4 ms·

I'm a founder bootstrapping a startup, so at the moment both my income and my assets are very well short of middle class. Nonetheless, I can afford to live in L

by nkoren 10y ago

I'm a founder bootstrapping a startup, so at the moment both my income and my assets are very well short of middle class. Nonetheless, I can afford to live in London Zone 2 -- a ten-minute walk away from Tower Bridge -- because I'm happy to live communally with a handful of excellent flatmates. There's nothing wrong with this arrangement, and I think it's an arrangement that will only grow in the future. I'm seeing the property development and and rental industries evolve to accommodate it. This is good. That's not to defend the way that most of the property industry has become simply a vehicle for financial speculation, which is to the benefit of nobody who isn't at the apex of the financial services industry.

skybrian 10y ago
Yes, there's a lot you can do to cut costs when single (or without kids) that won't work for a family.
bgeeek 10y ago
The poor and unemployed are also being priced out of London with the rise in rent and gentrification. It's a bit sad when people are priced out of the area that they grew up in. I do appreciate that this problem is not confined to London, but in some ways London is a more extreme city than anywhere else in the UK (extreme wealth and poverty side by side). This rise in rents has also made it difficult for generation/s to ever consider buying while living in London. Young people typically move to London and then when they want to settle down, they leave. As you get older the idea of communal living soon loses its appeal.
- ghaff 10y ago
  >Young people typically move to London and then when they want to settle down, they leave. This has long been a dynamic in many large cities though and only in part because of housing costs. Of the significant number of classmates in my MBA program who moved to Manhattan for jobs after graduation, only a handful remained in the city once they got married and had children. Many of those could have remained in Manhattan if they made the inevitable compromises--and there will always be trade-offs city vs. suburbs--but didn't choose to do so.
closeparen 10y ago
> because I'm happy to live communally with a handful of excellent flatmates. Television. In a small apartment, if one person is watching TV, the rest of us are locked into it too. Any hope of reading, programming, or any other focused activity goes out the window. After long days in a noisy open-plan office, coming home to other people's blaring TV show wore down my sanity very quickly. No job could possibly be good enough to justify that life. In college, you could at least escape it in any of the multitude of secure 24x7 spaces with tables, power, WiFi, etc. But the libraries around here close at the end of the workday, and that's about the only quiet public space we have in this country. I'd kill for a "media only with headphones" communal apartment.
- ticviking 10y ago
  So post some ads locally and make it happen.

by nkoren 10y ago

skybrian 10y ago

Yes, there's a lot you can do to cut costs when single (or without kids) that won't work for a family.

bgeeek 10y ago

The poor and unemployed are also being priced out of London with the rise in rent and gentrification. It's a bit sad when people are priced out of the area that they grew up in. I do appreciate that this problem is not confined to London, but in some ways London is a more extreme city than anywhere else in the UK (extreme wealth and poverty side by side). This rise in rents has also made it difficult for generation/s to ever consider buying while living in London. Young people typically move to London and then when they want to settle down, they leave. As you get older the idea of communal living soon loses its appeal.

ghaff 10y ago
>Young people typically move to London and then when they want to settle down, they leave. This has long been a dynamic in many large cities though and only in part because of housing costs. Of the significant number of classmates in my MBA program who moved to Manhattan for jobs after graduation, only a handful remained in the city once they got married and had children. Many of those could have remained in Manhattan if they made the inevitable compromises--and there will always be trade-offs city vs. suburbs--but didn't choose to do so.

closeparen 10y ago

> because I'm happy to live communally with a handful of excellent flatmates. Television. In a small apartment, if one person is watching TV, the rest of us are locked into it too. Any hope of reading, programming, or any other focused activity goes out the window. After long days in a noisy open-plan office, coming home to other people's blaring TV show wore down my sanity very quickly. No job could possibly be good enough to justify that life. In college, you could at least escape it in any of the multitude of secure 24x7 spaces with tables, power, WiFi, etc. But the libraries around here close at the end of the workday, and that's about the only quiet public space we have in this country. I'd kill for a "media only with headphones" communal apartment.

ticviking 10y ago
So post some ads locally and make it happen.