Are housing developers creating future slums by converting old offices?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ย. 2024
- Well in England they most certainly are!
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Thank you so much for watching! Hope you enjoyed it!
Big shout out to Luke Cutforth for reading out my Dr. Suess-esque poem for me to enact, and to Kim Nieuwenhuis for the editing effort on this one!
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Also big shout out to Baron for providing me with a lot of in-depth information on the Apt Living Parkview building in Brentford and trusting a random redditor reaching out who happened to recognise the building from his odd fascination with it.
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I work in construction, and have specifically done a lot of work around prisons. We once had to move a segregation unit, a place to isolate and punish inmates misbehaving in prisons, to a different area because its lack of sunlight was considered inhumane. It was an old building and an inconvenient and costly exercise, but the prisoners wellbeing was given priority. Every time I hear about lack of sunlight in housing now I think about how the residents are treated worse than criminals.
Indeed they r
residents aren't human, they're just money printing machines
When you think of it, in some european countries it's true...
In Toronto’s most people live in someone’s basement. No light barely. It’s so sad.
Yeah it's weird how humane treatment is deprioritised when the optics aren't significant.
I'm a renter. Any flat described as a "luxury apartment" I avoid like the plague.
The only luxurious thing about luxury apartments is that they exist.
And the price
Dude I live in the USA and EVERY SINGLE new apartment being built around me calls themselves “luxury living” 🙄
Same here. I call them chicken's cages. Horrible soulless design and open space kitchen/ettes in such a small living rooms are not a luxury if you have to turn the volume on your telly up, because the washing machine is spinning... I always look for older buildings with nice, spacious living rooms, kitchens and some green spaces outside. They think people are stupid and they take advantage that people are desperate for housing. Proper scam
Same as many”manufactured home parks” being referred to as estates.😂
"Money doesn't grow on trees, it's freely printed at the Bank of England." 🤣🤣
And loaned out with interest which is mathematically impossible to be repaid. That's how slaves are created.
Most of the money in the economy is actually created out of thin air by private banks when they give out loans. The Bank of England is printing physical money, the notes and coins, yes. But that's not the "money printing" we're usually referring to when we're talking about "money printing".
Or the federal reserve…
😂😂😂😂😂 I liked that
@@Ratgibbon this!
As a German (Stoßlüften!!!) not being able to open the windows sounds like a nightmare.
Also, to quote good old Not Just Bikes: "Cities aren't loud. Cars are loud." I live in the middle of Berlin, yet I can enjoy the rustling leaves and songs of birds in the calmness - when there's no car around at least
Also, modern cars are usually loud only if they drive faster than say 30 km/h... especially EVs. Most of it is road noise from tires on asphalt. If we move to EVs and then in city centres allow them onoly to go 30 km/h max, cities can be way way more calm
More evidence that the Germans just do things right. Can you think of something that Germany doesn't do well but Britain does? All I can think of is documentaries and comedy (I believe we are the best in the world at both of these, but working transport, water systems, and livable housing would be preferable).
@@lkrnpk Sadly this does mean bad things for the blind and partially sighted though. Some of these cars are scarily quiet and if you can't hear them coming, it can be quite dangerous (especially if you're used to having the audio cues or can't get visual cues).
Oh! Love of fresh air, right? I keep mine open all year if I can.
No cities are loud. You joker. Sirens blaring. People fighting and shouting. The birds going insane in the morning. Bin trucks. Construction. Car traffic is quiet compared to all of this. Also cyclists are not some higher form of life. Most of them are criminals breaking every rule of the road. Good thing im rich so I'm moving to the burbs!
Victorian Britain is an aspirational goal for this Govt. Great journalism here.
I toured the Tenemant Museum in NYC in 2008. All the tourists were amazed that anyone lived like that. My wife and I, being from NYC, were well aware that the apartments were the exact same size as most other apartments in that neighborhood (or most lf the city) still today. And while it is no longer legal for them to be occupied by 3 or 4 families... they still are. There were likely people on that very street living in bascially the same conditions we werr touring.
Yeah if the homelessness crisis demonstrates anything, it's that there's thousands of people who would probably pay to at least have an actual roof over their heads, even if it's a slum. It beats living in a tent. But that slum housing is probably even unaffordable for them now. What a time we live in
I just visited it 2 weeks ago and I can't imagine it's happening today!
I thought the same thing! I work for a union and some of our members live in smaller places with more people.
from a brief Google they look bigger than most modern (affordable) NYC apartments I've seen lol
Okay but the "those days are behind us. Literally" is such a good pun
Danke
@@evanDickensonian 😂
@@SearchIndex David Dickensonian?
@@klaxoncow 😆…Charles…Charlie…Chaz..Chuckles …Dickens-sonian
I'm in a new build in South Wales. It's my first ever place, before I moved here I lived with my mam. Was thrilled when the council offered me the place as from the outside it looks really nice. Supposed to be a "HAPS" which is basically a very energy efficient home. I've been here for 3 years now and it's like it was built by unsupervised apprentices. The pipes in the upstairs flat burst and flooded my bedroom, the water meter has never worked, the electric vent system has never worked, and the double glazing in the front door has water between the panes instead of air. The council will only do one repair at a time and only if you log the repair as a complaint because if you request a repair through the proper channels it's a dice roll on someone even turning up to see what the problem is.
A few years ago tenants where given the right to sue councils if their council property is not up to standard. Prior to that councils were responsible for suing if a rented property was not fit, but they could not sue themselves.
Talk to a lawyer (CAB can help) and get a letter before action sent on legal letterhead... It has a wakeup effect on councils especially if media get involved
You poor thing. That sounds absolutely HIDEOUS!
Sounds just my sister's flat in Stratford London, except for the double-glazed door and vent issue. No windows in the living room just a door, so if you wanted air, you'd need to open the whole door and there were mice on the balcony coming up from the bins and drains. Horrible!
you joke about "unsupervised apprentices" but my step dad's an electrician and was working on a new build development a few years ago where the developers had basically just filled the work crew with 18/19 yr old apprentices presumably because you can pay them pennies (he was horrified when he found out one of the lads he'd gotten to know was on like £3/hr or something). there were too many of them to properly supervise and half his day was spent ripping out and re-doing work they'd done. iirc he quit before the job was finished because he felt like he was signing off on a death trap.
I worked on construction for most of my life in Canada. I built both residential and commercial hi-rises. I don't know about the UK but in Canada they are built in VERY different ways and therefore converting office space to residential is EXTREMELY difficult, time consuming and very expensive. For instance in commercial there is usually only one bathroom per floor. Just plumbing in bathrooms is a huge task which will compromise the floors and perhaps weaken the structure.
I was wondering how that was done. Huge amount of new sewerage and water piping to install.
@@double2mo382 Not only that, but rewiring the entire building to accommodate a number of suites, plus all the water, sewer as I mentioned. Moreover the heating, ventilation and air conditioning has to be modified to suit individual suites rather than the typical open floor plan of office buildings.
In Canada office buildings do not have opening windows and the windows on an office building are integrated HUGE units which hang on the structure. The cannot be modified without entire removal.
Office buildings also do not have balconies and they cannot be retroactively installed.
That is just the beginning.
The costs of interior walls, doors, fixtures, counters and cabinets and hundreds of other details.
Not only would it be very expensive but comfortable living spaces may actually impossible to achieve.
Thanks for the reply.
As another Canadian my city has at least one office to apartment conversion completed and more in planning or mid conversion. I'm not sure how much the conversion costed or how the interior was redesigned but it possible.
Exactly. Most TH-cam urbanists are idiots.
Now I know why "we can't just turn the office bldg into residential". Thank you!
Absolutely disgusting - can't understand how developers can get away with this, it is appalling! As a practicing architect in London, the amount of loops we have to jump to get a small project off the ground is overwhelming - and then these massive companies come and do the bare minimum at a large scale, it is an absolute scandal! Great video Evan... next time maybe do a deep dive into leaseholders and why it should be abolished!
money gets you away with anything it seems
As an urban planning and development student at university the internet needs more content like this, bravo.
Interesting thing is how often the internet crowd often asks, "why don't we convert vacant office and mall buildings"? This video kind of answers that.
@@brodriguez11000yep
I really want to study this😢
Definitely, youtube and the Internet on a whole, is a platform for sharing, which is why I greatly respect Mr Berners-Lee for giving it away for free.
If the internet hadn't been invented, I don't know what I would have done for my architecture!
But thanks to videos like this and another urban planning content creator called not just for bikes, a person can absorb a months info in 30 mins.
Can I just say, the PRODUCTION VALUES THO. This could easily be a Channel 4 Documentary. Nice job.
Thank you!
Came here to say the same!! It totally looks/sounds professional.
I’ll second that!
Yeah I really don't watch variety channels like this but Evan is the exception because in every way (writing, shot design, lighting, sound, editing, performance) he really pushes the quality ridiculously high. The madman :)
a channel 4 doc ? like that is a compliment ?
i never thought that i, a early 20s Canadian, would be so invested in England's housing drama
It's not just in England.
I’m a 56 yr old American & I was drawn in too. Redevelopment of warehouses & office buildings has been going on in my area for well over a decade & isn’t slowing down. I lived in a converted department store (19th century bldg) for a bit - only my bedroom had windows. My son lives in a converted office bldg. It’s nice enough but he only has windows in his living room. And the new build apartments are just as bad & have poor reviews.
@@scottneil1187 yep UK wide
Agreed. I like the fact that the regulations and rules are spelled out in layperson’s terms so that someone who isn’t an expert in this field knows what is really happening with all the political language.
I hope that a lesson can be learned from what’s going on in GB so that it isn’t repeated in Canada. One good thing is that at least in BC political parties have a cap on donations.
Student housing in Canada is 6 mattresses in a room at $500 per month each.
I actually currently live in Apt Parkview on the 5th floor. Me and my partner are lucky enough to have a balcony facing the park so we don’t hear too much of the cars and get a nice view with natural airflow. We are also very lucky that our flat is owned by a private landlord so we don’t have to deal with the mess that is the company that deals with most of the other residents. Our landlord is very good at sorting out any issues we have promptly. It’s nice for what we have and are happy overall. But the lifts break constantly, there was a few week period where all 3 were broken and I had to walk up to 5th floor multiple times a day as I own a dog. They spend money on making it look nice but not on actually improving the building. The fire escape door has been replaced at least 3 times in the nearly 2 years we’ve lived here. It’s a mess and I feel so bad for everyone living here. So many things break and don’t work properly. There never was a games room like it was advertised and the communal roof terrace has been closed on a few occasions for months when they claim it was supposed to only be a couple weeks. They get annoyed when people call the fire brigade when residents get stuck in the lifts. If you wait for the company it would takes hours to get out. It’s disgusting how they’re treating people. On the 5th floor we also don’t have the problem of hearing neighbours. I don’t know why but it seems to be much better insulated up here as I have never heard anyone, doesn’t change the fact that only 1 floor seems liveable which isn’t good enough. Our bedroom doesn’t have a window and no air con on 5th floor so we have too keep it open with the balcony door open during summer. There’s so many things I could carry on listing but it’s amazing to see someone as yourself speak on the issue. I wish I knew you were here as I would have loved to say hi! Keep up the good work man ❤
Thanks! Tbf most of the problems you’ve listed aren’t unique to the building as nearly every single one I’ve also experience in my brand new build that isn’t even a conversion. Just pisspoor quality homes at extortionate prices in the UK at the moment.
There are stories from park view I didn’t discuss which ARE insane and unique tho. I’ll have to come back
thanks for sharing your experience!
@@evan These buildings sound like so much else today...All style and no substance.
I was thinking that it would be interesting to see inside one of the flats for some context. If Evan does a follow-up, would you be happy to let him film some footage of your home and maybe give him access to some of the communal areas?
re. fire brigade/lifts malfunctioning: many places seem to be like that, but one building that's relatively close to the featured one was quite "interesting": they gave a number to call, and "strongly suggested" that you should have a mobile phone on you when you use their lifts. Ignoring all other points, when I checked my phones (across three separate networks, though irrelevant, as), none of them had *any* reception in said lift, not even "emergency calls only"...
Where I live one of our biggest problems is that property developers are only interested in building condos and luxury apartments, and they are demolishing old apartment buildings to build them. So our affordable housing supply is shrinking in favor of expensive condos and luxury apartments. Its absurd. I make 24 bucks an hour, which is above average for the work I do, and I cant afford any of those places.
I visited a friend in Bristol who lived in one of these properties, it was heart breaking to see how claustrophobic her living space was and her view was the old office car park and the back of a Harley Davison dealership.
When she told me she’d lived there during the pandemic, I didn’t have words for how bleak that must have been.
People complain that “ Everyone deserves a place to live.” My Opinion, the Uk pretends to have Immigration Limits. But you don’t! All I have to do is watch “ BORDER CONTROL” programs & I see there is no effort to control Immigration. Working in the “Immigration Enforcement Department “ guarantees a permanent Life-long Job. I guess that’s why the government is so ineffective. Soooo, for every apartment you have, there is an Illegal to fill it.The Immigrants don’t care about how it looks, it’s better than what they’ve come from.
WHAT?! That's the worst think I've ever heard! There's no greater hell than being boxed next to anything Harley Davison.
My friend lived in a converted office block until he bought a house. It was owned by a housing charity, and the flats made available to the local council as social housing.
I believe that the building was a 1960s development. When I helped him to decorate, I was amazed at how well built the place was. Putting up the curtain track took ages. Even hanging a picture was an effort. Fixtures were good quality, though not luxurious. Windows opened. Sound did not travel between flats. The building had concierge services, a laundry, post room, community room, cycle parking, and so on.
Before this, I had negative thoughts about conversions, but when well done, they can be excellent.
It's important to take into account what type of office building is getting converted. Some buildings have been built to accommodate lots of small offices and they can be converted fairly simply to reasonable flats. Then there are buildings that are little more than a shell with easily movable inner walls that were always designed to have as many big open spaces as possible. Those will need complete rebuilding to work in any way.
@@Ruinwyn Yeah, for the most part. Although at least that makes it easy to put in larger internal public spaces. But cynically they would just try to cram as many units in as they can.
@@jonathanlochridge9462 "It was owned by a housing charity."
Uh yeah, that right there. A housing charity isn't concerned with making a quick buck off of the government and end user. They're concerned with providing a livable space to people. So I'm not surprised the housing they provided was pretty good.
These developers need to be named and shamed, alongside how much they have donated to government.
This is better than any TV documentary. Your career as a hard-hitting documentarian/journalist is assured.
At 1:23 & 1:26 the well composed images....
"Self storage" &
"We sell boxes"
Sums it up pretty succinctly
Evan has graduated to become a brilliant housing investigative journalist. (I watched your video on the Woolich tower block before this which was excellent.) Tories' deregulation is vile - oooh red tape is so bad. Of course the property devs contribute massively to the Tories but I had no idea it was that much. Regulations protect us! Really impressed with the quality of this video.
Thank you!
@@brigidsingleton1596 Yes, thanks.
@@brigidsingleton1596 wooch
I like to remind myself that it's a facade having different political parties. Red blue green, any colour is there to distract us. The real control goes higher we mustn't let them divide us, the people.
Yes should have just demolished the block and allowed folk to camp on it instead.
I used to work in a 1960s office block, during the pandemic we moved to working from home and they converted it into flats. It's TERRIBLE. It still looks like living in a 1960s office with big windows with views of the car park. 😆
Great video, I've never seen anybody ask this question before! 😇
Now your flat is also an office. So you don't need to go outside. Brilliant. Also you get to live by an intersection.
The vibes can be weird, but as long as it’s actually got space for you to LIVE it’s not so bad imo… just more interesting haha
A old friend provident building is Salisbury was converted. I when a purchase a item of a guy living there I said it was empty for ages . He said he wouldn't live there permanently because it awful . He rented but you could buy one
This is a favourite activity in my current home town of Eastboring on sea. I'm now wondering what those bijou flats are like😈
@@arandorapress7561 Eastbourne?! Thats where I grew up, ha ha.
Evan's documentaries, in my view, equate to the quality of traditional media productions. Your presentation flair and style of direction is so refreshing in comparison to others' too! Absolutely loved this. UK resident here, had no clue this was happening.
If all you watch is the BBC and all you read is the Grauniad, that's hardly surprising.
Yeah he's certainly got a nose for a good story. The influences from both England and USA make for an interesting (and strangely familiar) approach, something you don't see often from either Americans or Brits.
I live in Spain. We're currently installing the elevator (finally!) in my building; the decision was taken two years ago, but an owner (not neighbor, the flat they co-own is occupied by his sister) who's decided to be a [censored] about it has delayed the start of the work, costing everybody a lot of time and him half a kidney in legal fees.
In these two years, people have managed to make arrangements so we could evacuate the building completely during the works. This has included several flats disconnecting their electricity months before work started.
Now I'm trying to imagine the screams if we'd had a "daisy chain arrangement"...
Wow. Eye opening. I am a New Yorker and we are in a similar housing crisis paired with empty offices. There is a big call for conversions. Fortunately we do not a mechanism for side-stepping basic building regulations and hopefully we can keep it that way.
NY apts are glorified shoeboxes anyway for low low rent of $5k - $8k a month
Planning in the UK is nuts. I can’t extend my house by a metre because I’m in green belt but it’s fine for 3 new houses to be built on the same road by a developer.
Wtf
Yeah, but it's fine because those new houses will be bought by an American asset management firm that donates generously to the Conservative Party. Or, more likely, New New Labour since Rachel Reeves is currently fluttering her eyelashes at any shady corporation that wants to influence some future policy.
In my town developers just pay the fine for breaching code, then make it up on the sale.
Home owners don’t have this option and have to comply.
And it doesn’t matter whether we have a green/left council or a conservative council elected.
The rot is the same.
also having full grown adults live in glorified student accommodation
That's not the issue. It's that it's substandard housing. Personally, I'd love having a cute little 400 sq ft apartment. But what I would not be okay with is being in a home with no opening windows and no proper fire exits
@@msjkramey my housing associating put in new windows. They are tinted used up half the windowsill so now plants don't fit, double the frame size, badly made, cut down light and don't open even very far. I had to bust mine to get at the plants.
@@msjkramey new purpose built student accommodation is better than this...
The word is depressing not cute
@@msjkramey A 37 sq meter apartment is student accommodation no matter how much you dress it up. You can't raise a family in that shit.
Oh my goodness this reminds me, in the office I used to work in (the same one as below) the computers were on a chain, when one person turned off their computer it turned off the whole row and we all lost our work. 😂
I'm just baffled wondering why things would ever be set up like that, or frankly how. Was it virtualized with one computer split between everyone in their own set ups?
@@Klust413 Im assuming they turned their computer off by flicking the plug socket in the wall that was an extension cord for the other computers and not the standard shut down
The computers on my school (a long time ago!) we're set up like that too. A daisy chain principle with one computer acting as a server/databank.
@scottneil1187 But for a classroom that actually makes sense. That way the teacher can turn on and off all computers to stop students from playing around on the computer when they should be paying attention to the teacher.
Worked in IT for thirty years and never saw anything like that. I did once witness a lass smack an emergency stop button and shut down a line of servers. 'What's this do' she said just before hitting it. But that was in a factory, with dangerous equipment scattered about.
Are you sure it wasn't a dream?
I saw a brand new build as part of the "affordable" housing lottery here in NYC - no one had lived in the building yet - carpets were stained, elevator doors were dented, there was evidence of water leaking, cabinet doors were broken or missing handles, electrical outlets fell out of the wall when I touched them, and the wall was just a hole where the pipe came out for the radiator... Needless to say, I didn't sign a lease and informed the housing authority; not that either would fix the issues.
Evan if there’s a TH-cam award for a documentary film I think you should get it. Absolutely outstanding production and amazing that you’ve done it all yourself. A whole team of researchers, presenters, producers and technicians couldn’t have done anything better. Very well done.
Here in Brazil we have these converted buildings too, they're called “retrofit”, but all the plumbing and electricity are completely new, as well as the lifts. Preserved are just the structural walls, even the windows are changed
Just as it should be.
Haven't even watched the video yet but I live in a 1960s converted 'luxury' office block on a 4 lane A road - it's the coldest place I've ever lived, we have ice inside the huge metal frame windows in the winter (genuinely) and it costs around £600 a month to heat in colder months which we can't afford. The lift also breaks nearly every week, and we've had multiple times with no hot water for a week and even a power cut explosion in the car park at one point as well a bad leak onto our car. We've just bought a house (we live in the West Midlands) and are waiting for a move in date now, I can't wait lol. The building is just not designed to be lived in, no matter how they've 'converted' it.
A building is just a shell, it can be converted to anything. What baffles me is how they got planning permission in the first place. How did it pass building regs? Too much building, too little over-sight?
@@I_Don_t_want_a_handleif you watch the video you'll find out that permitted development regulations mean *NO* planning permission is required ;(
@@I_Don_t_want_a_handle In all reality, the government really does not care about the people who elected them into office. Force the government officials to live on poor pay, in poor accommodations where pipes leak and no one fixes them, heat is too high, the building is not sound proof at all, wind is a torture, building is too cold and too hot depending on weather and then gaslight them when they complain, and give them a taste of their own medicine. Some of those officials are so thick, they still would not get it! See House of Lords.
So find ypurself a better home.
@@I_Don_t_want_a_handle Well at that point economics say it's cheaper to build anew than convert.
Donation caps should be a thing, and they should end lobbying. Just make it outright illegal. Other countries have done it. They even sent the President of South Korea to prison not that long ago for accepting a bribe from Samsung. I want to see that happen here.
We’d lose every politician
@@evan*oh no how awful whatever would we do*
@@evan and nothing of value was lost?
@@evan And this is a bad thing, no? Okay, 2 people in the House of Lords seems to understand that having a back door policy to snoop into people's online workings is a very bad thing, but outside of those 2, whose names I do not know, I would dare say that yes, most politicians would be gone. This is why more poor people need to ban together and get their people in office. The middle class who is not upper middle class, needs to do the same thing. Slowly take over the fraudulent policy makes and make a better world.
As brilliant as my idea my sound, I think that when the Bible said, paraphasing, that we'd always have the poor, that maybe the Bible was also referring to the poor of mind with a scarcity of brain cells, and that we will always have these types in office no matter how hard we try to avoid them.
@@evan Oh no!
Anyway.
I currently rent a 3 bed flat in London which has just been sold. The new buyer... who I'm guessing is a developer... came round last week and expressed his plan to half one bedroom into two, and change the living room into two bedrooms making it a 6 bedroom flat. I can't stress how small the kitchen and bathroom with be for 6 people.... soon the days of comfortable living spaces in London will be gone.
Hope that you moved out of London.
You should have told him "Go to Hong Kong and buy housing there. We don't want your subdivided flats."
Air flow not typically good. Offices aren’t designed for bathrooms or tumble dryers let alone for sleeping. Basically humidity levels aren’t fully considered and builders too keen to cash in on high value locations such as cities and towns
Converting old offices and shops, especially in town and city centres, is a fantastic idea if done properly. It helps get more people into those currently struggling high streets and the higher footfall throughout the day and night can help these places feel more safe and secure.
They're a fantastic idea but they need to have options which are affordable to those working full time on minimum wage, otherwise the word affordable means nothing.
I have inherint doubts with any old office convertion thats labeled affordable. I am expecting the costs to do it properly making it not affordable or affordable convertions not being down properly. retrofitting a building to into a completely different building code is expensive.
@@randomprotag9329 I think it works best for buildings/zoning areas that were always mixed use. My neighborhood is full of 2-3 stories buildings and it's not uncommon to see that the first (or more) floors has clearly been converted from a business to a private home and vice versa, sometimes back and forth The neighborhood also has buildings go from townhouses to 2-3 separate apartments and back and at that scale, it's probably a similar amount of work.
@@duceagle6625 aptment to townhouses is not too hard since its the general building code its comercial to residental that gets rough though some buildings were built in a way that they are not too specialised design wise. one thing that abolutely helped with the the vice versia is that residential has a lot of features that do not hurt comercial they are just unneeded so theres never a reason to add them in purpose built comercial and changed during conversion.s, so the level of retrofitting needed gets reduced a lot when its got its first residential conversion.
@@randomprotag9329 yeah, which is why I said it probably works best in building always meant for mixed use. such as the ones found in a lot of older city centers.
Oh, and it'll take government subsidies...property developers will not develop affordable housing without the government providing some "encouragement"...and unfortunately, conservative politicians don't think about the middle class anymore...
There are a load of these popping up in Manchester as well. A lot of commenters have called them student housing. I’d go one step further and call them Swedish prison cells. £1,200-£2k a month for one and a half rooms a lift ride away from a tiny gym and some mediocre shared workspaces. Oh, and when I went to view one (out of morbid curiosity this year) they said that they increase the rent by 5% EVERY YEAR! Absolutely vomitable.
PS, yes you have ABSOLUTELY earned a subscribe!
Student accommodation is the new Klondike gold rush. These monstrous edifaces are blotting the landscape of our towns and cities.
@@eattherich9215 It's okay. All that wealth's going to trickle down to us any minute now!
Oh wait, no it's all going to the US, China and, of course, the Cayman Islands.
I bet the Swedish prison rooms have higher build standard...
@@dallysinghson5569building standard, probably yes, but recently Swedish prisons have begun to install bunk beds in all cells instead of having individual cells - with no other changes - so if it makes you feel better, there's a housing crisis in the incarcerated population too. And guess what some Swedish politicians are suggesting as a solution ? Privately run prisons... 🙄
A relative of mine lived in a converted office just like this. The roof turned out to have RAAC concrete and he had to be placed in emergency accomodation. The general quality of the building was pretty poor - tiny windows, a winding cramped layout, HOLLOW walls which were not even soundproofed, and very questionable fire safety.
These buildings were designed and built with an expiration date. They would be torn down, and new office buildings constructed with expiration dates.
I work in fire safety in Australia and the amount of issues I see in all buildings on a daily basis would blow your mind. One of the main issues in construction I see is that most of the people doing the work have little understanding of the Fire protection systems they are installing and how these systems come together to form a safe building. And don't get me started on the role of private certifiers....
Thank you for a well researched and clearly presented video, with a nice bit of humour for entertainment. You earned a follow from me.
A quality 30-min documentary on an important and interesting issue?
How do you do it? I love it!
Perfect length, perfect delivery and amount of information, images and sound so crisp it felt as if i was right there with you. *chef's kiss*
There's parallels in Ireland, particularly Dublin. A developed proposed co-living flats where 42 people would share a kitchen. FORTY F4CKING TWO! People here have no trust of apartments because of the lack of build quality, especially soundproofing. The Liberties were also a failure in town building, as they built high-rises, put all the same socio-economic demographic in it, and then built no local amenities. The lack of foresight is shocking. And the amount of landowners in government is shocking too.
42?! How many people have to share the bathroom?
That was my immediate thought too watching this. I didn't know that many people were sharing the kitchen areas though. I would absolutely hate to live like that and the rents are extortionate.
Yep. People In the USA and Canada assume everyone will be fine sharing 1 vehicle for 4-8 people and similar lunacy
😬 The high-rises sound like our American government housing projects from the 70s and 80s. They would often build two huge buildings facing each other over a tiny, empty courtyard, and then put an even tinier playground at the very edge of the courtyard. A lot of poor families lived in those places, which were modern-day slums...
They were miserable. Parents would lock kids inside because theu were scared of crime in the areas, elevators often didn't work, and though bus stops would be nearby, it would still take at least 2 bus transfers to get anywhere. 😢
I am Dutch and I invest as part of retirement, so I get these news bulletins about real estate and such. One of the bulletins from my bank was about the price to quality of housing. And the UK was at the bottom of the list in Europe. As in, for a pound spent, you got quite poor returns. Meaning there were issues with foundations, with insulation, efficiency of heating etc. Part of that is also because the UK has some of the oldest housing stock as a percentage of the total in their country. And whenever I see videos about the UK that arent in London, I am always surprised at the amount of neglected and abandoned buildings. Wouldnt have that in the Netherlands, they would immediately be redeveloped.
I am British and the first time I ever lived in a house or flat where every door closed correctly was when I moved out of the UK. It's that bad.
Out of more affluent areas good quality redevelopment often doesn’t pay for itself. The locals either cannot afford to buy the refurbished properties or are longterm unemployed/on benefits, landlords don’t like tenants like that. A lot of town “High St” buildings, shops etc have been owned for years by small local property companies who have not maintained the often historic buildings. Also some communities do not seem to mind living in decay and are happy to dump their rubbish in their own back yard. Councils can enforce orders to get properties back into the housing stock but not sure how aggressively many pursue this.
@@nicolad8822Often councils can't afford to buy back buildings/houses as housing stock, since a) the Tories have refused to fund them for the last 15 years, b) they have to sell houses through Right to Buy at a discount, so councils lose money when people buy social housing, and c) the insane property market makes it impossible to buy anything without serious capital, which most councils don't have
Unfortunately it is not only happening in the UK, we have similar issues in Australia. Our pollies are saying they will build lots of new homes, but we have a shortage of supplies (which are also extremely expensive) as well as a shortage of skilled tradesmen with the correct qualifications. So any new builds are not up to the actual building codes. Great video Evan.
I've heard about this. It seems absurd to me in a country with as much free space as Australia.
@andybrice2711 space isn't the issue here but the total lack of infrastructure is. They build houses further from the cities and you have to drive everywhere.
'qualifications' is mostly total BS, the issue is that things aren't inspected properly
Just discovered this video and as a town planning student I absolutely agree with every point in this video. Permitted Development and other attempts to “streamline the system” completely undermine good quality development. These regulations and policies exist to make sure that development is safe, necessary and relevant. Even if it promises more housing, policy should ensure that these are liveable, not just easy turnover for developers.
I remember moving from Poland to England 20 years ago, having high expectations for such iconic and wealthy country, only to be shocked by the state of housing from day one. Walking through Manchester after getting off the plane and seeing shoddy, old estates around Manchester city centre that in Poland would be considered substandard even in a small town. The image of England as a wealthy, well to do country was crushed instantly.
Housing says a lot about the state of a nation.
The GDP figures are misleading .If you look at productivity per person, balance of trade , investment then outside London and the south east third of the UK it is actually a poor country.
My friend said years ago that developers are creating future ghettos. Rabbit hutch living crammed in together whilst the exceedingly wealthy building company CEOs buy up huge properties in the countryside.
Yes ofc
Electrical Engineer here, change of use of buildings is typically more work for the Mechanical electrical plumbing MEP not less. Systems generally have to be completely pulled out or reworked and than the new systems to support the new type of use get added. I can speak to the British electrical code but that would pass here in the US
Heh, I'd completely forgotten about Matt Hancock and how completely hapless he always looked. (Someone once tweeted that if you're trying to remember the difference between Matt Hancock and Dominic Raab, Hancock is the one who looks like he drained the company's pension fund by accident and Raab is the one who looks like he did it deliberately. I think that's a good metaphor).
😂that is so spot on.
😂 brilliant
They do look kind of similar but were both equally useless.
When all you have to do is follow the instructions of a foreign organization, then there is no real incentive to learn how to run a country. Half a century of blindly following EU edicts is bound to breed low quality administrators and MPs.
Matt Hancock is also the one who was caught on CCTV having an affair with his adviser, in his office, during lockdown. After having castigated people for socializing in groups, and threatening to ban all outdoor exercise. Classy guy.
I used to work 2 buildings away from Apt Parkview and walked past it to get there, there was often water coming up through the drains in front of that building. Based on how it smelled there must have been a sewage leak somewhere that kept reoccurring.
Part of it is that modern office buildings are just plain difficult to turn into decent housing. They are designed for open-plan offices, so they are built with large, boxy floors. Many areas of each floor are so distant from windows that it is basically impossible turn them into an apartment with adequate windows. Turning offices into housing is one of those ideas that sounds attractive at first glance, but on closer inspection is not the easy solution it seemed to be.
Fantastic video Evan! I have followed you for at least 10 years and feel the transition in quality and calibre of video production and subject matter has developed as my own awareness and interests have developed as I have gotten older. I love following you because I learn so much from your videos on such a vast range of topics - yet they all feel relevant and interesting to me - a clear indicator you have curated an audience that shares your interests and intentions. The quality is insane considering you are a one person team - this is TV standard researching, presentation and production to me. I loved the bits where you broke into song/rhyme/rap... I am picturing a Hamilton style musical about the UK housing crisis 😅
This one had a lot of help in the edit from my friend Kim! She’s much better at a tv style editing as long as I provide copious amounts of b roll :)
Took me and age and a half for the script which I had to rewrite a few times upon learning even more info, but I’m v happy with how it turned out :)
Evan, look after Kim. You have a fantastic channel. I just subscribed.
Real journalism here. I'm comment for the algorithm as this needs getting into the main stream.
Thank thank! Fun fact I found out today… comments actually don’t affect the algorithm anymore 😢
Is that true?? So is it only likes and views? @@evan
@@evan Whaaaaaa??? That blows!
Brilliant work. I have experience with apartments in Sydney and a Melbourne. The quality and size of buildings has been reduced to absurd levels. The average one bed in Sydney was 60sqm or above. A two bed was 100. I was fortunate to live in a one bed in Melbourne at 95sgm. I'm now in the UK and the standards are appalling. New builds offer little space and even less quality. On top you have building fees which cost as much as rent. Having facilities is great if you have people that show respect, unfortunately this is rare and the damage to these facilities costs a fortune to repair. One of the best buildings in Melbourne is "The Melburnian" Now over 20 years old it is as if it's just opened. 24 hour concierge, incredible foyer, elgant spotless lifts, 20m indoor pool with gym above, sauna, steam, massage rooms. Everything kept immaculate because the residents care. I miss my time there. Thank you for your hard work.
Please never stop making housing videos. They are the best.
Lived in an apartment like this last year. Whoever designed the HVAC system in our building decided that cool air was unnecessary and the system would keep the air inside the building 10C higher than outside at all times. 0C outside and 10C inside in the winter and in the summer 30C outside and literally 40C inside. Apparently it was supposed to be very energy efficient but we got hit with an additional electric bill of £6500 when we moved out so it didn't seem like it.
I do not live in the UK but I always find your "documentary" type content so informative, funny and beautifully filmed. The quality of your videos are outstanding !
An office block near me has been converted into flats. My daughter knows someone who lives there. The walls are so thin you can hear conversations from the neighbours as though they're just in the next room (which they are), the dividing walls are too thin.
I live in a semi detached house, not a new build either and I can hear my neighbours talking on the phone and a thousand other annoying things. The walls are paper thin. It's been happening a very long time.
I'm in a new build and you can hear conversations in the hallway, kitchen and bedroom that's attached. This was made worse as they were obsessed with playing loud music for 7 hours straight multiple times a week. So you heard really loud booming where we couldn't even hear our TV. They said they didn't care as it wasn't night time. We went to the council and although they said they had decent recordings, ended up telling us there's nothing they can do as it's within legal hours. The council pretends to care about sound issues but they don't, they only send letters to hope it helps solve this issue (my neighbours ignored the letters and emails) if they just build houses with thick walls we would all be so much happier.
@@scottneil1187 It's amazing that this can be a thing. New York City code (probably similar to standard US codes) specifies a wall between apartments of a certain level of fire resistance, so it should be fairly soundproof. And anyway all you have to do to make any wall relatively soundproof is to put normal fairly cheap fiberglass insulation in the hollow spaces between the studs. (There are somewhat more expensive things you can do with the construction design, but just the insulation does a lot.)
This is a problem with the contractors and the quality of materials they are using. The towns should not allow them to build crap. If the buildings were built properly, it would be a great solution to housing issues.
Can't throw your piss and shit if you can't open your window! *Taps head*
Hahahhaa dang
You chuck it down the stairs - or to save time you use the staircase as a lav. (Well that's what happens in purpose built council flats).
@@SierraNovemberKiloin the 1980s the US navy enlisted had to live in old council house flats in Haverfordwest …whenever there was a storm the water would come out of the taps yellow like pee with feathers and leaves in it
They’d over charge us thousands of pounds and then claim they made an administrative mistake …they paid it back but then they’d trump up false charges during the exit inspection to take the money back
Actually there was an old school converted, here in Texas, into luxury apartments and the residents love it. This building was from the early 1900’s and absolutely gorgeous.
I dont even live in England or personally know someone who is but loved how the information was presented so stayed extremely engaged. Im so freaking impressed with this!
This is proper investigative journalism!
I used to watch your videos just to compare life here in the UK to the USA. Interesting tidbit... came in handy as I met my life partner and we now live together, and she's from the USA.
Anyway, this is a brilliant piece of journalism. Worthy of a larger audience and official news channel. Damn impressive work.
Are you part of a job swap with John Oliver?
I do love Last Week Tonight! Thanks!
As a fan of mixed use development I think that any space that could be converted to residential needs to be built to residential standards
During the 1970s I lived & worked in London. The Salvation Army & CenterPoint were but two of the organisations that were trying to counter the effects of homelessness. A little investigation revealed that office blocks were built specifically to remain empty as a tax loss. If empty office space is now being converted to living space it can only be that more profit can be made today from renting that space as opposed to profit that may be preserved evading tax. IMO. Cheers.
And if they were built with the idea of being left empty, do you think they cared much about the quality of them? These cheaply built buildings are 50-60 years old now. They need to be pulled down and replaced, not converted!
@@CallumRepairs YUP! Centre Point has been campaigning against buildings built to be left empty as a tax loss at least since the 1970s which is when I first heard about this.
My town is filled with converted office blocks.
Come and visit!
Harlow town, after one building in the town centre got converted there was a 900% increase in crime in the local area.
Other converted offices are literally in the middle of industrial estates where people don't have access to essentials such as shops or transport links.
They become isolated and vulnerable to predators living in the same blocks.
Megacity 1 here we come ! 😂
Was that the one bought by that London council to outsource it's housing problems?
@@timbridges4246 yup
You lost me at no windows opening.,,
That's common feature in office buildings and even some hotels. Remember staying in a hotel near the airport
Developers are planning to double the size of our village, but with no additional infrastructure. Sure, they're obliged to offer the local council space for a new school, but if the council don't have the budget to build and fund that school, oh well, more houses for us! Same with the new shop and pharmacy they're promising. They have to offer the land, but if no one wants to build and run the businesses, then more houses it is. I'm for new homes, even on this green-belt land, but they need proper infrastructure for everyone's sake.
I’d agree with this take
We have this all the time too. What's worse is that along with LTNs basically turn any cities into monorails.
It's for the great replacement conspiracy
this happened fairly recently in my hometown, the new builds are shite anyway but the already stretched services are crumbling. and to top it off, a disused office building that would have made a great replacement for the cramped and failing doctors office got turned into rubbish flats intead.
@@DewtbArenatsiz You don't need some grand conspiracy to explain this. Just people who are looking for a quick buck, and don't have any regulations stopping them.
I love your take on the housing crisis. One of my friends bought a flat in a converted office in Norwich. She had to take legal action against the developer to rectify the issue. Norwich developers are building student accommodation in the city centre that students can not afford. So they are then changed into HMOs
Ah same ol trick as in Cardiff
Thank you for this. As someone who has suffered homelessness and lived in sub-standard housing most of my adult life, 37 m² seems like luxury. The level of corruption and the suffering it causes is obscene.
At this stage in capitalism's endgame, cruelty is the point.
You're brilliant. I'm so sceptical of Americans commenting on European things tbh, but OMG, you're a one-man stereotype-smasher. Just brilliant. Hilarious, insightful, truthful. TH-cam at its best!
Thank you so much for raising awareness of these issues!
They turned some old offices and an old courthouse in my town in to apartments, but we somehow lucked out with a decent developer... Although it helped they were situated in fairly nice areas to begin with, just wish I could say the same for the guys who bought up the old Co-op and renovated it just to leave it empty for 5 years and counting
I've looked at this building so many times driving by on the M4 thinking I wonder what it's like inside
me too, but my fave on that stretch is the building with the garden wall in the atrium. If I'm driving, I don't have time to look for it, but if I get the NatEx bus up from Bath, and I'm awake, I get to look for all the buildings on that stretch.
Your stuff just gets stronger & stronger. UK is lucky to have your talent and insight.
The only thing luxury about most luxury apartments is the price
Thanks for all your work, Evan, this is such an important issue. I hope the next government will try to put better regulations in place but they're going to have so much to fix, I doubt they'll have the money to help the people who have been screwed over by this.
Can't believe there are still so many people (who aren't shoddy developers or other business people) who still support the Tories, but it's partly a lack of this sort of information coming out, mixed with classism that decides that people who can't afford better must be unworthy of it. Please, Labour, do better.
The shock is not that politicians can be bought , but for how little ! Incredible return on investment !
Lived in this building for 2 years, glad I got out after the landlord dared to ask over 10% rent increase for worse living standards... Glad I'm gone.
I’m loving this new direction you’re heading in. It’s how investigative journalism use to be and should be. You’re one of few that aren’t being paid off to keep quiet!
the lighting, art direction, camera placement, EVERYTHING from the filmmaking stand poin is PERFECT! It's so cool to find a channel like this! And that uses de metic system
Glad you liked it!!
I used to work for Domino's in Utrecht and delivered to a few offices converted into housing. I don't know what living in them was like but I often had issues with contacting the person I was delivering to - offices aren't designed to have a doorbell/entry system that links to every room!
So my first flat was in a converted office block like this. Sure it looked nice and the facilities were cool, but the windows were dreadful, not sealed properly, and frequently leaked water, eventually resulting in black mould. Despite raising this to the building manager CONSTANTLY, their solution was to just send in someone to paint over any mould growth, not actually replace the windows or the structural issues causing the leak! Would never live in a converted office block again!
I’d love if you made a video about all the “luxury student halls” being built knowing that they’ll never be filled just so they can convert them into family flats later
It’s not every day you get a twenty minute video explaining to you that a $75,000 double wide in an American trailer park will give you a much, much better standard of living than in a £700,000 London ‘permitted’ office tower flat
"i can't wait to take a piss and throw it at my neighbour" has a very different mental image when thinking about flats with no openable windows lmfao
The tory skit was beautiful
Thank you! I’ll make it a TikTok or whatever today :)
Ok, this is such an important video! We need to start comparing what housing developers are doing atm to slums. Round where I live, we're looking at new houses which are horribly similar to back to backs. Houses with a different house attached to its back instead of a back garden. Cul-de-sacs with no pavement, no space, and very little greenery. This isn't in a city, so these houses don't need to be so so cramped. If I could draw a picture of what they look like I would.
I live in what is called a quad townhome. Make a Four Square game on the pavement and then pretend you just made 1 home. Except you didn't. It is really 4 homes squeezed into 1 home's spot. Every unit has 2 shared walls.
@@tpkyterooluebeck9224 I've seen something like that! When I was looking to buy a house, I looked at one that was 4 houses in 1 square, so no private garden for anyone.but they were also quite literally one room upstairs, one room downstairs (kitchen & living were one room, and then a separate bathroom and bedroom upstairs). There was only 1 singular door inside to the bathroom, the rest was all open and yeah, 2 walls joined with the other houses. This isn't too uncommon in a terrace of course, but at least with a terrace you have a back and a front with daylight coming from two opposite sides. I'm going to see if I can link to the one I saw, but I might not be able to find it on Rightmove anymore, this was over a year ago 😂
@@HeidiSholl You pretty much described what I live in. Over in my country, if you can put in a closet, it can be considered a bedroom even if a bedroom will not fit. I always wanted to be rich enough to be able to create the most horrific Flats that only housed 4 family, using the absurd rules of bedrooms and such just to prove to the government how silly their rules are, but not actually rent them out. Instead, I would have families come in and film the absurdity of it all, discussing laws and how this was considered legal when it shouldn't be. And then me discussing how I feel laws need to change so that better quality is had by all, including more sound proofing that works for real. Sound will go the path of least resistants, so a 2 foot thick wall will not stop sound between units, if the window is only 1-ply or 2-ply thick.
@@tpkyterooluebeck9224 Damn, sounds like a plan! It is absurd, how in this day and age we put people into housing like that. We really can't expect people to live on top of one another, because that's exactly how slums happen. Affordable housing shouldn't just mean "bare minimum that we can get away with".
I can't remember where the estate was built (England sonewhere), but you might have seen the picture of houses built where the fence separating gardens was basically a zig-zag when it should have been straight. The houses were built in a digital zero configuration (no round edges, basically a big hollow rectangle). The back gardens backing onto the back garden of the house opposite. There is no alley between gardens.
The entire estate is a massive headache for firefighters; there is no access to the rear of any of these houses. If the front of the house is on fire, there will be no safe exit route through the rear because each garden is separated by a 6 foot fence... with no gates.
They have built a death trap. Because the houses are mainly wood frame, not brick, if a fire starts at the rear of any one house the entire easte could be lost because there is no way to tackle the fire.
It is so dangerous.
Having lived under a Labour council, I'm extremely sceptical about if a change of government will achieve a darned thing. Starmer at least seems to have a vague clue about policy in general, he isn't overly biased by ideology, but it seems like there is a big issue that isn't addressed - we keep trying to add more housing in to already densely populated areas. You can buy a 2 bedroom house with a garden in Middlesborough, Sunderland or Carlisle for less than £60k. Affordable housing exists, but job creation is so wildly unbalanced. If we could find ways to create employment in these areas, especially more rural ones, it would lessen the pressure for houses to be built in the parts of the country where a lot of land is already turned over to living space. I suspect it's going to get worse too as brick and mortar retail declines, so shopping centres in the smaller towns and cities will go under.
It's a decent video, I just wonder if anyone is looking in to what can be done to change the demand about where the empty housing is meant to be created. As much as there are bad intentions in the policy changes here, I imagine a lot of them would have happened anyway so the party in power could be seen as having done something (even if it was something utterly ineffective). Ah, the chance to vote for either corruption or incompetence...
Starmer has built his entire brand on being completely unremarkable and jettisoning every progressive policy that won him the leadership in the name of expectation management. Absolutely nothing will change. It's the managerial class managing decline.
Try living under a Tory one, pal
@@ThatGuyThanus Have done. Some times incompetence is more harmful than corruption.
Friend recently moved back from the UK, and I think it may be more a general problem than just office conversions. I've heard many stories of so many pieces not working properly (lights, doors, boilers, drains, etc), and horror stories trying again and again to get them fixed. Regardless of who's responsible, people just want things to work again without getting a runaround.
The worst part is they literally defraud the taxpayer then advertise 'migrants' as the reason for poor quality of life for people in the country lmao
This is the high-bar of content, Evan- thanks for all the hard work you put in!
I didn't realise how small 37m2 is until I thought about making a sims house that small. It's *possible*, but it's hard to fit everything a home needs.
It's almost 400 sq feet for people like me living in the stone ages.
Great video Evan ❤ also I know you but so much effort into your video quality and editing and it does not go unnoticed. The amazing depth of field and colour grading always gets recognised here 🙋♀️
Oh not just England and Wales. It's the US, too. This is exactly what they are proposing for our large excess of unoccupied office and warehouse blocks. For one thing, no way am I living in a tower, I'm afraid of heights. Also, I do not want my only way out to be via a hallway to a lift. Or in an emergency, to a stairway. I have a dog. I have a cat. I want a garden. This tower you are showing looks like my brand of hell.
If you want to live in an area that has shops, schools, hospitals etc, you often have to compromise and take an apartment. I'd rather live in a high rise building and be able to walk everywhere I need to get to.
Many people live like this in apartments already, especially in cities.
Also. This is why we bought a 100+ yo flat conversion. Like it's not perfect, we share a lot of space with slugs and lord it needs work but it was actually built with people in mind and wasn't a million pounds to have a sewage problem.
Evan I think this is one of the best videos you’ve ever made, the editing is immaculate, this really feels like a documentary!!
This is a worldwide problem at this point. The lack of regulations also allow Landlords to jack up the prices as high as they want, to a point that you are paying half of your income to live in a tiny room in a shared apartment. There are also a lot of empty apartments because if an owner can use 1 apartment to pay what would be 6 or 7, he has no incentive to make the prices of the other ones any lower.
For example, Lisbon is now the most expensive city in Europe, in 2023 there were 47,000 empty apartments.
The government just the other day announced that they want to ease up on the price of construction, so more places can be built, but nothing to combat the prices directly.
People, have been asking for price control, and an extra tax for apartments that have been empty for more than 6 months, so it forces them to lower the price.
The quality of this video (in both ways) is amazing. Thanks for this really insightful work!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I work very near there. Also loving your pivot to social issues and politics.
This is the first time I’ve come across this channel and I really couldn’t place Evan’s accent. He first sounded American, but then I heard twinges of British English. I thought he learned to sound American and I was even more impressed at how fast he speaks. BUT, I read the channel description and learned that Evan is American born and transplanted to England, hence the sutble English accent. Makes perfect sense now! 😅
That video was so polished, superbly shot, expertly presented/thoroughly researched that it would have held up prime-time on the BBC. Bravo 👏👍