Exhibit XYZDGJLGhdbsvbd in the never-ending list of Reasons Why Entitled Millennials Are Ruining Everything By Expecting To Actually Enjoy Their Lives For One Damn Second is this paper by German architect Patrik Schumacher, in which he says that the standards for what counts as a “room” and a “dwelling” are, like, way harsh, and also millennials don’t need living rooms.
This f**king guy reckons that we don’t need anything so sprawling as the 38 square metres currently mandated as the minimum size on new flats in London!
Apparently “a small, clean, private hotel room-sized central patch serves their needs perfectly well”.
Patrik Schumacher's vision of life in cities is deeply depressing and his naive faith in the "market" would be hilarious if it wasn't so destructive. https://t.co/nrDsrRxkFx
— Brendan Redmond (@brendanredmond) April 26, 2018
Oh, thank you, kind sir! Here I was, thinking that living in a space where I can’t smell the toilet from the kitchen was the bare f**king minimum I could expect, but now I discover it’s actually a luxury, and I should be looking for a “patch” instead of a dwelling.
In NSW, the average studio flat is around 38m/sq, and new-build studios must be at least 35m/sq. Here are a couple of carefully renovated apartments around 38m/sq, so you can see what the smallest legal size looks like when you have a whole bunch of money for an ingenious structural renovation that turns your flat into a TARDIS.
Just like our fave Disney characters! (Without the phenomenal cosmic power.)
Schumacher says that a “patch” is all we need because “young professionals are out and about networking 24/7”.
And what’s more, centrally-located “patches” should be “allocated” to people “whose productive lives are most enhanced by being thus positioned, i.e. those who operate at the centre of our network society, attending early morning meetings, after work networking events, weekend conferences, and professional lectures”.
Totally me, going to Professional Events.
It’s true. I, a young professional, LOVE to network 24/7!
I am definitely never at home, watching Netflix in the one communal room while I eat on the couch because we had to choose between that space being the living room or having a table and chairs in it, or making economical toast-based meals in the falling-apart kitchen or working on my side hustles while I wait for one of my three housemates to finish using our one bathroom.
FYI: THIS is why my writing is total shit, Facebook commenters!
Also, there are no millennial tradies, nurses, teachers, chefs or garbos who have early starts or work late for reasons that aren’t sponsored by LinkedIn! And if there were, they wouldn’t need affordable housing in the inner city anyway because there are no hospitals, building sites, schools, kitchens or garbage there!
This f**king guy. (Born 1961, for those of you playing Boomer BS Bingo from the comfort of your inadequate homes.)
I mean, the paper is titled “Only Capitalism Can Solve The Housing Crisis”, so I’m not sure what we expected.
Yes, actually I am. It’s this patronising supervillain BS: “Many people who don’t understand how markets work seem afraid that the liberalisation of standards implies that people are then ‘forced’ to live in ‘rabbit hutches’.”
“I will be VERY comfortable in here” – Ancient millennial house-hunting proverb.
Yeah. Because landlords and property developers can absolutely be trusted to build and maintain habitable living spaces without proper regulation and oversight. They would never, say, turn half a living room into an extra bedroom with a plasterboard “wall”, or neglect to pursue basic repairs, or build studio flats with the toilet in the f**king kitchen.
@JennieDuke Sydney rental madness. combined kitchen and shitter – $370 per week http://t.co/olaQ4OnZHf (via Reddit) pic.twitter.com/qkHpyt8No9
— Rob (@rman_trebor) January 17, 2014
So, to recap: boomers reckon young people should save money to enter the housing market by eating at home instead of eating out all the time, but also don’t need big apartments because they’re out all the time, so all we need is a studio with a murphy bed and a microwave, and also stop complaining and let the market take care of everything because capitalism has worked great for you so far.
https://twitter.com/kennethn/status/895036508163276801
But joke’s on him, as clearly he doesn’t know anything about millennials’ home lives. We actually spend the night hanging upside down like bats, dreaming of capitalist institutions that we are yet to destroy and disrupt – so we don’t need horizontal space for sleeping! We just use those areas to curate and photograph our Instagram flatlays of the smoothie bowls we eat to try and compensate for living in black mould-infested, ventilation-free terraces a mere hour’s commute from our insecure jobs making socialist memes as dank as our kitchen cupboards, and then to come home and watch our favourite comedies, dramas and sci-fi TV shows that are all about the end of civilisation for some reason.
we already live in a boring dystopia pic.twitter.com/4feoT4DWSC
— Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) April 29, 2018
God forbid we want to both own and sit on a f**king couch.