Y:Cube Is Here. Would You Live In It?

The Y was officially launched this week by the YMCA in South West London. It might look like a life-sized monopoly hotel, but it’s actually a really innovative housing solution.

The development is made up of 36 one-bedroom flats (or cubes) each of which have their own bathroom, living room and kitchen. The cubes are prefab, put together in a factory and dropped into place, in one piece, by a crane. They cost £55,000 each which, when you think about the market price of even the pokiest one bed cupboard flat in London, is pretty good.

The idea came about because the YMCA wanted to find a sustainable and affordable accommodation which would support homeless people back into employment and education. The YMCA currently has to turn people away from their hostels because they are so crowded.

Of course, this is an important solution to a desperate problem, but what they’ve come up with also fits into an even bigger narrative.

Prefab housing might make you think of those portacabin temporary classrooms you had at school but these are pretty neat. The architects who have designed the Y are Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners who also designed Terminal 5 and the Cheesegrater. So, these are not exactly your average prefabs.

From the outside the development is a patchwork of industrial grey cement and bright primary colours. Inside there’s an open plan kitchen/living area which is clean, light and, actually, bigger than most of the living areas I’ve had since I started renting in London. The bedroom is big enough for a double bed and a wardrobe and has an en suite bathroom. All in all it’s very ‘if Ikea made houses’, but it’s super-functional and I would happily live in one. In fact, my bedroom and kitchen in my last flat were smaller, darker, danker and far more expensive than the Y . Also, because it's a self-contained one-bed residents won’t have to deal with the perils of shared housing: disappearing cheese, shower queues, washing up that definitely isn’t yours etc.

The Problem

We have a housing shortage in Britain. The increase of demand and lack of supply, alongside other factors like the booming buy-to-let market and an ageing population of baby boomer homeowners holding onto their properties have all contributed to the problem. Successive governments, over the last few decades, have fundamentally failed to build enough homes to meet growing demand.

To give you some idea of the scale of the problem: Britain needs to build 250,000 homes a year, and since the 1990s, when council house building tailed off, we’ve only been managing around 140,000. The number of new homes built has not matched the number needed in England since 1989. The credit crunch hasn’t helped, we only built 110,000 homes in England in 2013.

As a result, the cost of home ownership is now out of reach for many young people, particularly those leaving supported or temporary accommodation.

The current government has committed to building 200,000 so-called ‘starter homes’, but, as Shelter’s research clearly shows, families on an average income will be unable to afford these in 58% of local authorities by 2020, and families earning the new national living wage will be priced out in 98% of the country. It’s bleak, I know. Sorry.

Traditionally, renting has been seen as a temporary stage in your life. Something you do in that awkward post university period when you’re not a teenager anymore, not quite yet a proper adult… starting out in your career and working out who the hell you are. However, now more people than ever before are renting and, for the first time in history, the number of people in privately rented accommodation has surpassed the number of people in social housing. You can thank Maggie T for that one.

People who rent privately are, on average, spending around 40% of their total earnings on rent.

The great irony is that’s double the average amount spent by people who have mortgages. It’s cheaper to have a mortgage than it is to rent, but in order to get that mortgage you’ve got to be able to afford the deposit which is pretty tricky if almost half of what you earn is gone on rent before you even leave the house. It’s a vicious cycle. Two thirds of private renters in England are not saving anything towards a deposit, that’s up from 53% two years ago.

Young people are being affected more by the crisis than anyone, as I’m sure oyu know as well as I do. Housing charity Shelter has warned that only 20% of 25-34 year olds will be on the property ladder in 2020, compared with 60% a decade ago. Hence the catchy name we’ve been given: Generation Rent.

At this point it’s not enough just to build more homes to solve the housing and renting crisis – we need to build homes which are affordable, especially for those who need them the most.

The Solution?

The YMCA has specifically developed the Y to provide what they call ‘move on’ homes for young people who have been staying in their hostels, but cannot afford the jump in price that moving into the private rental sector would entail.

Many of the young people who come to stay in YMCAs have been homeless for some period of time. For them stability is particularly important.

The weekly rent for a Y is set at £145 a week. That’s £628 a month. This is 65% of market rent in the area, and looking at London rental costs as a whole, a single room in the capital will soon be comparable to renting an entire Y flat.

Amy, 22, has been homeless on and off since she was 16. She has lived with her auntie and in hostels, but could never manage to get a council flat because, as she puts it, ‘I wasn’t pregnant, so I wasn’t a priority.’ She says, ‘I’ve moved so much. The Y is mine. It might not be permanent, but it’s mine.’

She points out that to rent privately you need a deposit, which she can’t afford. And, certainly, it is difficult to get a deposit together at the best of times once you factor in the rent required upfront, the deposit itself (which is usually one and a half month’s rent) plus agents fees (which vary depending on the agency). Living here will give her a chance to save.

Amy wants to see Y everywhere. ‘I think they should build more of these. There’s loads of empty land and buildings that are disused… they’re just left. Before they built this there was just one building here. Now there are 36 flats here. This little space has changed 36 lives.’

Today, when it’s actually the shortage of land and lack of building that is driving up property prices, they might just be our saviour. Just as Boxpark in Shoreditch is a great way of making the most of previously unused space, the possibilities for Y are endless.

Because of how quickly the cubes can be installed and uninstalled they could, in theory, be put up on land which is free for a few years at a time, like brownfield sites waiting to be developed. A cube will last around 60 years and can be moved five times during its life.

The Y is a great thing, that’s for sure. However, it’s important to note that it is still a very temporary solution, and is only intended as one. We still need a long-term solution to the lack of affordable homes in this country, particularly in London. But while it may not have super powers that will solve the housing crisis entirely the Y could certainly offer an as yet unseen and much needed alternative model of housing and, more importantly, an alternative way of thinking about housing.

This bit is key. It’s possible that we are going to have to completely transform the way we think about housing in this country.

For so long ‘an Englishman’s home’ has been ‘his castle’, but for members of Generation Rent the prospect of owning a home may well be remote. And, if we do eventually buy, it’s unlikely what we will be able to afford will look anything like a castle (unless we decide to buy on the outer Hebrides).

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Photographed by Jake Kenny

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.