It goes for £2000 a month ($2500) and is in Zone 1, a 25 minute stroll from the London Stock Exchange. You aren't going homeless if you have £2000 a month to spend on rent, and Zone 2 is one stop away on the Jubilee line. You're moving to Zone 2/3, or moving into a flatshare. Or out of London.
Given the location, pricing and finish I suspect it's more likely to be used as a pied a terre -- a second (weekday) home -- for someone in the City.
Interesting. Here, when conversions happen to make cellars into self-contained units, I'd argue they are frequently only suitable for short term lets, on the basis that no-one should have to live like that. In converting properties whose lower ground floors were never meant to be used for residential purposes into housing, we get stuff like this.
Rental Opportunity of the Week: A Remodelled Crypt, for Goths Your own windowless basement in London Bridge, for just £2,000 a month.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/akz9ze/rental-opportunity-london-bridge-basement
Well on that we are definitely in agreement.
In this specific instance, I suspect it is because there is every indication that the basement room rented by OP was not, in fact, a fully self contained suite within a house, but was a guest room.
How do you physically get into these "basement suites" in your part of the world? When I lived in a townhouse, access to the cellar was via a door in the middle of the property leading off the kitchen. There would be no practical way to split the cellar off from the main property as a separate dwelling. But having guests sleep down there every so often was no big deal.
I understand that. OP expressly described this basement experience as "renting out spare rooms", though, so I hope you'll understand why I'm treating this as a spare room being rented out.
I live in London and am very familiar with the issue of affordable self-contained accommodation being flipped into overpriced Airbnb units, and I would agree with you that such units should be retained as residential housing.
I slept on a pull out bed in a mate's living room once so I guess that should be converted into a separate dwelling.
I don't see how that matters. A spare room is a spare room whether it's in the basement, the first floor, or the attic.
Bloody hell, what did party rings ever do to you?
Also: oreo is ranked too high on the list. I know it's at the bottom. That's too high.
I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't reopen. Channel crossing passengers are down 30% since 2019. They've also canned the Disneyland Express.
You can only starve a government body of funding -- making it muddle along depleting its reserves and selling off assets -- for so long until a final bill tips it over the edge, so I'd argue that if it wasn't this bill it would be another bill.
Other councils took risky approaches to replace money cut under Austerity:
Woking said that against its available core funding of £16m in the 2023-24 financial year, the council faced a deficit of £1.2bn.
Racked up to finance the building and acquisition of a vast empire of commercial assets, its investments included a complex of sky-high towers – standing as the tallest buildings outside a big city in England – including a four-star Hilton hotel, public plazas, parking facilities and shops.
Many councils piled into property and other commercial enterprises to raise money to fill gaping holes in their budgets and to undertake regeneration projects after sharp cuts to central government funding introduced under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
If Birmingham city council was taking money from Russia it probably wouldn't be bankrupt.
Some people own more than one house, and perpetually rent those properties out via sites like Airbnb.
So we have:
Buying a property that you don't intend to live in, so that you can rent it out to other people as a short term let.
Buying a property that you live in, and occasionally renting out a spare room as a short-term let while you continue to occupy the property.
These are not the same.