From today's Evening Standard:
Pod homes for teachers and firefighters are being put on the roofs of buildings to help solve London's housing crisis. Forty-four prefabricated pods are being lifted into position on a Seventies estate opposite Hammersmith Hospital primarily for key workers. Heat pumps will be used to circulate hot air around the pods, giving the owners an estimated weekly energy bill of only £2.20.
It is hoped the one and two-bedroom homes, constructed by Ducane Housing Association, will ease pressure on Hammersmith & Fulham's waiting list of about 10,000 people. Most of them will sit atop existing three and four-storey housing blocks. Units will have a fitted kitchen, bathroom, storage room and balcony.
They are prefabricated in lightweight steel and have "excellent sound and thermal insulation", the housing association said. A 47sqm, one-bedroom flat will be let for £794 a month, including service charge, and two-bedrooms cost £961. Andrew Johnson, Hammersmith & Fulham's cabinet member for housing, said: "This is a brilliant way of providing much-needed low-cost homes for vital key workers such as teachers, nurses and prison officers. Ducane Housing has come up with a great idea and I hope many other organisations will follow its lead."
Peter Redman, chairman of Ducane Housing Association, said: "The scheme has sparked a lot of interest among other London councils and housing associations and could be repeated across the capital, generating at a modest cost new homes for below- market rents."
Such a "pod home" (a glorified container or stackable mobile home) costs about £20,000 to buy and install, and the "below market rent" of which they speak is still £10,000 a year, a 50% return on investment.
Draw your own conclusions from that.
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14 comments:
They do have to maintain it as well, some of these places even have a cleaner. It's a bit like university halls.
Actually, it IS student accommodation. A lot of the people living there (in the "existing three and four-storey housing blocks") at the moment are research students at the hospital. Most of them are foreigners.
I was offered a place at one of these flats but I already have somewhere to live.
Neat idea.
Not sure they should just be for 'key workers', that sounds a bit Animal Farm to me.
"prefabricated in lightweight steel" and "excellent sound and thermal insulation".
At least one of these things must be untrue.
The usual balls-up that follows from not focusing on the land-price issue.
As to the key worker problem: what's the alternative?Left to itself, the market prices low-paid but essential workers out of the city.
"Key worker" can be an elastic category in practice. I knew a geezer who was allocated key worker housing in a dear old London Overspill development scheme of yore:he was a driving instructor (His employer was an "influential" Conservative councillor, mind you)
Well I suppose it's one way of using up all those shipping containers left over after the slump hit world trade.
If a city cannot house key workers will the cities communal appeal not wain and people move to new centres of community in a self regulating way.
If you are a "key" worker you have the "right" to live in a "pod home" , sounds like Orwell big brother and animal farm at the same time.
Agreed to all of the above, but DBC says what I was thinking:
If you can stack 50 sq yard containers five high, and you need as much space again for pavement or road, and rent each one out for £10,000, that gives you a rental income of £500 per sq yard of land per year (minus modest running costs).
Perhaps we will see "Pod home parks" like "Mobile home parks". It would make moving house a lot simpler.
B, it's virtually the same thing anyway, it's just that these are designed to be stackable (I don't know if yer traditional mobile home is stackable).
So they are better for high density sites in the inner cities. They just need to be made trendy and everyone will want to live in one. The name "pod" is a good start.
BfoD, not necessarily, most sound insulation doubles as heat insulation and a steel box is very easily to insulate, it just ends up a bit smaller on the inside.
shame that essential workers don't take home enough after tax to rent these super delux pods
They have failed to address why so many people unwilling to work are housed within Zones 1, 2 and 3.
These people have no place in the heart of a metropolis. mrs 20 is a nurse and could not survive without my support, which I provide having paid for the workshy parasites infesting London, and no doubt other thriving cities.
I am waiting for someone to tell me why refugees are given houses and taxpayers are being offered sardine tins.
Anon, that is a separate issue. People work for their after tax, after rent wages. Maybe the NHS workers in these pods end up with £10k a year after tax and rent - but seeing as the NHS is part of the government, why not just offer them £10k tax free plus free accommodation?
20R, that's my thinking exactly. Let's encourage low earners to move out of desirable areas by a combination of scrapping Housing Benefit and replacing income tax with Land Value Tax.
"They have failed to address why so many people unwilling to work are housed within Zones 1, 2 and 3."
It's all part of the Sacred Cult of the Home. We no longer have names for our household gods, as the Romans did, but they haven't gone away. Those people unwilling or unable to work in Central London are ther because that was their home when they were in work, or that was their parents' home or whatever. Mark will agree that a major plank in the HOist platform is that nobody must move house unless they want to and even then, moving is frowned upon unless it's to somewhere bigger or better or both.
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