Canbury Press to publish competition winner's housing investigation

Canbury Press is due to publish a work of non-fiction by Chloe Timperley, who has won a public competition to write about Britain's housing crisis.

The independent publisher launched the competition via social media in November 2017, and granted Timperley a book contract.

Generation Rent: Why You Can’t Buy A Home (Or Even Rent A Good One) investigates the "surge in rents, lack of protection for renters, dubious ground rents in new-builds, and the cause of homelessness."

Martin Hickman, managing director of Canbury Press, said: “Commissioning a book by a public competition was always a gamble, but I felt that it would winkle out a talented writer who wasn’t on the radar of London-based publishers. And it did. Chloe has produced a fast-paced and urgent examination of Britain’s out-of-control housing market.

“It reveals the bubbling-over frustration of an entire generation in their twenties and thirties who have done everything right and yet are still locked out of a secure home. Renting should be a good option, but all too often in the UK it involves unsafe housing and dodgy landlords.

“Even people who are sitting pretty in their own homes realise there is something fundamentally wrong with the status quo, especially when they consider how ruinously expensive it will be for their children or nephews and nieces to get a foot on the ladder.”

Timperley, who works in financial services, proposes a "bold solution to the housing crisis which is likely to stoke political debate".

She said: “At 29, I am a paid-up member of generation rent. I’m also a northerner earning a decent wage in a 9-5 job. Sections of the media would have you believe people like me are unaffected by the housing crisis: that this issue is unique to London and the South East. I wanted to set the record straight on that."

Generation Rent: Why You Can’t Buy A Home (Or Even Rent A Good One) will be published in paperback on 23rd July.