People of London: Cost of living in capital ‘unaffordable’

Actor Chris O’Dowd has said he feels like Londoners are down and broke, but how do Londoners feel?

Transcript

00:00Actor and director Chris O'Dowd recently revealed he felt the city feels down after returning

00:07to London having lived in Los Angeles. O'Dowd said it's just gone through 10 years of austerity

00:14and you can feel it. The actor explained the impression he was getting was that people are

00:20down and wasn't sure if it was because of political divisiveness or because everyone is broke.

00:27The cost of living in London is high with rental costs and house prices at what Londoners call

00:33unaffordable levels. So are people in London feeling broke and down? I spoke to Londoners

00:39to see how they feel about their future buying houses and what life is like in the capital

00:45at the moment. It's impossible to buy in London. My girlfriend and I would love to move in together

00:54but it's not possible. I'm a creative. I need to be in town a lot. I teach a lot in town which means

01:00I need to be living in the closer zones because if I'm only on one tube line then I'm stuffed if

01:08the train lines are down. So I need to be living really central but then you're looking at houses

01:14which cost like half a million. I don't know because of the rhetoric around how difficult

01:20it is for first-time buyers I'm not thinking about buying a home for ages. I'll probably

01:23be renting for many years. This area has changed massively. The house that my parents purchased

01:29on their salaries when I was a kid was it was something like like 250,000 or whatever which

01:36is still pretty high I think and then now it's worth like over a million or whatever but it's

01:40it's just a regular townhouse and it's even it's one half of a conjoined house to begin with.

01:44Yes I'd like to go back and live in my birth my birth sort of young area like Brixton. I cannot

01:50afford it. I'd like to go back there. I was born at Elephant and Castle. I'd like to go back and

01:55live there to be honest with you but I cannot afford to go back there. Wages aren't going up

02:00everything's more expensive but rents are going up. Landlords don't really care.

02:06I think there's you know people in their 20s 30s 40s even 50s are sharing which wasn't the

02:14norm back in the 80s. Yeah I mean I've been incredibly fortunate you know our family home

02:19is in London so I'm proud to pay that but yeah some of my friends are graduating moving to London

02:24paying a thousand a month on rent. Absolutely absurd. I don't know how people can afford it to

02:28be honest and obviously everyone's just getting pushed further and further away from central.

02:34So yeah must be pretty yes tough. I've become homeless. I have a good friend that has taken me

02:40in. I don't understand where the money is going since we're not investing in the quality. Everything

02:48is rubbish. I can hear my neighbour. I can hear who's in the toilet. I can hear someone

02:53cough in another room. I think that's ridiculous. Things crumble all the time.