I once read the city described as a “relatively permanent” place. Inserting the word relatively next to permanent seems contradictory. Is it one or the other? Permanent is permanent, a concrete word. It is not permanent-ish, surely? Perhaps using a concrete word but subverting its intention is a perfect analogy for a city. A sprawling mass of brick, metal, mortar and glass that seems inviolable, untouchable, and permanent, suddenly changes constantly. The materials that once seemed unmalleable fall to dust and change again. The thing about cities is that transition and temporality are innate to their identities. With each building that rises, another is flattened into the ground. Unlike a natural landscape, the city landscape morphs and shifts far more rapidly, with city inhabitants’ dwellings constantly changing. It’s a life that is not a stranger to change. But, though the city itself is relatively permanent, its relative permanence for inhabitants fluctuates between the echelons of its members.
In London, there is a housing crisis. This crisis has not come about because of a lack of accommodation; it has come through the lack of affordable accommodation. Though many luxury high-rises line the skyline, a large proportion lie empty. In January 2024, London Councils estimated that one in 50 Londoners are homeless. According to government figures, in the UK, we now have a quarter less social housing stock than in 1979 when the figure was 5.5 million homes, which is now 4.1 million despite the UK’s population growing by 7.8 million. These figures are driven by the lack of affordable housing as contractors seek to make the most profitable accommodations. In Peckham, Berkeley Homes has applied for planning permission from Southwark Council to redevelop the Aylesham Centre to create 877 new homes, of which only 185 homes will be for social rent, and 85 will be “intermediate.” This leaves only 35 percent of the new homes “affordable,” leading to uproar from locals, including the creation of the Asyleham community action. What is considered ‘affordable’ can be questioned. GOV.UK defines affordable or intermediate rent as “Homes let at least 20% below local market rents (affordable rental properties) or let at rates set between market rents and social rents (intermediate rental properties).”
Considering that homes in London sell for 70 per cent higher than the national average, a home defined as affordable will still cost significantly more than anywhere else in the UK and not be proportionate to the majority of people’s wages in the area. Given that Peckham is in England’s 10 percent most deprived areas, it only sets the present residents further from ever being able to remain in their communities.
With rents rising year on year without a rise in ‘real wages’ (i.e., wages proportionate to living costs), individuals are far more likely to compromise basic living standards. One of the ways in which individuals have tried to obtain affordable housing is through living in property guardianships. On GOV.UK, it states that the UK Government “does not endorse or encourage the use of property guardianship schemes as a form of housing tenure.” It states this is because guardians can be asked to live in conditions that do not meet the standards expected in residential properties. The page also highlights that there is no official definition for a property guardian, merely that it is widely accepted that a property guardian is considered to be someone who has entered an agreement to live in a building or part of a building that would otherwise be empty, to safeguard and maintain the property. Guardians do not have the same rights as those renting properties in the rental market. Most rented accommodations fall under Assured Shorthold Tenancy contracts. Property guardians, however, enter Licence Agreements, which are monthly or even weekly rolling contracts, with occupants agreeing to vacate the property within 28 days at any given time. Given that they are a unique type of contract, there are almost no unions to represent guardians’ rights, as there are for renters. So, why do people choose to live in them?
The government’s website offers an outdated estimate of people living in guardianships. They cite that it is somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000. In 2022, the BBC claimed that it was near 10,000. They obtained this number from the Property Guardian Providers Association (PGPA), representing some (but certainly not all) guardianship companies. The PGPA stated that in 2020-21, some 32,000 people applied to become guardians and expected that number to rise to 50,000 at the end of 2022. Considering that we are nearing the end of 2024, if we were to assume that this number has doubled, it would not be outrageous.
Like the artists behind The Forever Temporary Nicolaas van de Lande and Lucía Scarselletta, I live in guardianship properties. Being in property guardianships can be perilous and compromising of basic living standards. I have experienced living with mice, water leaks, having a ceiling crumble and a gas leak; however, I would not trade it for entering the current property market. This is because I have experienced similar issues in London’s rental market. Furthermore, problems that arise vary in their ability to be fixed based on the cooperativeness of your landlord, which itself is a lottery. The amount I can save as a guardian is the most attractive feature. I am ultimately trading off one stress for another through being a guardian. I live under less financial burden, for sure. But it does come with its new precarities.
Lucía’s textile work hanging from the ceiling of the Turf gallery space displays the dicey nature of London’s property market. It is comprised of woven quotations lifted from property descriptions listed on housing search websites. Descriptors stitched into tarpaulin include “well insulated”, “economical”, “efficient”, “high ceilings”, and X “distance from central London.” If you have any experience living in rented accommodation in London, you know that property descriptions are often incredibly misleading. Any viewing of a potential home is a desperate hunt to do a thorough check to find out what is inevitably wrong or amiss with the place whilst also being conscious of the time constraint to put in that offer before the other 200 people interested do. The materiality of the sculpture itself, being tarpaulin, references its use on building sites and scaffolding structures that, despite being temporary structures, seem to take up permanent residence in the city. Lucía’s structure incites the shared feelings of uncertainty and temporality that characterise living in the city, also indicating one of the contributing factors to why she became a property guardian.
Her works feature in parallel with those of her collaborator, Nicolaas. His large-scale works forward the investigation of the uncanniness and proclivity of the housing market and, in turn, guardianship spaces. Upon first glance, it does not appear that Nicolaas’ three-dimensional structures are partly created with oil paint. Their appearances are instead deceitful. They infer that their surfaces are furry, similar to a peach. The use of primary colours that have been dulled down also refers to shapes and colour schemes that can be seen as markers of early childhood, like the markings of a playground or the colours of early learning materials in a school. It refers to a time when, for many, an intellectual relationship with space, habitancy, and permeance were not formed. The notion of everyone having a place they could call home, in the physical and emotional sense, was a given, just as the sky is just blue or the grass is just green.
In my experience of becoming a guardian, I considered that some of the negatives of being a property guardian were also negatives of the rental system. I figured that even if I was given my 28 days’ notice, it was not too dissimilar from being served something like a Section 21 eviction notice. Though this will soon become illegal, extremely recently, an entire apartment block in Deptford housing 250 people was served a Section 21 just weeks before Christmas. Though a Section 21 stipulates that it must give tenants at least two months’ notice vs my License Agreement’s 28 days, I felt that by saving a significant amount on rent, I could build up a financial safety net.
Nicolaas’ works focus more on the visceral experience of being a guardian, which I also relate to on many levels. On the surface, many guardianship properties exist because erasing them as buildings is more complex than keeping them functioning. However, things which would usually be deemed as necessary costs to keep a building in operation might not be seen as profitable for a guardianship company. So, if there is a leak in a roof, whilst in another life of the building, it would be worth the couple hundred pounds it would cost to fix; when it is temporarily protected, it might be easier to shut it down instead. As the exhibition title infers, these places are forever temporary, as their inhabitants wait for the unanticipated day when their living situation becomes no more.
But becoming a property guardian still attracts many. One of the big attractions is to be able to live in an unconventional space. Guardianships are often unique properties such as old schools, hospitals and churches. What I found previously renting is that you always had to give up communal spaces. The places I lived never had a living room, and the bedrooms were always pokey. With the lack of other ‘third spaces’ in and around London, it was a claustrophobic experience, and I was finding few places to actually ‘live’ my life. Here, I spend less money but feel, vaguely and perhaps not even truly, that I have more autonomy over the space I inhabit. Though you are not meant to, if I put a nail in the wall and hang up a painting, it wouldn’t matter because the property’s destiny is to be demolished. That’s essentially what being a guardian is, I sometimes tell people, posh squatting. You pay to inhabit a space that would otherwise be empty whilst it awaits planning permission to be demolished. In almost every circumstance, it is then built up again as luxury accommodation, without much regard for the reason that the building was initially made and what it contributed to the local community. In these spaces, however, some can live in the city’s transitory cracks to reclaim some space as their own, albeit temporarily, in a place where space is ever scarce.