I remember as a student renting a hotel room in New York for $10. Now in the 1970s that was expensive.
But the hoteliers didn’t reckon on the canniness of impoverished Irish exchange students. The trick was for one of us – who looked a little bit respectable to check-in. Then and quietly the rest of us will follow, one by one, and in a busy hotel, no one would notice.
Mattresses would be slung on the floor and bases would become beds. Double rooms were a premium as you could get two people into them and with the bases, that would make four. The record was 10 in one room which included the bath. The next morning, one by one we would sneak out and Mr Respectable would pay the bill.
Normally I have little sympathy for Generation X and Z who keep on whinging about the cost of accommodation, but I’m changing my mind.
A new survey shows that the cost of the room is £1,000 a month in London – that’s a ROOM and unless you are going to get 10 people in there, that is pricey.
London is almost impossible for them. And that’s where the good career-enhancing jobs are. So those with rich mums and Dads are fine which is unfair to everyone else.
We boomers were lucky.
Of course, the problem is the government’s total inability to have any sort of planning policy except to erect hurdles like nutrient neutrality, the protection of birds and badgers and the sacred Green Belt.
I thought a new Labour government would have an outbreak of common sense over housing but not a bit of it. This week, Angela Rayner is heading back to nutrient neutrality and the huge effect it is having as an impediment to house building.
Never mind the few thousand poor wretches arriving in small boats from across the channel, this year there will be 600,000 legal migrants and they will all want somewhere to live. And don’t move to Dublin, it’s more expensive than London.
Suddenly ten to a room looks like luxury.
Have a good weekend.
Tom
by the Planning PR guru 