6 foot wide wooden house appears in London

The current housing crisis has led to the government trying to find new ways to create affordable housing and to find areas where these projects can go ahead. Lack of space is a huge problem in the UK right now, and seeing as the population is growing rapidly its set to become even more difficult in the future. This could be why one person in Leyton, London decided to take matters into their own hands and create a six foot wide ‘house’ between two other terraced buildings on Manor Road.

Before the house was constructed a dilapidated garage took up the space, but according to locals one month ago construction work took place and this tiny property was suddenly there instead. However, locals are still unsure who constructed the property and whether anyone actually lives there at this point in time. IT consultant Esther Regenwetter, who has lived on the street for fifteen years, said: “For a long time it was a horrible shed, not even a garage. They seem to have put this bizarre front on it, but what was there before was really, really horrible. I don’t have anything against it.”

Meanwhile, a seventy year old woman who lives next door to the pop-up property said: “You’re going to have to be quite thin to live in there.” While it may be amusing to some, Waltham Forest Council has taken the matter seriously and is currently seeing whether there was any proper planning permission for the property. A spokesman for the council said: “We are investigating and will take appropriate action,” and also said that if the house was built illegally then the council will arrange to have it demolished.

Even though tiny homes seems like a clever way to solve the housing crisis, it seems very unlikely that there will be many tenants out there who would be happy to live in a property of such a small size. Furthermore, landlords would probably find it difficult to find a landlord insurance provider to cover such small properties as they are less safe than regular properties, and housing charities such as Shelter would also be opposed to such ideas as a lack of space and natural light is already a problem in many houses in the UK. While this ramshackle property may seem funny to some, it really does highlight the housing problem in the UK right now, and how urgent it is for new housing to be created.

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