International
Louise Stephenson lives in a small shipping container in a parking lot in northeastern London, and she considers herself lucky.
She's one of the countless Londoners who are being affected by what experts are warning may be a housing bubble. London is increasingly the preferred location of a large group of the global elite, whose home-buying sprees, in combination with other factors, have jacked up housing prices across the city.
"It depends on who you are personally, (but) living on the streets would probably be more of a dent to pride than living in a shipping container," Stephenson told Al Jazeera.
London's housing market is becoming so unaffordable that it's forcing many into shelters, according to Timothy Pain, head of the Forest YMCA in East London. He plans to build dozens more of the cheap container homes to help people cope.
"In London, where we've got such enormous wealth and such opulence, there's enough to go around," Pain said. "If there was justice and fairness, we wouldn't require anything like this. But if we don't (build these containers), there's nothing."
Driven by low interest rates, an influx of wealthy foreigners and a lack of housing stock, home prices in London have jumped 10 percent in the past year.
New construction projects are almost exclusively marketed to the superrich.
Almost 75 percent of new construction in central London was sold abroad in 2012 before it was even marketed in London, according to Knight Frank, an international property consulting group.
But wealthy buyers' snatching up properties isn't London's only housing problem. Last month the Bank of England cautioned the British government that its housing policies could cause another bubble like the one that helped bring down the global economy in 2008.
It released data showing that housing prices have exceeded their peak in the months before the 2008 crisis.
The bank warned that the country's Help to Buy program — which offers incentives to banks to give low- and middle-income citizens mortgages — could push up prices. Some experts are worried that by encouraging people to buy houses they wouldn't be able to afford without assistance, the program is causing the housing market to tighten even more.
London's biggest housing problem, though, might be related to the socioeconomic status of its residents.
An analysis by The Guardian found that even as Britain rebounded from the global recession, the poor and middle class' earnings have stagnated, which is making London's ever higher home prices further and further out of reach.
Al Jazeera, with reporting by Laurence Lee.
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