An escalator step in central London would cost you £6,111, and other brutal facts about Britain's housing market

If you venture through Westminster Underground station this month, prepare to be met with a horrible sight.

Throughout the station, stickers representing different sizes of floor space quote their prices at you in blunt caps, drumming home the extent of the UK’s housing crisis before you’ve even had your morning coffee.

A square a little smaller than the floorspace of a phone box, for example, would set you back over £8,000 in Westminster:

At least it comes with lovely carpeting.

Floor space the size of a door, meanwhile, would cost you £7,584 in Oxford or £6,909 in Bath:

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An escalator step would cost you over £6,000 in central London. They couldn’t fit the words on one step – that’s how small a space we’re talking about here – so the stickers cover two:

A property the size of a tube carriage would cost you over £600,000 in Westminster, and about £300,000 on average in Central London. And if you fancy owning property the size of Westminster’s ticket hall, dream on – it’ll cost you over £21m:

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The stickers and posters are part of the Homes for Britain campaign, run by the National Housing Federation and other housing groups. The groups are hoping to raise awareness among politicians of the state of housing in the nation’s cities, and get them to, well, build more bloody houses. 

The final poster, as you leave the station, lets politicians know that they could help solve the problem:

Let’s hope they listen. 

All images: CityMetric/National Housing Federation.