Housing Crisis - 5 in a two bed flat

[Westcountrygal]

I was flabbergasted to recently learn about so many people sharing incredibly cramped living conditions. A Scottish MP saying on the radio that he grew up sharing with his two brothers, effectively three kids to a bedroom.

A colleague living in a two bed flat with her three kids, older ones sharing and baby in with the parents- where will they all go as the kids get older?

I live in an incredibly expensive city and coming across so many people living in very cramped living conditions must be so difficult. Where do people even keep all their clothes/ endless washing/ belongings?

Surely that's a "want" rather than a "need".

3 kids in 1 room is fine if same sex. If not parents can sleep in living room….
I know a family of 7, almost 8 in a 2 bed flat. They will get a 4 bed house eventually but still… girls room, boys room, parents in living room. It’s a workable solution.

debatable....if you WFH you need a space to WFH, if you have friends and family who aren't local then it's nice to have somewhere for them to be able to stay. If your kids are different genders then they're going to want their own rooms, or maybe one child's bedroom isn't large enough to be shared....

But surely this is on the parents? If you don’t have space for more kids why are you having them! It is your responsibility to feed and house your children!

Until very recently this was completely standard. My dad had 5 brothers all in one room. We are living in very unusual times and geography to think everyone needs their own room

Friends and family stay in hotels surely! Are you suggesting people are living in cramped conditions because they don’t have a study or guest room

To those who are saying why have more kids if you don't have room to house them? On the Estate where I'm from, it was usually so that they could get a bigger house. Judgy I know but it happened! Don't think it happens now though but may be wrong.

Doesn't happen now, at least not where I live. There's 24000 people on the list for housing and your only hope of getting a larger house, is to swap with someone else. That's what I'm trying to do.

christ they hardly to come to visit as it without them having to pay £200 a night to stay somewhere!! No, I'm not suggesting that's why people are living in cramped conditions, it was in response to the question as to why someone might need a 4 or 5 bedroom house if they had 2 kids!

That’s great for you but not everyone is fortunate enough to plan to this degree and also change of circumstances or overwhelming desire for more children is a factor

Both me and my partner's employers have down-sized their office capacity massively since COVID. It's now expected that we will work from home part of the week. That's fine for those with large houses but for junior colleagues it often means working at a desk in their bedroom in a house share. For us, we have a 3 bed and 1 child - so our spare room gives us one 'office' space but we can't both work at home at the same time.When we move we will be looking for a 4 bed.

What I can't understand is people who are in emergency accomodation with kids already, having another child while they are still living in one room in a hotel. I've seen it happen a few times. I don't know if it's that they think they'll ultimately get a bigger house.

My friend works from home. On a laptop at a table in her one bed flat

That’s really bad for you though both physically and mentally. I also have no idea how people can get office tasks done with just the one screen. It’s so much slower

Reminded me of Bill Shankly. One of ten kids..family of 12 , 2 roomed house…later got the 2 rooms next door as well. When you see the footprint of the house, which is all that’s left now, it’s tiny.----

Well she's happily done do gor over 6 years now

Bravo for her but I worked from home during lockdown from my dining table and ended up with serious back issues and really can’t do my job effectively without a large monitor and 2 screens and a proper mouse and keyboard.

Why not just sleep in the sitting room. Surely a better option? Sounds so claustrophobic!

My parents always stayed in a hotel when they came over to visit. The average family doesn't have a guest room in the south east anyway.

Many people did have space for their children when they had them but following on from marriage breakdown/and or being priced out of the rental market things changed.

I'm quite happy to have given up my bedroom so my 2 can have a room of their own. They won't be here for ever so a few years on a sofa to give them the privacy they need as teenagers is no issue for me. The parents chose to have the children so why can't they make do?

It’s pretty normal for families to cram into houses/flats around the world. When the kids get older it’s a bunk bed and a single… used to be really common. If that’s all the parents can afford then so long as it’s safe, secure, warm, clean and there’s food and love and laughter - what is the issue?

Agree. It's one thing to do the odd day here or there at a kitchen table but to do my job properly I need keyboard, mouse, 2 screens. My partner ideally needs 3 screens (that's what he has in his work office) but we don't have the space to accommodate that.

I'm not as squeezed as that, but I do sleep in the sitting room so my two kids (actually young adults, and one has a bf who stays over a lot) can have a bedroom each.

Luckily we have a second toilet which is quite roomy so I have built shelves in there and keep all my clothes and bedding in baskets. Its not great, but its ok.

My gran raised ten kids in a two bed cottage! Not all at the same time, to be fair - the eldest had moved out before the youngest were born. But they had a girls room and a boys room, each with four singles crammed in (the ceilings were too low for bunks). You had to walk through the girls room to get to the one bathroom, so your sleep would be disturbed all night. Her husband slept in a kind of cupboard off the bathroom, and my gran slept on the sofa downstairs.

Two things I struggle to understand, though: one is that they had two reception rooms but one was kept for 'best' and no one was allowed in there. Which was weird because they never had visitors. Second thing: she had alsations. Bloody alsations when there wasn't room to flick your hair...

I didnt even have a bedroom as a kid. I slept in the corner of the kitchen and later on in a corridor. With rats and no central heating or double glazing. This was in the 60's though.