The housing I had as a teacher in London

When I trained to teach in London in my mid-thirties I lived in halls of residence which had breakfast and dinner included which was great. I was actually married and had a daughter but they were living somewhere else with my wife’s work so that was quite lucky for them and it meant I could live a student’s life again for a while. I graduated with a PGCE in post compulsory education and training at master’s level in 2003 and got my first job after graduation at Hammersmith and West London College (actually an interesting point that I found out some years later was that only 15% of FE teachers had a PGCE in 2004 and at that time less than 20% of those were at master’s level). I would have loved to say that the salary three levels up the lecturer scale (including a London allowance) was enough for me to rent or buy a house or flat suitable for me, my wife and my child which I believe it should have been, but sadly that was far from the case. The accommodation I found for the first six months was a shared flat in West Kensington. There were five of us in a four bedroom flat which didn’t even have a living room, just a small galley kitchen.

I started three level up the lecturer scale as a lecturer in business communication because of my PGCE and previous experience teaching in Asia but that shared accommodation was really all I could afford when you think that they say a fair amount to spend on rent is about 30% of your gross salary but I got a bit upset with sharing with so many people so I looked for my own place even though it would take me quite a lot over that 30%. I looked at studio flats close to where I taught so that I would save the time and money in commuting costs, and a studio flat was certainly all I could afford at best which isn’t much. Many of the flats I looked at were on the edge of the underground line where you could hear the trains going past, I also looked at two small flats in Kensington Olympia that were very small rooms with a shower in the corner and a shared toilet and even they were at least £600 a month. There was a two bedroom flat close to where I taught as an example of what was possible, it was on the eighth floor in a local authority council estate and was £1,000 a month in the local estate agent’s window but that would have been nearly all of my take home pay, so again no way of supporting my wife and child even with a good job and a postgraduate education in our supposed meritocracy.

What I did find in the end was a one bedroom flat in West Kensington but the bedroom needed renovation so it was let as a studio flat for £750 a month including council tax which actually worked out as quite a bargain on the one hand but a lot of money for a single room on the other, certainly as I only took home about £1,200 a month from teaching. I lived there for the next 18 months, interestingly, just a few doors down from where Gandhi had lived as a law student. It was very basic but okay and it had it’s own separate kitchen and bathroom, while I was there some builders came to renovate the bedroom, so even though I was working as a teacher with occupational health checks, enhanced criminal checks and a postgraduate education it meant that my studio flat was now a legitimate one bedroom flat and in that locality was worth a lot more than I was paying and far more than I could afford which left me feeling ashamed and uneasy as to what would happen.

In 2005 I was given key-worker assistance to buy my own place. I would say that there were many places near to where I worked that had the appearance of budget build accommodation but they were all actually well out of my price range. I looked at a two bedroom flat above some shops in Middlesex with an 80 year lease that was in my budget, I looked at an ex-council property in Bromley in need of significant renovation, I looked at an ex-council flat in Stevenage, and two flats and a house in Luton, one an ex-council maisonette and one a nice small house but too far from the train station, and finally, a two bedroom flat near the train station, as I didn’t have a car and needed to commute to work by train. I bought the flat near the train station and planned to commute to West London every day to work which would have been expensive and time consuming and really this flat was just about adequate anyway, so instead I decided to resign from my teaching job and go and live with my wife and daughter who were now both living in France in a nice flat. I stayed there as a house husband for the next 18 months and our second child was born there. I then actually had a real problem finding work again, I would spend two hours filling in an application form for a teaching position and get no reply, at first it was okay as my experience and qualifications were quite fresh but as time went on it became clearer that I simply wasn’t wanted.

One thing I’d like to add about the studio flat where I had lived from 2003 to 2005 as a teacher, the landlord told me that he had bought the entire house in 1989 for £55,000, I think it must have had five or six flats, just my flat when renovated to a one bedroom flat alone would have been worth that much in about four years. He told me once that he had lived well on the proceeds including putting his children through private school and the actual house even then in 2005 was worth about a million pounds.

So what of me as a teacher in my mid-thirties with a postgraduate education, enhanced criminal checks, occupational health screening and a wife and a child? Well, I didn’t seem to count at all is all I can say, and I was quite puzzled by the whole experience. I later found out that I probably could have had the same flat on housing benefit and with job-seekers allowance not really be any worse off than I was which I remember being amazed at because my job was so difficult and so meaningful.

I think the best way I can explain the issue I had was this: Working in Hammersmith with its Argos, T K Maxx, Iceland frozen foods and Primark then commute about 40 minutes to Kilburn High-street with its two William Hill betting shops (one at each end of the small high street), poundland and Peacocks, then on for another 30 minutes on the motorway to Luton where I could just about afford to find a property with key-worker assistance with my job as a lecturer of further education, four levels up the lecturer scale with a postgraduate education, a wife and a child.

For some reason people don’t seem to talk about this, they say that finding property is a pipe dream for the students but I’m not sure if that’s because they’ve all got their heads buried in the sand? As this news article from 2013 shows, it says the cost is fuelled by a shortage of housing stock, well, obviously not by a lack of people who would need to earn about £120,000 a year to pay the mortgage on the ‘average’ house.

Actually, I just came across an old image I had from 2005. This was a property I viewed in Middlesex about an hour from work by public transport, it had an 80 year lease and was £120,000, as I’ve written in the image the mortgage was £750 a month, the council tax was about £100 a month and transport to work was about £100 a month, I had a pre-tax income of £22,500 and I think what I was trying to say was that also my tax and national insurance added up to about £4,500 a year on top of the £11,400 plus my student loan and pensions was another £200 a month or £2,400 a year, making a total of nearly £18,500 of my £22,500 a year before food clothes, utilities and recreation. I remember that the mortgage lender wouldn’t give me the mortgage because at the time they said they’d never be able to resell it, but actually it was the only 2-bed property in all of West London that I could find within my budget.

‘Just thinking about it this morning, I was living in a studio flat that was very simple, I couldn’t afford a car and I didn’t even have a computer, my idea of a good time apart from visiting my family was a builder’s breakfast in Earls Court🙂’ added December 2024