The lowest rung of the housing ladder?
October 21, 2015 4:11 AM Subscribe
"A growing number of people on low incomes are now living in shared housing - known as "houses in multiple occupation" - where each room is rented separately. But there's concern that many tenants are living in poor conditions." [SLBBC]
The quality of "affordable" rental housing in the UK is atrocious, HMO or no. The last time I managed to find a job that lasted all but a full month, my way-below-market-rate room in a shared property was over 80% of my income. I was making nearly 20% over minimum wage, and working about thirty hours a week. I'm intensely lucky to be living in decent conditions with people I know well (including my landlady) but it doesn't feel tenable. I'd already be homeless if I hadn't been able to rely on the goodwill of said friends.
This is what Right To Buy gets you. The current government seems hellbent on worsening the situation however they can. As an EU citizen, my leave to remain in the UK is now conditional on my being "self-reliant". In practice, this means that I cannot claim any benefit. No jobseekers' between temp jobs. No housing benefit when my earnings barely cover rent, if they even do that. No council tax exemption. No ESA if I get ill and cannot work (typing this from under a duvet on my phone with a chest infection and 39 degree fever). Nothing. I've lived here my entire adult life - over a decade - having moved from the former colony I lived in since I was six (at which point it was still a British colony). Because of the fact I haven't lived there, I'm not eligible for any benefit in my home country either (woo xenophobic anti-immigrant legislation) so my options are... limited.
If you're voting Tory in the UK, this is what you're voting for. If you're voting DF in Denmark (or any of the parties eager to hand them concessions in coalition) this is what you're voting for. The complete destruction of any safety net, any help, any prospects of a decent life for me, and many others in similar situations.
The UK desperately needs decent social housing. It's such a shame that the political will for that hasn't existed in my lifetime. That lack is how we've arrived here. That lack will continue to worsen and entrench the problem. The future looks bleak.
posted by Dysk at 4:38 AM on October 21, 2015 [19 favorites]
This is what Right To Buy gets you. The current government seems hellbent on worsening the situation however they can. As an EU citizen, my leave to remain in the UK is now conditional on my being "self-reliant". In practice, this means that I cannot claim any benefit. No jobseekers' between temp jobs. No housing benefit when my earnings barely cover rent, if they even do that. No council tax exemption. No ESA if I get ill and cannot work (typing this from under a duvet on my phone with a chest infection and 39 degree fever). Nothing. I've lived here my entire adult life - over a decade - having moved from the former colony I lived in since I was six (at which point it was still a British colony). Because of the fact I haven't lived there, I'm not eligible for any benefit in my home country either (woo xenophobic anti-immigrant legislation) so my options are... limited.
If you're voting Tory in the UK, this is what you're voting for. If you're voting DF in Denmark (or any of the parties eager to hand them concessions in coalition) this is what you're voting for. The complete destruction of any safety net, any help, any prospects of a decent life for me, and many others in similar situations.
The UK desperately needs decent social housing. It's such a shame that the political will for that hasn't existed in my lifetime. That lack is how we've arrived here. That lack will continue to worsen and entrench the problem. The future looks bleak.
posted by Dysk at 4:38 AM on October 21, 2015 [19 favorites]
George Monbiot wrote about this issue only today: Home Ground: Britain’s housing crisis won’t end until we face some uncomfortable truths
posted by wilful at 4:39 AM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by wilful at 4:39 AM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
We don't, thank the lord, have right wing Christians on the same level you do, although there are some. Our churches are often loud campaigners against austerity, and are active in food banks, refugees are welcome here, night shelters, etc.
I wish I could understand it better, why people voted Tory. I think it was because they had bought the lie that labour had sunk the country, and only the Tories would stop it from going tits up again. At least that's what I've picked up from my friends who voted Tory. They didn't anticipate the hurt that it would bring, or else felt that there would have to be pain to stop something even worse happening. I don't know why they couldn't see through the lie that that is.
posted by Helga-woo at 5:25 AM on October 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
I wish I could understand it better, why people voted Tory. I think it was because they had bought the lie that labour had sunk the country, and only the Tories would stop it from going tits up again. At least that's what I've picked up from my friends who voted Tory. They didn't anticipate the hurt that it would bring, or else felt that there would have to be pain to stop something even worse happening. I don't know why they couldn't see through the lie that that is.
posted by Helga-woo at 5:25 AM on October 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
So has the US just exported a bunch of conservatives to take over the world or something?
For a while now, yes.
And seems to be happening more and more...
The one thing I was really struck by in both TFA and the Monbiot piece is the role of temporary ("B&B") accommodation in all this. I'm sure I remember at the death of the last Tory administration in 1997 that there were huge - I mean really huge - numbers of people being housed in B&Bs by local councils; certainly far more than the 2500 families given by Monbiot. And it (rightly) attracted huge outcry and became a policy priority, at least at local level, and a lot of the B&Bs (an their occupants) disappeared. Is the scale of the HMO problem all due to the decisions to sell off and not rebuild council-owned housing in around 2012? Or have we actually just been shuffling for 20 years?
posted by cromagnon at 5:32 AM on October 21, 2015
For a while now, yes.
And seems to be happening more and more...
The one thing I was really struck by in both TFA and the Monbiot piece is the role of temporary ("B&B") accommodation in all this. I'm sure I remember at the death of the last Tory administration in 1997 that there were huge - I mean really huge - numbers of people being housed in B&Bs by local councils; certainly far more than the 2500 families given by Monbiot. And it (rightly) attracted huge outcry and became a policy priority, at least at local level, and a lot of the B&Bs (an their occupants) disappeared. Is the scale of the HMO problem all due to the decisions to sell off and not rebuild council-owned housing in around 2012? Or have we actually just been shuffling for 20 years?
posted by cromagnon at 5:32 AM on October 21, 2015
Is the scale of the HMO problem all due to the decisions to sell off and not rebuild council-owned housing in around 2012?
It was Thatcher who first introduced right-to-buy (and specifically forbade councils from reinvesting the proceeds in social housing). The ConDem coalition reprising the'greatest' hits of the 80s didn't help, but it's not the root of the problem.
posted by Dysk at 5:37 AM on October 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
It was Thatcher who first introduced right-to-buy (and specifically forbade councils from reinvesting the proceeds in social housing). The ConDem coalition reprising the'greatest' hits of the 80s didn't help, but it's not the root of the problem.
posted by Dysk at 5:37 AM on October 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
For those of us not from the UK: I found the story of the Liverpool 47 a helpful source of information on the Thatcher years and council housing. They were a group of town councilors who pushed back against national housing policy in the mid-eighties, built social housing and in general kept on with what I understand to be the post-war UK ethos. They were, of course, defeated in the end.
I lived in a building almost as rundown as the ones pictured for about three years - I was getting a great break on rent, the landlords themselves were okay (they'd bought the building when they didn't have money to fix it up, which was a very them decision, but they weren't going to let it, like, catch fire or anything) and the apartment had once been pretty cute, before time and cockroaches got to it.
It wears you down. You think it's going to be okay, you'll just keep the place clean and surely that will make a difference, right? But everything is subtly broken (our oven didn't work, ever). The bathroom will be perpetually kind of creepy and gross-feeling because there are cracks that can't really ever be scrubbed really clean, and lots of the surfaces are old decaying plastic. There will be roaches, and you'll know that anywhere you're sitting, there could be roaches right by you. You'll know that there are roaches in the walls. You'll develop habits about where you step and where you sit, and you'll never totally relax.
When I was living there, I tipped over into full blown depression that made it really hard to keep working. I started getting better after I moved. I really think that it was the stress of that living situation which took me from "I am a depressive person but exercise and self-care keep things under control" to "I can barely get out of bed and cry all the time".
posted by Frowner at 6:31 AM on October 21, 2015 [19 favorites]
I lived in a building almost as rundown as the ones pictured for about three years - I was getting a great break on rent, the landlords themselves were okay (they'd bought the building when they didn't have money to fix it up, which was a very them decision, but they weren't going to let it, like, catch fire or anything) and the apartment had once been pretty cute, before time and cockroaches got to it.
It wears you down. You think it's going to be okay, you'll just keep the place clean and surely that will make a difference, right? But everything is subtly broken (our oven didn't work, ever). The bathroom will be perpetually kind of creepy and gross-feeling because there are cracks that can't really ever be scrubbed really clean, and lots of the surfaces are old decaying plastic. There will be roaches, and you'll know that anywhere you're sitting, there could be roaches right by you. You'll know that there are roaches in the walls. You'll develop habits about where you step and where you sit, and you'll never totally relax.
When I was living there, I tipped over into full blown depression that made it really hard to keep working. I started getting better after I moved. I really think that it was the stress of that living situation which took me from "I am a depressive person but exercise and self-care keep things under control" to "I can barely get out of bed and cry all the time".
posted by Frowner at 6:31 AM on October 21, 2015 [19 favorites]
In the US housing like this is known as Single Room Occupancy (SRO).
posted by OmieWise at 6:33 AM on October 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by OmieWise at 6:33 AM on October 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
Ok. We all agree this is not good.This is bad. What then do you propose should be done to make things more acceptable for your view of housing? Who will do what? How will it be paid for? How much will it cost to change to a better housing for all those living this way?
posted by Postroad at 6:55 AM on October 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Postroad at 6:55 AM on October 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
What then do you propose should be done to make things more acceptable for your view of housing? Who will do what? How will it be paid for? How much will it cost to change to a better housing for all those living this way?
Even though I think it'll never happen, the laws need to change, and be given teeth to be enforced. No more absent landlords, shell-companies, etc. Tough laws on the standards of housing that people are allowed to live in. If you're an investor who can afford the mortgage, but not afford the upkeep, then you can't actually afford this investment, and should stay far, far away.
If this means that all the investors do leave, then change the laws to make it easier for families to purchase these properties. We've given over all control of finance to the public sector, but it hasn't gotten the vast majority of us anything great. If the houses, under private ownership can't be kept up, take them back under temporary public ownership.
The UK doesn't seem to mind bureaucracy like we do in the US, so have the councils interview and vet prospective "buyer" families. Instead of charging a mortgage or rent, they have to work out a budget to spend the money instead on renovating the property. Any money spent this way will count towards the purchase price. Once it's brought back up to decent standards, the family can either continue to live there and pay a reduced mortgage, or sell it to another family with more money and split the proceeds with the council.
I mean, this is a crazy plan, with a ton of loopholes, but it's an alternative to what's going on now, all over the world. We keep doing the same thing, over and over, when it's clearly not working, isn't that the definition of insanity?
posted by sharp pointy objects at 7:08 AM on October 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
Even though I think it'll never happen, the laws need to change, and be given teeth to be enforced. No more absent landlords, shell-companies, etc. Tough laws on the standards of housing that people are allowed to live in. If you're an investor who can afford the mortgage, but not afford the upkeep, then you can't actually afford this investment, and should stay far, far away.
If this means that all the investors do leave, then change the laws to make it easier for families to purchase these properties. We've given over all control of finance to the public sector, but it hasn't gotten the vast majority of us anything great. If the houses, under private ownership can't be kept up, take them back under temporary public ownership.
The UK doesn't seem to mind bureaucracy like we do in the US, so have the councils interview and vet prospective "buyer" families. Instead of charging a mortgage or rent, they have to work out a budget to spend the money instead on renovating the property. Any money spent this way will count towards the purchase price. Once it's brought back up to decent standards, the family can either continue to live there and pay a reduced mortgage, or sell it to another family with more money and split the proceeds with the council.
I mean, this is a crazy plan, with a ton of loopholes, but it's an alternative to what's going on now, all over the world. We keep doing the same thing, over and over, when it's clearly not working, isn't that the definition of insanity?
posted by sharp pointy objects at 7:08 AM on October 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
It costs now, Postroad. Having a population with hardly any free income because they pay it all for rent is bad for the economy. The great lie of austerity policies is that cutting costs reaps benefits. But chronic poverty, homelessness, joblessness, crumbling infrastructure, instability, and so on have heavy costs for a society.
Providing money and other benefits to those who need them results in more money circulating in their neighborhoods, which boosts the economies of those neighborhoods, and eventually, creates upward mobility. But you have to really give, you can't half-ass it. You have to give money but also housing, also education, also healthcare. You have to remove barriers, like drug-testing or onerous paperwork. You have to see it as a worthwhile investment, not as something you do with gritted teeth and boiling resentment for a bunch of lazy ingrates. Given that most people do want to work and be productive.
After all, what do most people do when they have abundance and stability? Well, they get married, start businesses, they send their kids to college, they build houses, they buy cars, they stimulate the economy. What do the very rich do when they get more money? They sock it away in a vault, where it gathers interest but does nothing else.
Where does the money come from? Taxing the rich and closing loopholes that let them send their money out of the country or otherwise shelter it from taxes. Cutting back on excessive military spending (in the case of the US, anyway, I don't know how the UK fares in that area). Prioritizing social programs over vanity projects. Using the economies of scale that government has access to.
Is it worth it? If you like a functioning society with healthy citizens, then yes.
posted by emjaybee at 7:09 AM on October 21, 2015 [19 favorites]
Providing money and other benefits to those who need them results in more money circulating in their neighborhoods, which boosts the economies of those neighborhoods, and eventually, creates upward mobility. But you have to really give, you can't half-ass it. You have to give money but also housing, also education, also healthcare. You have to remove barriers, like drug-testing or onerous paperwork. You have to see it as a worthwhile investment, not as something you do with gritted teeth and boiling resentment for a bunch of lazy ingrates. Given that most people do want to work and be productive.
After all, what do most people do when they have abundance and stability? Well, they get married, start businesses, they send their kids to college, they build houses, they buy cars, they stimulate the economy. What do the very rich do when they get more money? They sock it away in a vault, where it gathers interest but does nothing else.
Where does the money come from? Taxing the rich and closing loopholes that let them send their money out of the country or otherwise shelter it from taxes. Cutting back on excessive military spending (in the case of the US, anyway, I don't know how the UK fares in that area). Prioritizing social programs over vanity projects. Using the economies of scale that government has access to.
Is it worth it? If you like a functioning society with healthy citizens, then yes.
posted by emjaybee at 7:09 AM on October 21, 2015 [19 favorites]
What can you do?
1. Not privatize social housing.
2. Not refuse to build more social housing or make it illegal for local authorities to do so.
3. Not force housing associations (who are private charitable organisations not a part of the state) to sell off their property putting it into the hands of the profiteering landlords.
4. Not basing policy around stoking up a property bubble which concentrates housing in the hands of profiteering landlords while making it less and less affordable to private individuals and couples.
5. Not failing or refusing to properly regulate the activities of profiteering landlords.
posted by Grangousier at 7:13 AM on October 21, 2015 [14 favorites]
1. Not privatize social housing.
2. Not refuse to build more social housing or make it illegal for local authorities to do so.
3. Not force housing associations (who are private charitable organisations not a part of the state) to sell off their property putting it into the hands of the profiteering landlords.
4. Not basing policy around stoking up a property bubble which concentrates housing in the hands of profiteering landlords while making it less and less affordable to private individuals and couples.
5. Not failing or refusing to properly regulate the activities of profiteering landlords.
posted by Grangousier at 7:13 AM on October 21, 2015 [14 favorites]
What then do you propose should be done to make things more acceptable for your view of housing?
Decent quality social housing. Policies to discourage the concentration of property ownership (things like Help To Buy schemes that are open to people purchasing a second property are the opposite of this). Regulation of the rental market, starting with an enforced prohibition on the "no DSS" discrimination and a robust system for ensuring a decent minimum standard of housing.
How will it be paid for?
Taxes. The system of progressive taxation that has continually been cut for the last several decades. The taxes that the Tory government are cutting, and taxes on property, taxes on capital gains deriving from increases in property value, and an end to tax write-offs for mortgage expenses, particularly on rental or unoccupied properties.
posted by Dysk at 7:33 AM on October 21, 2015 [8 favorites]
Decent quality social housing. Policies to discourage the concentration of property ownership (things like Help To Buy schemes that are open to people purchasing a second property are the opposite of this). Regulation of the rental market, starting with an enforced prohibition on the "no DSS" discrimination and a robust system for ensuring a decent minimum standard of housing.
How will it be paid for?
Taxes. The system of progressive taxation that has continually been cut for the last several decades. The taxes that the Tory government are cutting, and taxes on property, taxes on capital gains deriving from increases in property value, and an end to tax write-offs for mortgage expenses, particularly on rental or unoccupied properties.
posted by Dysk at 7:33 AM on October 21, 2015 [8 favorites]
Ok. We all agree this is not good.This is bad. What then do you propose should be done to make things more acceptable for your view of housing? Who will do what? How will it be paid for? How much will it cost to change to a better housing for all those living this way?
Well, one step could be to change the legislation on HMOs. The article says:
Finding accurate information about the number of HMOs across the UK is not straightforward. Each local authority keeps figures, but these are only estimates as not all HMOs have to be licensed - only larger properties over three storeys high with five or more unrelated tenants and shared facilities.
But that's not true across the whole of the UK. Here in Scotland (and I think in Northern Ireland?), any property with three or more unrelated tenants and shared facilities needs a HMO license. So there are a lot more properties requiring HMO licenses overall, and fines for not complying with HMO legislation are also heftier than they are in England and Wales.
This isn't vastly popular with landlords, who have to pay for the license as well as paying the costs of maintaining the property as a HMO, but it has hugely cut down on the amount of terrible shared flats. (HMO licensing here was actually introduced after a horrendous fire at a student flat in Glasgow where two people died.)
Worth a shot, surely?
posted by Catseye at 7:34 AM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
Well, one step could be to change the legislation on HMOs. The article says:
Finding accurate information about the number of HMOs across the UK is not straightforward. Each local authority keeps figures, but these are only estimates as not all HMOs have to be licensed - only larger properties over three storeys high with five or more unrelated tenants and shared facilities.
But that's not true across the whole of the UK. Here in Scotland (and I think in Northern Ireland?), any property with three or more unrelated tenants and shared facilities needs a HMO license. So there are a lot more properties requiring HMO licenses overall, and fines for not complying with HMO legislation are also heftier than they are in England and Wales.
This isn't vastly popular with landlords, who have to pay for the license as well as paying the costs of maintaining the property as a HMO, but it has hugely cut down on the amount of terrible shared flats. (HMO licensing here was actually introduced after a horrendous fire at a student flat in Glasgow where two people died.)
Worth a shot, surely?
posted by Catseye at 7:34 AM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
Oh, here's another one:
6. Not put local authorities under such financial pressure that they need to sell their social housing stock to developers in order to build luxury apartments, sold to overseas buyers as investment opportunities and left empty, while replacing only a fraction of the lost housing often many miles away.
7. Not being a local authority who are seduced by the blandishments and outright bribes of property developers into selling off their housing stock for conversion into luxury apartments.
posted by Grangousier at 7:36 AM on October 21, 2015 [8 favorites]
6. Not put local authorities under such financial pressure that they need to sell their social housing stock to developers in order to build luxury apartments, sold to overseas buyers as investment opportunities and left empty, while replacing only a fraction of the lost housing often many miles away.
7. Not being a local authority who are seduced by the blandishments and outright bribes of property developers into selling off their housing stock for conversion into luxury apartments.
posted by Grangousier at 7:36 AM on October 21, 2015 [8 favorites]
(OK, that last one is a bit more specific to London than Blackpool.)
posted by Grangousier at 7:37 AM on October 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Grangousier at 7:37 AM on October 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
Landlord Tory MP Philip Davies says law requiring homes be fit for human habitation is an unnecessary burden
The 'lower than vermin' expect you to live with vermin.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:06 AM on October 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
The 'lower than vermin' expect you to live with vermin.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:06 AM on October 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
From what I understand, shared tenancies only need HMO licences if the rooms have individual locks on their doors. Which is why a lot of them are landlord-mediated sharehouses, where you take your chances on the landlord being good at weeding out the thieves, psychos and others, and being bothered to do so. (The free-market creed of our age says that they would, because otherwise the tenants would go to one of their vigorous competitors; though with the way things are (certainly anywhere within a hour's commute of London), if you're a landlord, the fish just jump into your boat and volunteer to gut and fillet themselves without your having to so much as lift a finger.)
posted by acb at 8:08 AM on October 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by acb at 8:08 AM on October 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
The 'lower than vermin' expect you to live with vermin.
To be fair, what he's proposing is not so much a change as a normalisation of the de facto state of affairs. If you have vermin, you're free to complain to your landlord, who is obliged to deal with them. However, he is also free to evict you for any reason or none, and there's a long line of people who'd be willing to take over your lease (typically for more than you're paying). So if you don't fancy being a few thousand pounds out of pocket looking for a new flat, you shut up and learn to put up with vermin.
posted by acb at 8:14 AM on October 21, 2015 [5 favorites]
To be fair, what he's proposing is not so much a change as a normalisation of the de facto state of affairs. If you have vermin, you're free to complain to your landlord, who is obliged to deal with them. However, he is also free to evict you for any reason or none, and there's a long line of people who'd be willing to take over your lease (typically for more than you're paying). So if you don't fancy being a few thousand pounds out of pocket looking for a new flat, you shut up and learn to put up with vermin.
posted by acb at 8:14 AM on October 21, 2015 [5 favorites]
> I wish I could understand it better, why people voted Tory. I think it was because they had bought the lie that labour had sunk the country, and only the Tories would stop it from going tits up again. At least that's what I've picked up from my friends who voted Tory.
People have short memories, it seems. The Thatcher era wasn't that long ago.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:21 AM on October 21, 2015
People have short memories, it seems. The Thatcher era wasn't that long ago.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:21 AM on October 21, 2015
I've only lived in one SRO and the prospect of doing so again is terrifying. The dwellings were always in very poor condition, but, even worse, you had absolutely no say over who you lived with. In the one I was in, one of my roommates would watch violent rape porn on the shared television and then just stare at me. I couldn't even leave because I couldn't afford to break the terms of my lease. At least there was a lock on my bedroom door.
There are many, many reasons to get rid of this type of housing, or at least better regulate it, in the UK and across the pond.
posted by congen at 8:27 AM on October 21, 2015
There are many, many reasons to get rid of this type of housing, or at least better regulate it, in the UK and across the pond.
posted by congen at 8:27 AM on October 21, 2015
This is just a flophouse, right? Hello, world of the Great Depression, so nice to see you again.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:29 AM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:29 AM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
I wish I could understand it better, why people voted Tory. I think it was because they had bought the lie that labour had sunk the country, and only the Tories would stop it from going tits up again. At least that's what I've picked up from my friends who voted Tory.
There's a lot of temporarily embarrassed millionaires who, once their windfall comes in (any day now!), don't want the bums and scroungers descending on it like locusts and using it to subsidise their feckless lifestyles.
posted by acb at 8:36 AM on October 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
There's a lot of temporarily embarrassed millionaires who, once their windfall comes in (any day now!), don't want the bums and scroungers descending on it like locusts and using it to subsidise their feckless lifestyles.
posted by acb at 8:36 AM on October 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
Did anybody else catch Michelle Dorrell's angry outburst at Amber Rudd on Question Time last week? She says she voted Tory, and now feels betrayed and lied to, and is enraged by the tax credit cuts coming next April. And is now a Corbyn supporter, for all the good it's going to do her (or Corbyn, for that matter.) She seemed genuinely shocked that benefit cuts turned out to include her own.
posted by skybluepink at 8:42 AM on October 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by skybluepink at 8:42 AM on October 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
She seemed genuinely shocked that benefit cuts turned out to include her own.
“Keep the government out of MY Medicare!”
posted by acb at 8:57 AM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
“Keep the government out of MY Medicare!”
posted by acb at 8:57 AM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
It's funny, I shared the entire time I was in London, bar a short period where I lived with my then girlfriend, who I met when she moved into a flat I was sharing.
All the places I lived in were very much "young professionals looking for not-crazy." I was interviewed by the existing housemates anywhere I moved into, and I actually ran a round at the last place I lived, when we were looking to replace a housemate that'd moved out.
None of us were sharing due to poverty...I earned about twice the average wage, and the rest of them weren't doing badly for themselves.
We were in London, though, where absolutely everyone wants to live. You could return all the council housing stock to HA ownership, and you'd still have shared houses everywhere. There're about twenty times as many people who want to live in London as there are singe-occupancy housing units.
The last share I lived in was beautiful. It was an end-of-row terraced house with a garden in the back, two-living rooms, a separate kitchen, and five bedrooms. At the time, it would have probably cost ten times my implausibly good salary to buy. More social housing is definitely needed, but it would have a small effect on sharing in London. Outside London, it wouldn't kill off the sort of places you see in the article, but it would drastically reduce their numbers.
posted by Kreiger at 9:03 AM on October 21, 2015
All the places I lived in were very much "young professionals looking for not-crazy." I was interviewed by the existing housemates anywhere I moved into, and I actually ran a round at the last place I lived, when we were looking to replace a housemate that'd moved out.
None of us were sharing due to poverty...I earned about twice the average wage, and the rest of them weren't doing badly for themselves.
We were in London, though, where absolutely everyone wants to live. You could return all the council housing stock to HA ownership, and you'd still have shared houses everywhere. There're about twenty times as many people who want to live in London as there are singe-occupancy housing units.
The last share I lived in was beautiful. It was an end-of-row terraced house with a garden in the back, two-living rooms, a separate kitchen, and five bedrooms. At the time, it would have probably cost ten times my implausibly good salary to buy. More social housing is definitely needed, but it would have a small effect on sharing in London. Outside London, it wouldn't kill off the sort of places you see in the article, but it would drastically reduce their numbers.
posted by Kreiger at 9:03 AM on October 21, 2015
Yes, flat sharing when you're not bottom of the heap isn't hell. Very few things are when you're in that position. And indeed, many things that would be of serious benefit to most of the UK if not go most of the way toward solving the worst of the housing problems would not fix the frankly insane housing situation in London.
These are not reasons not to do it. London is big and all, but it's not the only place that matters.
posted by Dysk at 9:12 AM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
These are not reasons not to do it. London is big and all, but it's not the only place that matters.
posted by Dysk at 9:12 AM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
The focus on London, what's good for London, how to support London, London, London, bloody London, is huge part of the problem. I say this as somebody who lived in London for six years, in a perfectly nice flat, with my husband, loved the place, and then moved up north to be closer to his ageing parents. It's like an entire different country, and we live in the nice bit of one of the UK's most deprived regions. It wasn't great before, but the coalition and now the fucking Tories, have made it even worse. So much worse.
posted by skybluepink at 9:27 AM on October 21, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by skybluepink at 9:27 AM on October 21, 2015 [5 favorites]
I wish I could understand it better, why people voted Tory
There's a whole lot of people out there who are happy to live in a depressingly unequal country as long as there's someone worse off than they are, and a whole lot of people who just want a scapegoat. Particularly an easy scapegoat, like the poor.
posted by Rissa at 10:37 AM on October 21, 2015
There's a whole lot of people out there who are happy to live in a depressingly unequal country as long as there's someone worse off than they are, and a whole lot of people who just want a scapegoat. Particularly an easy scapegoat, like the poor.
posted by Rissa at 10:37 AM on October 21, 2015
There's some fantastic research that has been done on SROs (Single Resident Occupancy) hotels in the United States that point to how important shared housing has and still is, especially for irregular and seasonal workers, but also for seniors on fixed income and even families. Charles Hoch and Robert A. Slayton's New Homeless and Old: Community and the Skid Row Hotel is a great one that shows how much the tenants value their SRO hotels, even the most basic ones provided some measure of privacy and security. I wish that the media's microunit discussion in hot housing markets (San Francisco, New York, Honolulu) also acknowledged that this type of housing is for more than just tech workers and recent college grads.
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:14 PM on October 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:14 PM on October 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
I wish I could understand it better, why people voted Tory
The best response would be a series of Daily Mail links, but I'd rather cut my hand off.
You see the occasional capital-T Tory voting his class, but the rest is a combination of right-wing press, xenophobic race-baiting, and the lack of a genuine third party.
posted by Kreiger at 12:27 PM on October 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
The best response would be a series of Daily Mail links, but I'd rather cut my hand off.
You see the occasional capital-T Tory voting his class, but the rest is a combination of right-wing press, xenophobic race-baiting, and the lack of a genuine third party.
posted by Kreiger at 12:27 PM on October 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
Our impression of life in the UK has been heavily distorted by literature that concentrates on the life of the upper- and upper-middle class. In fact most people, at least before WW2, lived in some form of shared accommodation. This was actually true even in upper-class homes, which were almost defined by the number of servants that lived there: only one or two of those would have had more than a single room of their own; most of the junior servants would have shared rooms. The same was true of agricultural workers.
The lower ranks of the middle class also shared houses, or lived in bedsits, or paid weekly or monthly for a room plus meals. Bachelors would do this even if they were from the higher classes - think of Sherlock Holmes at 221b Baker St. The alternative would have been paying for a house/apartment and supporting and managing at least two servants. It was the sort of thing that really required an unpaid domestic servant, in the form of a wife. Single women from the higher classes would be hangers-on of another establishment, or work as a governess, teacher, or similar.
Below all this there was an array of housing alternatives that got progressively bleaker until you reached the Salvation Army dormitories, the workhouse, and the street. These were administered by people who had a healthy preoccupation with making their charges' lives miserable, to encourage them to keep away. You can get the feel of a lot of this from Orwell - or Dickens.
So things in the UK haven't changed that much. There was an atypical period just after WW2 when people's aspirations were raised and it seemed that every family (and many individuals) could indeed live in their own homes, but I think we're back to the base expectation. Things are as they have ever been, and changing them will take more than a few Council flats.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:39 PM on October 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
The lower ranks of the middle class also shared houses, or lived in bedsits, or paid weekly or monthly for a room plus meals. Bachelors would do this even if they were from the higher classes - think of Sherlock Holmes at 221b Baker St. The alternative would have been paying for a house/apartment and supporting and managing at least two servants. It was the sort of thing that really required an unpaid domestic servant, in the form of a wife. Single women from the higher classes would be hangers-on of another establishment, or work as a governess, teacher, or similar.
Below all this there was an array of housing alternatives that got progressively bleaker until you reached the Salvation Army dormitories, the workhouse, and the street. These were administered by people who had a healthy preoccupation with making their charges' lives miserable, to encourage them to keep away. You can get the feel of a lot of this from Orwell - or Dickens.
So things in the UK haven't changed that much. There was an atypical period just after WW2 when people's aspirations were raised and it seemed that every family (and many individuals) could indeed live in their own homes, but I think we're back to the base expectation. Things are as they have ever been, and changing them will take more than a few Council flats.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:39 PM on October 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
Our impression of life in the UK has been heavily distorted by literature that concentrates on the life of the upper- and upper-middle class.
Please explain Victorian terraced houses by this metric. I've lived in single family middle class housing dating back to the 18th century.
posted by ambrosen at 4:34 PM on October 21, 2015
Please explain Victorian terraced houses by this metric. I've lived in single family middle class housing dating back to the 18th century.
posted by ambrosen at 4:34 PM on October 21, 2015
Even "single-family" homes were often occupied by more than one family, and servants' accommodation might be jammed in anywhere it would fit. My uncle told me that his father, my grandfather (a European doctor but not well off) had two servants in their not-at-all large home: the cook slept in the kitchen; the maid had bedding under the sofa!
Here's a chart from Life in West London : A Study and a Contrast, by Arthur Sherwell that documents multiple-occupancy in West London:
Here's a chart from Life in West London : A Study and a Contrast, by Arthur Sherwell that documents multiple-occupancy in West London:
Civil Parish. Average Number of Families or Separate Occupiers per House. St. Anne, Soho 3 1/3 St. James, Westminster* 2 1/3 Spitalfields 2 1/3 St. Saviour's, Southwark 2 1/5 Whitechapel 1 9/10 St. George's-in-the-East 1 9/10 Bethnal Green 1 2/3 Bermondsey 1 2/3 *– including St. Luke's, Berwick St., Sohoposted by Joe in Australia at 4:57 PM on October 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
This doesn't really speak to the quality and affordability issues in the article, but looking it up I was pretty surprised to read that there are apparently 26.7* million households in Britain. That's a household for every 2.5 people*, or one for every three if you take out the single occupiers. Obviously that includes everything from a bedsit up to a stately home, but given that three bedrooms is the most common number*, that all sounds a lot more like it should be working than the actual situation on the ground suggests.
> I wish I could understand it better, why people voted Tory.
Amongst my friends, it's mostly because they believe they'll be better off. Not in some delusional "embarrassed millionaire" way, but as in they've sat down with a calculator and the policies and worked out that they'd have an extra hundred pounds at the end of the year. They also mostly see the idea of voting for the other parties as laughably stupid - "If you don't vote Lib Dem when you're young, you don't have a heart, but if you don't vote Tory when you're old, you don't have a brain."
Anecdotally, I feel like I see a lot of commentry from people who describe things as the exact opposite to the usual narrative - the left is actually the side that secretly hates the poor, doesn't want anyone getting more well off, and is trying to hold progress back, whereas the Tories are the progressive party. I can't believe that every one of them is just pretending, but it feels like bizarro world sometimes. It might be a question for AskMe.
posted by lucidium at 5:03 PM on October 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
> I wish I could understand it better, why people voted Tory.
Amongst my friends, it's mostly because they believe they'll be better off. Not in some delusional "embarrassed millionaire" way, but as in they've sat down with a calculator and the policies and worked out that they'd have an extra hundred pounds at the end of the year. They also mostly see the idea of voting for the other parties as laughably stupid - "If you don't vote Lib Dem when you're young, you don't have a heart, but if you don't vote Tory when you're old, you don't have a brain."
Anecdotally, I feel like I see a lot of commentry from people who describe things as the exact opposite to the usual narrative - the left is actually the side that secretly hates the poor, doesn't want anyone getting more well off, and is trying to hold progress back, whereas the Tories are the progressive party. I can't believe that every one of them is just pretending, but it feels like bizarro world sometimes. It might be a question for AskMe.
posted by lucidium at 5:03 PM on October 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
Joe in Australia, you only mentioned the occupancy rates in parts of London which have been urban since early mediæval times. The majority of Britain's urban development is post industrial revolution and while there was some overcrowding amongst the poor and a fair proportion of resident servants amongst the wealthier, there was also a sizeable middle class who were in single family homes. Including, from what I understand of the history, the family of the stonemason who lived in the house built in 1773 that I used to live in (now separated into 3 one bed council flats).
The actual article's pretty sensationalist. Lots of people do live in HMOs, but plenty are fairly decent quality housing, and it is easy, but tedious, to find out how many people do and what standards each council applies before insisting on licensing.
posted by ambrosen at 5:47 PM on October 21, 2015
The actual article's pretty sensationalist. Lots of people do live in HMOs, but plenty are fairly decent quality housing, and it is easy, but tedious, to find out how many people do and what standards each council applies before insisting on licensing.
posted by ambrosen at 5:47 PM on October 21, 2015
> shows how much the tenants value their SRO hotels, even the most basic ones provided some measure of privacy and security
I think there's a distinction to be made between SRO hotels/hostels -- facilities specifically set up for that type of tenant -- and a situation where a landlord (ahem, slumlord) is "renting by the room" instead of renting the unit , operating a sort of cheap, lowest-common-denominator houseshare where the tenants have no say over their housemates and have very little privacy or security or legal rights.
posted by desuetude at 10:03 PM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
I think there's a distinction to be made between SRO hotels/hostels -- facilities specifically set up for that type of tenant -- and a situation where a landlord (ahem, slumlord) is "renting by the room" instead of renting the unit , operating a sort of cheap, lowest-common-denominator houseshare where the tenants have no say over their housemates and have very little privacy or security or legal rights.
posted by desuetude at 10:03 PM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
Amongst my friends, it's mostly because they believe they'll be better off. Not in some delusional "embarrassed millionaire" way, but as in they've sat down with a calculator and the policies and worked out that they'd have an extra hundred pounds at the end of the year.
Thank you.
Dismissing all Tory voters as rabid xenophobic Daily Mail readers helps no one.
In the 1911 census, there were 7 adults living in my one-bedroom Victorian flat.
posted by Helga-woo at 12:40 AM on October 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
Thank you.
Dismissing all Tory voters as rabid xenophobic Daily Mail readers helps no one.
In the 1911 census, there were 7 adults living in my one-bedroom Victorian flat.
posted by Helga-woo at 12:40 AM on October 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
'Things sucked a century ago so the poor shouldn't expect anything now, either'
posted by Dysk at 5:58 AM on October 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 5:58 AM on October 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
Thanks, Dysk. I am frankly amazed that people are bringing up the past and how awful it was for poor people, as though that is what we should be aiming for, or as a reason why we should not complain now. Here, have a look at how bad things were in the 1930s and tell me you want to go back to that.
posted by marienbad at 7:05 AM on October 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by marienbad at 7:05 AM on October 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
'Things sucked a century ago so the poor shouldn't expect anything now, either'
Ha ha, yes, what a blinkered view. Stop wanting things that have historically belonged only to your betters, poors, like eating nutritious food and having a voice in government!
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 7:12 AM on October 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
Ha ha, yes, what a blinkered view. Stop wanting things that have historically belonged only to your betters, poors, like eating nutritious food and having a voice in government!
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 7:12 AM on October 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
Ha ha, yes, what a blinkered view. Stop wanting things that have historically belonged only to your betters, poors, like eating nutritious food and having a voice in government!
ALSO, this narrative obscures the times and places when working/ordinary/common people had it pretty good. We narrate the past as "it always sucked for ordinary people and then it didn't suck and now it's reverting to the mean, too bad", but unless I grossly misunderstand my English history, there were parts of the middle ages, for example, when the peasantry and the guilds were relatively rich and powerful - you read reports of how people could pay in coin for things when coin was uncommon, for example, or you read about the power of the guilds in medieval and renaissance towns. If you read the intro to Lark Rise To Candleford, which is a really revelatory semi-autobiography about growing up in a small farm hamlet in the later 19th century, you'll find too that the oldest people in the hamlet have more and nicer stuff that they got when young or inherited from their parents, because they or their parents lived through a time when working people were doing better.
The story of the past is the story of a push by elites to take away whatever common people manage to get for themselves. That's the enclosure acts, that's the struggle to destroy guilds, that's the struggle to drive down wages. But it's also the story of common people getting stuff, common people winning. We win from time to time and we don't always get crushed. But that narrative is left out of history because it suggests that if we won once, we could win again.
The older I get, the more I understand that the way elites work is to see something that ordinary people have made for themselves, or to see something that was made by collective effort through the state, and then to do whatever they can to seize it for themselves. That is the push to get rid of council houses, for instance. And when there's no more literal property to take, they will take our bodies, our time, the tiniest of our creations in terms of fashion or writing.
posted by Frowner at 7:37 AM on October 22, 2015
ALSO, this narrative obscures the times and places when working/ordinary/common people had it pretty good. We narrate the past as "it always sucked for ordinary people and then it didn't suck and now it's reverting to the mean, too bad", but unless I grossly misunderstand my English history, there were parts of the middle ages, for example, when the peasantry and the guilds were relatively rich and powerful - you read reports of how people could pay in coin for things when coin was uncommon, for example, or you read about the power of the guilds in medieval and renaissance towns. If you read the intro to Lark Rise To Candleford, which is a really revelatory semi-autobiography about growing up in a small farm hamlet in the later 19th century, you'll find too that the oldest people in the hamlet have more and nicer stuff that they got when young or inherited from their parents, because they or their parents lived through a time when working people were doing better.
The story of the past is the story of a push by elites to take away whatever common people manage to get for themselves. That's the enclosure acts, that's the struggle to destroy guilds, that's the struggle to drive down wages. But it's also the story of common people getting stuff, common people winning. We win from time to time and we don't always get crushed. But that narrative is left out of history because it suggests that if we won once, we could win again.
The older I get, the more I understand that the way elites work is to see something that ordinary people have made for themselves, or to see something that was made by collective effort through the state, and then to do whatever they can to seize it for themselves. That is the push to get rid of council houses, for instance. And when there's no more literal property to take, they will take our bodies, our time, the tiniest of our creations in terms of fashion or writing.
posted by Frowner at 7:37 AM on October 22, 2015
The guild point is a great example...it's a great reminder to look at where the narrative you're hearing is coming from, who's pushing it, and who runs the places that you're getting it from.
As an outsider, but not visible one, the class structure in the UK was blindingly, constantly obvious, but very few people seemed to see how it was put, and stayed, in place.
posted by Kreiger at 7:52 AM on October 22, 2015
As an outsider, but not visible one, the class structure in the UK was blindingly, constantly obvious, but very few people seemed to see how it was put, and stayed, in place.
posted by Kreiger at 7:52 AM on October 22, 2015
[...] the oldest people in the hamlet have more and nicer stuff that they got when young or inherited from their parents, because they or their parents lived through a time when working people were doing better.
I think there may have been a selection effect there.
What happened in the rural areas I researched was that the average number of children in a household was large, by our standards, but the number of households was mostly constant. Poor people couldn't afford to rent a croft, let alone buy a farm, so they mostly stayed single and didn't become part of history. A few people were lucky enough to inherit or did well one way or another, so they became the next generation of householders. The others were laborers all their lives and probably died young from overwork.
When poorer people did marry they would have to find a farm that had work for both a male and a female laborer, which wasn't necessarily easy. And if they had kids the mortality rate was something shocking. So most people I researched were descended from big families, but often only one or two of those siblings had any kids themselves.
What this means is, "the oldest people in the hamlet" were the winners from the previous generation, which is why they were much better off than the average person from the current generation. Conversely, almost everyone was descended from people better off than they were. Hence the memories of a gilded age.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:37 PM on October 22, 2015 [3 favorites]
I think there may have been a selection effect there.
What happened in the rural areas I researched was that the average number of children in a household was large, by our standards, but the number of households was mostly constant. Poor people couldn't afford to rent a croft, let alone buy a farm, so they mostly stayed single and didn't become part of history. A few people were lucky enough to inherit or did well one way or another, so they became the next generation of householders. The others were laborers all their lives and probably died young from overwork.
When poorer people did marry they would have to find a farm that had work for both a male and a female laborer, which wasn't necessarily easy. And if they had kids the mortality rate was something shocking. So most people I researched were descended from big families, but often only one or two of those siblings had any kids themselves.
What this means is, "the oldest people in the hamlet" were the winners from the previous generation, which is why they were much better off than the average person from the current generation. Conversely, almost everyone was descended from people better off than they were. Hence the memories of a gilded age.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:37 PM on October 22, 2015 [3 favorites]
What this means is, "the oldest people in the hamlet" were the winners from the previous generation, which is why they were much better off than the average person from the current generation. Conversely, almost everyone was descended from people better off than they were. Hence the memories of a gilded age.
That is fascinating. But also very depressing.
Maybe I'll just pretend I didn't read it and go on believing in a better past.
posted by Frowner at 6:12 AM on October 23, 2015
That is fascinating. But also very depressing.
Maybe I'll just pretend I didn't read it and go on believing in a better past.
posted by Frowner at 6:12 AM on October 23, 2015
I am still not sure what any of this has to do with the present. The world now is not the same world as it was 100 years ago by any stretch of the imagination, let alone the same world as in the Middle Ages. I mean, I love history as much as anyone and more than most, but who gives a shit about "base" expectations. Much like the future, Buckminster Fuller's world of plenty is here, it just isn't evenly distributed, and THAT'S the issue.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 7:50 AM on October 23, 2015
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 7:50 AM on October 23, 2015
It depends whether you believe in linear or cyclical progress. There's a plausible case to be made for progress being cyclical, and going between periods of relative freedom and egalitarianism and periods of hierarchy, and that we're now in a period of accelerating towards a neo-feudal pyramid-shaped society. (After all, what could be more feudal than the core idea of neoliberalism, trickle-down; in the feudal age, there were no universal human rights per se (other than everyone being theoretically equal before God and in the afterlife), and one's rights and freedoms trickled down from their lord.) In fact, the idea has been gaining currency that the period of relative egalitarianism and social mobility in the second half of the 20th century, between WW2 and Reagan/Thatcher, was not a bold new humanist future but a temporary blip caused by a convergence of factors (the destruction of dynastic wealth/concentrated power in WW2 being one of the main ones).
posted by acb at 8:01 AM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by acb at 8:01 AM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yes, and though I am pessimistic by nature I really do want to believe it's different this time. It had the potential to be, but perhaps that has already been squandered.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:26 AM on October 23, 2015
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:26 AM on October 23, 2015
unless I grossly misunderstand my English history, there were parts of the middle ages, for example, when the peasantry and the guilds were relatively rich and powerful -
Sorry to disabuse you - I'm a historian with a specialty in living conditions in England, c1500-1800.
When historians talk about pre-modern (pre-1800) English lower classes being "relatively rich" the emphasis really is on the relatively - that is, compared to continental Europeans or (sometimes) the 19th century. Craig Muldrew, for example, has done some really interesting research strongly suggesting that the poor in circa 1700 ate better than the poor in the 1790s (when a lot of our detailed information comes from). But his point is that the 1790s were a crisis period (which is why elites were investigating living conditions); the poor in 1700 didn't live better than today.
And the whole issue is further complicated by the fact that living conditions are a result of not just on factor, but many, and they don't move together. Housing and food are obvious, of course, but there is also clothing, tools/household goods, etc. So a labouring person in 1700 may have eaten as well as - or better than - a labouring person in 1850 or 1900, but some (many economists) would say that the later person was richer, as they had many, many more consumer goods. The price of consumer goods (clothes, etc) relative to food has changed dramatically due to the Industrial Revolution. Even then, 17th century English people were only a bad harvest or two away from starvation; 18th century Scots and 19th century Irish also starved in bad times. Today we talk about "food insecurity" and how bad it is, but we don't have large numbers of people chewing on bark just to keep from dying.
Housing has also improved. In the 1500 or 1600s, even middling families lived with less space than people today. Poor families lived in one room; middling sort families in 2-3 rooms. Rich people, of course, lived in massive homes, with many servants (labour was also much cheaper). The 2-up, 2-down terrace home was considered a vast improvement on what went before when it was introduced. But even then, many families would rent out 1 or 2 of their 4 rooms.
There is much we can learn from the past; I spent years studying it. But we deceive ourselves when we imagine that people in the past live better than today. Yes, of course middle class people in the past lived better than poor people today -- and this is a shame upon our society -- but the shame is that the richness we have is so unevenly distributed.
*My comments about modern poverty are, of course, about the first world
Also - re Trade Guilds: it would probably be better to think of them as business improvement associations or some kind of business/upper-middle class lobbying/control group. Guild members tended to be the middling to upper sort in their community; employees (aka journeymen) were part of the guild, but less influential than the employers (the masters) - and a lot of guild activity was oriented on maintaining their advantage versus less powerful people (women, outsiders like Jewish craftsmen).
posted by jb at 8:37 AM on October 23, 2015 [3 favorites]
Sorry to disabuse you - I'm a historian with a specialty in living conditions in England, c1500-1800.
When historians talk about pre-modern (pre-1800) English lower classes being "relatively rich" the emphasis really is on the relatively - that is, compared to continental Europeans or (sometimes) the 19th century. Craig Muldrew, for example, has done some really interesting research strongly suggesting that the poor in circa 1700 ate better than the poor in the 1790s (when a lot of our detailed information comes from). But his point is that the 1790s were a crisis period (which is why elites were investigating living conditions); the poor in 1700 didn't live better than today.
And the whole issue is further complicated by the fact that living conditions are a result of not just on factor, but many, and they don't move together. Housing and food are obvious, of course, but there is also clothing, tools/household goods, etc. So a labouring person in 1700 may have eaten as well as - or better than - a labouring person in 1850 or 1900, but some (many economists) would say that the later person was richer, as they had many, many more consumer goods. The price of consumer goods (clothes, etc) relative to food has changed dramatically due to the Industrial Revolution. Even then, 17th century English people were only a bad harvest or two away from starvation; 18th century Scots and 19th century Irish also starved in bad times. Today we talk about "food insecurity" and how bad it is, but we don't have large numbers of people chewing on bark just to keep from dying.
Housing has also improved. In the 1500 or 1600s, even middling families lived with less space than people today. Poor families lived in one room; middling sort families in 2-3 rooms. Rich people, of course, lived in massive homes, with many servants (labour was also much cheaper). The 2-up, 2-down terrace home was considered a vast improvement on what went before when it was introduced. But even then, many families would rent out 1 or 2 of their 4 rooms.
There is much we can learn from the past; I spent years studying it. But we deceive ourselves when we imagine that people in the past live better than today. Yes, of course middle class people in the past lived better than poor people today -- and this is a shame upon our society -- but the shame is that the richness we have is so unevenly distributed.
*My comments about modern poverty are, of course, about the first world
Also - re Trade Guilds: it would probably be better to think of them as business improvement associations or some kind of business/upper-middle class lobbying/control group. Guild members tended to be the middling to upper sort in their community; employees (aka journeymen) were part of the guild, but less influential than the employers (the masters) - and a lot of guild activity was oriented on maintaining their advantage versus less powerful people (women, outsiders like Jewish craftsmen).
posted by jb at 8:37 AM on October 23, 2015 [3 favorites]
Yes, actually, what I was trying to get at was the relatively - not that life was physically better in the Middle Ages than in the present, but that structural inequality wasn't always terrible and pervasive, and therefore always will be. I feel like the way pre-about-1700 gets narrated in popular culture is "from the dawn of time and across Europe, people who were not nobles never had power, were always immiserated and could be beheaded at the drop of a hat".
What I had understood to be true (and I may still be wrong!) was not that working class people in 1600 (for example) had large houses, fancy food, etc, but that there have been historical moments when working people have had some power and stability relative to elites. That was my thinking with guilds and with the ability to pay in coin - not that those things represented wealth in contemporary terms, or that those were great living situations, but that they reflected a more complicated, not completely immiserated past - by the standards of the past.
I mean, perhaps it's misery all the way down, but I thought that there were times (post-plague Europe is the one I'm thinking of) where laborers were scarce and wages rose, for example.
posted by Frowner at 8:58 AM on October 23, 2015
What I had understood to be true (and I may still be wrong!) was not that working class people in 1600 (for example) had large houses, fancy food, etc, but that there have been historical moments when working people have had some power and stability relative to elites. That was my thinking with guilds and with the ability to pay in coin - not that those things represented wealth in contemporary terms, or that those were great living situations, but that they reflected a more complicated, not completely immiserated past - by the standards of the past.
I mean, perhaps it's misery all the way down, but I thought that there were times (post-plague Europe is the one I'm thinking of) where laborers were scarce and wages rose, for example.
posted by Frowner at 8:58 AM on October 23, 2015
What I had understood to be true (and I may still be wrong!) was not that working class people in 1600 (for example) had large houses, fancy food, etc, but that there have been historical moments when working people have had some power and stability relative to elites. That was my thinking with guilds and with the ability to pay in coin - not that those things represented wealth in contemporary terms, or that those were great living situations, but that they reflected a more complicated, not completely immiserated past - by the standards of the past.
I mean, perhaps it's misery all the way down, but I thought that there were times (post-plague Europe is the one I'm thinking of) where laborers were scarce and wages rose, for example.
It's complicated (and late where I am) --
it's true that wages rose after the Black Death, and serfdom was just about eliminated (though not quite), and the 15th/early 16th century in England was more prosperous for the labouring & middling classes than the late 16th/early 17th.
But we're still talking about inequality that dwarfs our own, economic and political. I once graphed the yearly incomes given in Gregory King's estimates from about 1685. I was expecting a more unequal society than our own. I was astounded at how much more unequal it was - more than in the Gilded Age.
And that's not even taking into account political inequality. Riots were semi-legitimate in the early modern period, largely because that (and scurillous ballads) was the only political expression the majority of the country had.
I worked for years with teachers and colleagues who had a really positive view of the past and definitely where not of the linear development school. But if we're talking physical living standards and political and human rights, the twentieth century first world really was better than what came before - and even as we increase in inequality, we are approaching 19th century levels and have not yet gotten to medieval or early modern levels.
posted by jb at 11:18 PM on October 23, 2015
I mean, perhaps it's misery all the way down, but I thought that there were times (post-plague Europe is the one I'm thinking of) where laborers were scarce and wages rose, for example.
It's complicated (and late where I am) --
it's true that wages rose after the Black Death, and serfdom was just about eliminated (though not quite), and the 15th/early 16th century in England was more prosperous for the labouring & middling classes than the late 16th/early 17th.
But we're still talking about inequality that dwarfs our own, economic and political. I once graphed the yearly incomes given in Gregory King's estimates from about 1685. I was expecting a more unequal society than our own. I was astounded at how much more unequal it was - more than in the Gilded Age.
And that's not even taking into account political inequality. Riots were semi-legitimate in the early modern period, largely because that (and scurillous ballads) was the only political expression the majority of the country had.
I worked for years with teachers and colleagues who had a really positive view of the past and definitely where not of the linear development school. But if we're talking physical living standards and political and human rights, the twentieth century first world really was better than what came before - and even as we increase in inequality, we are approaching 19th century levels and have not yet gotten to medieval or early modern levels.
posted by jb at 11:18 PM on October 23, 2015
sorry - a correction to my comment: we are at early twentieth century levels of inequality, and that of the late Middle Ages and early modern were still greater.
I'll let a medievalist come in to make declarations on earlier.
posted by jb at 5:10 AM on October 24, 2015
I'll let a medievalist come in to make declarations on earlier.
posted by jb at 5:10 AM on October 24, 2015
I sometimes see that kind of historical knowledge used to justify (what I consider) a bullshit point of view. Instead of looking at current inequality and saying, "We can do better than this," (because we certainly can), they say, "Look how much better you have it than those people used to," or, as we've seen above, "Shared prosperity was, historically speaking, an aberration, so it's only natural that we should return to Poverty For (almost) All".
I don't think you're doing this, jb, just FYI.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 7:33 PM on October 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
I don't think you're doing this, jb, just FYI.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 7:33 PM on October 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
I prefer to focus on the fact that the prosperity of the industrial revolution didn't really come to the working classes until unions took off -- and that's why it is ridiculous to expect conditions in the developing world to improve through market actions alone (though they are part of it).
But really, I'm aware of this because I had a hard disillusionment: I've looked through the sources for the peasants' "golden age" - and failed to find it. It's always more complicated.
What definitely did happen between the medieval and end of the early modern was an increase of inequality not at the national level (don't know if anyone has/could calculate that), but at the local level. Under feudalism, landlords received labour in place of / as well as money-rent, so they had an incentive to rent small farms to many people, so landholding tended to pretty evenly spread. With the move to only money-rents, landlords increasingly preferred a couple of larger tenants, and we see what is called (in Early Modern English agricultural history jargon) "engrossment": the continual growth of larger farms at the expense of small landholders. This process proceeded across England unevenly - and never occurred in some places. But by the end of the 18th century, we have the emergence of a different class structure at the village level - rather than landlord, and a relatively egalitarian peasantry (though strictly speaking, they weren't peasants), we have landlords, big farmers and landless agricultural labourers.
In their living conditions, those labourers may not have lived worse than their smallholder ancestors - their houses were as big or bigger, their diet the same, maybe worse than the good medieval times, but better than the hungry times -- and not subject to the same instabilities, as England no longer had famines or associated demographic crises. But they held a very different place in village society - and less autonomy, less control over their work and their lives.
*We actually have a pretty good proxy for nutrition through average heights. By this measure, the best fed English people lived about 1000 CE, from their heights fell to a nadir in the early modern - and started rising again in the 19th century. 20th century English are once again as tall as they were in c1000.
I blame the Norman Conquest. Normans, not even once. (October is #NormanAwarenessMonth.)
posted by jb at 8:28 PM on October 24, 2015
But really, I'm aware of this because I had a hard disillusionment: I've looked through the sources for the peasants' "golden age" - and failed to find it. It's always more complicated.
What definitely did happen between the medieval and end of the early modern was an increase of inequality not at the national level (don't know if anyone has/could calculate that), but at the local level. Under feudalism, landlords received labour in place of / as well as money-rent, so they had an incentive to rent small farms to many people, so landholding tended to pretty evenly spread. With the move to only money-rents, landlords increasingly preferred a couple of larger tenants, and we see what is called (in Early Modern English agricultural history jargon) "engrossment": the continual growth of larger farms at the expense of small landholders. This process proceeded across England unevenly - and never occurred in some places. But by the end of the 18th century, we have the emergence of a different class structure at the village level - rather than landlord, and a relatively egalitarian peasantry (though strictly speaking, they weren't peasants), we have landlords, big farmers and landless agricultural labourers.
In their living conditions, those labourers may not have lived worse than their smallholder ancestors - their houses were as big or bigger, their diet the same, maybe worse than the good medieval times, but better than the hungry times -- and not subject to the same instabilities, as England no longer had famines or associated demographic crises. But they held a very different place in village society - and less autonomy, less control over their work and their lives.
*We actually have a pretty good proxy for nutrition through average heights. By this measure, the best fed English people lived about 1000 CE, from their heights fell to a nadir in the early modern - and started rising again in the 19th century. 20th century English are once again as tall as they were in c1000.
I blame the Norman Conquest. Normans, not even once. (October is #NormanAwarenessMonth.)
posted by jb at 8:28 PM on October 24, 2015
Keith Wrightson has a good book on the issue of local inequality from c1500-1700 - Earthly Necessities.
But regarding living conditions: if you asked me whether I would rather be poor in England in 1500, or 1600, 1700 or 1800, I would pick 1500. But I think I would pick 1900 over 1500 (conditions had been improving), and definitely pick 2000 over any time in the past (and I have been poor in the UK recently), including the mid-twentieth century.
For all that wages have stagnated, living conditions for poor Britons really aren't even as bad as the 1950s. My mother-in-law went to school with kids who didn't have shoes, or had jam on bread for their birthday tea instead of cake. She had to go outside for her toilet, and she was "middle class" in her village (her dad was the mayor, but that meant he was a small shopkeeper, and of course his kids went to state schools. She lived in a really rural area).
posted by jb at 8:39 PM on October 24, 2015
But regarding living conditions: if you asked me whether I would rather be poor in England in 1500, or 1600, 1700 or 1800, I would pick 1500. But I think I would pick 1900 over 1500 (conditions had been improving), and definitely pick 2000 over any time in the past (and I have been poor in the UK recently), including the mid-twentieth century.
For all that wages have stagnated, living conditions for poor Britons really aren't even as bad as the 1950s. My mother-in-law went to school with kids who didn't have shoes, or had jam on bread for their birthday tea instead of cake. She had to go outside for her toilet, and she was "middle class" in her village (her dad was the mayor, but that meant he was a small shopkeeper, and of course his kids went to state schools. She lived in a really rural area).
posted by jb at 8:39 PM on October 24, 2015
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The last time I was looking for a place to live Craigslist was full of ads for shared housing, which from the descriptions ranged from atrocious to totally pleasant, but the pleasant ones were noticeably more expensive and highlighted their selectivity. If you don't have the money for the nicer places, or you don't meet their criteria for acceptance ("quiet professional seeks same," say), I think your options for housing are very poor.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:33 AM on October 21, 2015 [1 favorite]