Average rents in the city have risen to a staggering £1885 a year. Year on year, rents have risen by up to 8 percent.
By Pat Meusel
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Bristol City Council has been based here since 1956 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Neiljforsyth)
Bristol City Council, led by the Green Party, is set to sign off on new rules that would allow the construction of flats as small as 18 square metres.
Socialist Worker spoke to Delane, a young IT worker who has recently moved to Bristol from London.
“Everything that’s being built in Bristol seems to be small, ‘student flats,’ with rents that are ridiculously expensive,” he said.
Bristol is in the grips of a housing crisis. Average rents in the city have risen to a staggering £1885 a year. Year on year, rents have risen by up to 8 percent.
At the same time, Bristol records the highest rates of homelessness in the south west. The housing charity Shelter reports that 1 in 113 residents of Bristol experience homelessness.
And the council has increasingly looked to so-called co-living spaces as a solution to the city’s housing crisis.
A planning document published by the council reads, “It is anticipated that this form of development will be a more prominent feature of Bristol’s housing market in the coming years”.
“A lot of homes on the market are already along the lines of these ‘built for renters schemes,’ on the model of co-living spaces,” Delane added.
“They’re a bit bigger than what’s being proposed now. But they’re always advertised as ‘community oriented developments.’
Indeed, the council claims that, “Bringing together people in a communal environment allows the sharing of costs and resources”.
But, as Delane points out, these developments offer little in the way of community.
“They’re advertised as the sorts of places you can move in to–and out of–quickly. And that’s the point. They offer no sense of long-term stability,” he said.
When plans for the even smaller co-living spaces were first published last year, the council’s plans were criticised by the public.
The council’s response reads that, “Combined with communal space, this size of unit can provide suitable living space for the occupant”.
But the government’s own Nationally Described Space Standard states that one person must have a floor space of at least 37 square metres–more than double what’s now being proposed in Bristol.
Delane pointed out that the plans for even smaller co-living spaces in Bristol was part and parcel with other problems in the city.
“The lack of affordable and decent public transport in the city is shocking,” he said.
“I’m on a wage where I can afford to live in the centre. But some of my co-workers, on decent wages, have to live outside the city, so commuting to the city’s become extortionate,” he added.
And for him, it’s no surprise that the Greens have put forward this plan.
“Surely, building affordable, social housing, along with improving public transport are things a Green council would be in favour of?” he asked.
Bristol shows the limits of the Greens —and the need to fight for decent housing for all on the streets, estates and neighbourhoods.