‘I plumbed in our bath – and it works!’ The DIY

They laid floors, installed piping, hung ceilings and erected frames – and that was just the easy bit. Our writer reports on a miraculous 15-year self-build that promises capped-price housing for ever

Kareem Dayes’s story will be familiar to many millennials. Moving between rented house shares, with stints in leaky warehouses and spells back home with the parents, Dayes led a precarious existence – going from one temporary set-up to the next, continually subject to evictions and rent hikes, with little hope of ever finding an affordable, stable place. “I thought I’d have to move out of London,” says Dayes, “or even out of the country. There were no options left.”

A few years later, there has been an unlikely twist. He hasn’t won the lottery – but he now lives in a four-bedroom flat in Lewisham, in leafy Ladywell, where his two children enjoy the run of a big communal garden and play area. Dayes and his neighbours grow food together and organise the daily life of a place they collectively own and manage, in homes that will remain affordable to people in the surrounding area for ever.