Harper-Thames on the informal sublets, room shares, and arrangements that actually house the creative class
Published at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat. The formal housing market in Shoreditch does not house the people who make Shoreditch what it is. The rents that appear on Rightmove are not the rents that artists, musicians, and creative workers are paying. They are the rents that are paid through a set of informal arrangements, sublets, room shares, borrowed studio space with a sleeping area, that have existed in E1 since the area first became attractive to creative workers and that persist because they are the only mechanism that allows the people who create the neighbourhood’s value to remain in it. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat have been talking to people in this economy.
The Arrangements
The arrangements are various. A studio space rented at commercial rates by a more established artist is informally sublet to two younger artists who use it in shifts. A flat with a Rightmove listing of £2,200 per month is occupied by three people paying £733 each, through an arrangement that the landlord is aware of and tacitly accepts. A photography studio that officially closes at 6pm has a living area behind the backdrop that the owner uses as accommodation, which is not legal but is widespread enough that enforcement would require a political decision that no local authority has been willing to make.
The Fragility
The fragility of these arrangements is the story: each of them is one landlord decision, one enforcement action, or one personal breakdown away from disappearing, and the person displaced by its disappearance has no formal recourse and no affordable alternative within travelling distance. The informal housing economy is what allows the creative economy to exist in this neighbourhood, and both are more precarious than the neighbourhood’s reputation suggests. For East London housing information, see Tower Hamlets. More at NewsThump.
About This Column
This piece is published at Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat. The writer covers their specific London beat with the sustained attention and personal voice that both publications value. Further articles in this series will appear as coverage continues across both publications.
London’s complexity as a subject rewards the kind of sustained, specific, opinionated coverage that this column provides. The city changes constantly and the record of those changes, accumulated article by article over time, is what both publications are committed to building. This piece is one contribution to that record, observed from the specific vantage point that the writer brings to the city and to the themes described above. The coverage will continue as the city continues to produce material worth reporting on, which is always.
Readers following this column are encouraged to consult both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat for the full range of London coverage that both publications provide. Together they produce a portrait of the city that no single publication can generate alone, and that portrait is what both are committed to building with sustained, specific, and honest attention to the London that their writers inhabit and their readers recognise.
The writer continues to document London with the sustained attention and specific perspective that characterises this column. Both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat are committed to maintaining this kind of specific, informed London coverage, and further articles in this series will appear in both publications as the coverage continues. The city rewards sustained attention, and the column’s record of that attention over time is what gives individual pieces their context and their meaning. Readers who want to follow the coverage are encouraged to consult both publications regularly for the full range of London journalism they produce together.
London: Why It Rewards the Patient Visitor
London is a city that reveals itself slowly. The visitor who arrives with a fixed itinerary and a list of sights will see those sights and will have a valid experience of London. The visitor who allows some of their time to be unplanned, who walks without a destination, who enters a museum or a market or a pub because it appeared rather than because it was scheduled, will have a different experience that is, in most cases, more memorable and more revealing of what the city actually is. This column exists to support the second kind of visitor by providing the specific, honest, non-promotional information that makes unplanned exploration productive rather than wasteful. The journalism is practical and the practice is principled: good travel writing serves the traveller rather than the tourist industry, and the traveller’s interest is in authentic experience rather than managed experience. Both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat are committed to this kind of journalism and will continue to produce it across the full range of London coverage they offer.
The writer’s ongoing coverage of London for both publications draws on sustained residence in and engagement with the city that allows the specific and accurate reporting that occasional visitors cannot produce. That sustained engagement is what this column offers and what distinguishes it from the promotional and aggregated information that most travel coverage provides. The coverage will continue as London continues to change and to produce new things worth reporting on, which it does consistently and which the publications will continue to document.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
