This is London: Sleeping under the stairs rents for $500/month

It’s not only in America that housing prices are rising while incomes remain stagnant. According to the financial experts who track such things, London is second only to Hong Kong in unaffordable living.

In London, one homeowner ran an ad renting out the space under the stairs for £500 a month. As you can see in the picture, it’s basically a closet with a bit of padding on the floor, and nothing else. It does, however, come furnished with some spare coats and a box of something called “Daz.”^[1]

In the meantime, back in the USA, people are renting out their bathrooms. One enterprising American started a company called “Airpnp,” which is just like AirBnb, except, instead of renting out a room, you rent out your restroom – but only long enough for your customer to use the toilet.^[2]

For people who cannot afford the skyrocketing price of housing, or who can afford it but just don’t want to get stuck paying a mortgage for the rest of their lives, there is a new alternative: Tiny houses. In fact, there’s a whole “tiny house movement” sweeping  across America. Now you can have the pleasure of living in a Third World shack without ever leaving the country!

As a website devoted to the subject says: “Simply put, it is a social movement where people are choosing to downsize the space they live in. The typical American home is around 2,600 square feet, whereas the typical small or tiny house is between 100 and 400 square feet. Tiny houses come in all shapes, sizes, and forms, but they enable simpler living in a smaller, more efficient space.”^[3]

Jeff Wilson, aka “Professor Dumpster,” is someone who has taken this idea to the extreme. An environmental science teacher at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, he converted a 33-square-foot campus dumpster into a home and lived there for one full year. Actually, it doesn’t look all that bad!^[4]

[1] ZeroHedge.com

[2] SFWeekly.com

[3] TheTinyLife.com

[4] DumpsterProject.org