency costs and enjoy life now!
We should, however, be glad of these ghettos for the mindless; invariably they are populated with the type of artless numpty who really wouldn't contribute to the community as a whole and thankfully is of the disposition not to go out in the local area.
ONe significant factor regarding those kinds of flats is that many of the people who live in them don't intend to live there - they intend to find a greater fool who will rent it.
What the Phantom hasn't commented on is how Greenwich seems to have cornered the market in particularly poor new build.
Look at the oversized brick boxes by the river on Creek Road; the nasty new block on the High Road, or the late 90s 'neo-Georgian' on King George Street. Then compare them with buildings around SHoredith, Islington, Whitechapel, some of them built by the same developers.
St George built some lovely new houses, with perfect brickwork and detailing at Spitalfields. At exactly the same time they developed on King George Street, a Georgian street (with original Georgian buildings that the council had 'allowed' to catch fire), and threw up those nasty executive neo-Georgian homes with MDF fittings and plastic canopies (the cost of construction was £35,000 per house).
The same applies to the development at Woolwich Arsenal - future eyesores, in places that should be a delight to live in. I take solace in the fact the developers might well go bust, but I'd rather they didn't desecrate these beautiful places and made a decent living.
Don't get me started on poor build quality - you only have to have been watching those appalling flats being chucked up where the old Jet garage was on Woolwich Road to see that. It must be darker than the tunnels under Greenwich Park in one of those - and as for the cheapo front doors and the horrid glass shelves above them, just perched at the right angle to tip excess rainwater on anyone below, yet, miraculously at the same time, create a miniature garden of green slime over them - well - all I can say is that the developers have so little faith in their own property that they haven't even bothered to give the development a fancy name...
Yuck.
We could learn a thing or two from the French - some of the Parisians apartments are tiny as well but they have drawers and cupboards in every nook and cranny, not to mention a small storage room in the cellar (cellars are pretty much standard in continental Europe).
As for the build quality - hopeless.
You get the public policy you vote for. Its as simple as that. As a private resident it is incredibly difficult to make modifications to your home (and quite rightly in some respects) in many areas of Greenwich. Dont get me wrong I dont like UPVC windows on Georgian terraces. However, large developers are able to do quite the opposite.
The hypocracies are endless. Gainning planning consent for an extra bedroom is almost impossible so growing families are forced to leave the area yet a developer can build one and two bed flats on an enourmous scale. Are the authorities anti family?
The council likes to be anti car, huge fines for minor offences, large fees for guest permits etc. Yet a developer can errect a multi unit block of flats with no public transport infratructure with large under ground parking that will produce masses of extra traffic.
A great example of all this can be found at the bottom of Ashburnham Place. A cheap block of small flats (complete with plastic windows) that is out of keeping with the street and will add more cars to an already congested street.
What was said about the French is correct. We rented a tiny apartment in Paris last May. It turned out to be only marginally bigger than our living room - but one entire wall was made of cupboards. In which you could put EVERYTHING.
"Let some other idiot take care of all the maintenance bills, bank the cash you would otherwise squander on needless surveys, legal fees and stealth agency costs and enjoy life now!" Yeah, while you pay more in rent than you would do for a mortgage! My monthly mortgage is exactly 1/3 of what the people next door are paying in rent every month. Sure, I can't phone anyone to come fix the sink if it blocks up - I have to pay a plumber - but my home's an investment. And I can't get kicked out by the landlord on their own whim with only a month to find myself a new home.
How can your home be an investment? I am genuinly intruiged by such a statement. For what its worth I bought my house in 2004 and I reckon I would just about get my money back today.
Fat Cat, it's not an investment that you will ever normally be able to realise (because you'll always need somewhere to live) except by seriously trading down when you retire.
Move to some tiny shithole in the middle of nowhere when you're old...
OK it makes sense now, I lever up to buy an asset then when I am done paying for it I sell to buy an inferior asset.
The stupid thing is that it is not like London doesn't have the space.
I have been riding round Erith/Belevedere way the last few day and it is incredible how cut off it feels from London.
Metroland is a good example of what can happen with decent transport links. The North and South West of London is blessed in this regard. The East is sorely laking with gaping great holes of wasted space.
Greedy developers....
Greedy Council Planners...
Overloaded infrastructure...
More traffic/train chaos...
Its enough to make me spit pink ink!
I agree with rtb - the suggestion that it is cheaper to rent than to pay a mortgage is simply incorrect. Not to mention the lack of security of tenure.
My flat is small (though not a new build, as it happens) because it was all I could afford - and all I could have afforded to rent - but thanks for the snobbish dismissals, folks! And it's a good investment for one blindingly obvious reason: all being well, the mortgage will be paid off eventually and I will have no housing costs to pay in later years. Not something that happens when you rent.
Er, just to clarify that rant, I'm not in favour of these shoddy new builds with their poor design and lack of infrastructure etc. However, that doesn't mean that all small flats are bad and all their buyers idiots as some commenters seem to think. As others have commented, careful storage planning is key!
However fancy a trim and external chic they put on these developments they are sure to becoming rental ghettos all too quickly. A cycle around the vast Woolwich Arsenal development does little to convince that it will ever feel like a neighbourly or homely environment.
With no integrated shops either residents will have little incentive to stroll their own streets and I'll wager most coming and coing will be car.
Quite simply, no one will know anyone else as there'll be no stopping for neighbourly chats etc.
It will be very much the same on the Peninsular when it reaches full development.
As for the size question, I viewed one of the flats in the newish development by Deptford Bridge. What's it called? Nevada, Nebraska or is it Omaha - hang on I'm getting mixed up over the Normandy Landings!
Anyway, they were a right realty ripoff with not even room to swing a shrink-wrapped pussy.
I concluded that it was as well that they had balconies as it would be something to catch on to if you happened to trip coming in your front door.
I can tell you I'm more than happy in my 1965 one-bedroomed flat with it's excellent open window space, a very generous living room at 17' X 12' and in-built and discreet storage.
sandwich...i dont feel like i live like a gerbil. yes my flat is small but i do have storage, actually more than enough for my needs(and i do tend to hoard a load of rubbish!), afterall, how much stuff does one person need !!
...and jeff, i dont have an obsession with getting on the housing ladder. its more of a case of too many years renting in house shares with people who turn out to be living nightmares and uncertainty of landlords who either run off with your deposit or decide to sell the property and giving you notice just after you move in...i honestly could not take the stress any longer.
i would love to buy a lovely spacious old property in greenwich but not everyone can afford to do that. i only managed to get my own place because of the part buy/rent scheme which alot of these new developments offer. i found renting a one bedroom flat more expensive and atleast buying one of these flats means i will get something back one day.
not everyone is in such a well off position to be able to look down on these places
...now that is a rant!!!
Tenants do have rights - and what about the Tenancy Deposit Scheme that is law? Landlords have to get a court order to chuck people out - and that's normally if the tenant hasn't paid their rent for two months or more, or is trashing the place. Most tenancies nowadays are 'assured shorthold tenancies' giving a level of protection to both landlord and tenant.
If you're a lodger, or have no agreement (or the wrong type) your rights are affected.
Sorry, this could be a very boring comment...
Unfortunately, from April the Tenancy Deposit Scheme will only apply to regulated letting agents. From the TDS website:
"From April 6, only regulated letting agents and corporate and individual landlords will be covered by the Tenancy Deposit Scheme and cover will be withdrawn from unregulated agents. Tenants are advised to ensure their landlords have made alternative arrangements to safeguard deposits as soon as possible."
More generally, despite TDS regulations it can be extremely difficult to secure the return of a deposit from a recalcitrant landlord - as we learned to our eternal frustration a few years ago when we stayed in rented accomodation during renovations to our house. It took almost five months to get our deposit back, despite the fact that the agent was an ARLA member.
Franklin - what site you looking at for this information?
www.direct.gov.uk ?
I'm not sure how many landlords/agents are unregulated versus ones that HAVE to take part in the TDS. I presume the government brought in the legislation (April 07) to make sure most people would be covered? No?
Hi SoC
The TDS has its own site - www.thedisputeservice.co.uk
The news on the withdrawal of deposit guarantees for unregulated agents is at /index.php?p=10_1&id=15
It would appear that the TDS' insurance cover for unregulated agents was too dear.
Regardless, in my experience the threat of TDS mediation didn't work; only a solicitor's letter and the threat of a small claims' court action did... and the (ARLA member) agents were useless.
If all these new developments have 2 bathrooms then why not use the 2nd bathroom as a storage cupboard.
My flat was built in the 70s and has not much storage but then it does have the king of junk storage facilities - a garage.
All of this, and yet the John Roan school can't be built
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