I’m single and living in £3,700 VW panel van at seaside because I can’t afford to buy a house – I spend just £60-a-week
AN ARMY veteran has been forced to live in a campervan - she says owners of second houses have flooded her hometown.
Lauren Bray, 27, is desperate to remain in her beloved part of Cornwall where detached properties sold for an average of £348,868 over the last year.
Without any chance of buying her own home due to soaring house prices, Lauren decided to cut the costs and try out a nomadic lifestyle.
She told The Mirror: “There’s a housing crisis here and it’s so bad - locals cannot afford places here.
“I don’t see it ever changing - I think it’s just going to get worse because more and more people are coming to Cornwall."
Since paying £3,700 for her baby blue Volkswagen Transporter (T4) panel van, lovingly named Genie from Aladdin, Lauren now faces far fewer bills than most homeowners.
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Lauren also shelled out a further £2,000 for a bed frame, insulating and cladding it and putting a window and two sunroofs in.
She said she'd have to be in a partnership or a relationship to have any shot at buying a home where she lives now.
The van was bought with the ambition to use it to stay in while she went surfing or paddle boarding on her days off while she was living in Birmingham.
Bray served six years in the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps in Birmingham as a trainee and then worked as a qualified nurse before returning to Cornwall.
Helston, a small town approximately 12 miles east of Penzance is where Lauren calls home and she believes the house prices in her area are due to the rise in second home ownership.
She explained how house prices in and around Helston have been 'far beyond' the budget for a single person - despite her keeping savings in a Help to Buy ISA.
She said: “People who have houses in Cornwall have multiple houses - it becomes a game of Monopoly where they buy everything up."
Regulation for second home-owners has been a hot topic in the UK for years with millions of vacant dwellings around the country, according to the Office of National Statistics.
Lauren described how most people her age don't own properties and the ones that do have usually had help from parents, inherited money, or are in a shared ownership scheme or relationship.
“So many others are living in caravans or vans or in an annex or something their parents have built for them.
"There’s a housing crisis here and it’s so bad - locals cannot afford places here."
