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Are there community places where someone can just sit and stay during the day?
My mental health is poor and I believe that spending a lot of time by myself is exacerbating the problem.
When feeling particularl… I'm male and live alone in London. I also work from home most days.
My mental health is poor and I believe that spending a lot of time by myself is exacerbating the problem.
When feeling particularly lonely I often take a book with me to a pub or library, but these aren't always suitable.
I'm wondering if there are any community facilities where people can just go at times during the day to sit inside and be around others. Places that aren't specially for younger or older people, since I'm neither. Somewhere to sit and read, have a chat with others, or just be.
Does anyone know of anything along these lines?
some of the university buildings are open to the public during term time, especially the newer ones. the senate house library at ucl has a big common room area on the ground floor where people just sit and work or read, and the cafe there is reasonably priced for london. also the soas building on russell square has these random seating nooks by the windows with views over the garden, and the security guards are pretty chill if you're not being loud. not every uni is like this but the ones with public-facing buildings tend to be fine
fwiw some of the bigger train stations have proper waiting rooms that are free to use and nobody checks tickets. london bridge and paddington both have these big heated areas with benches where people just sit and wait. bit noisy but you get a real cross-section of london life going past. also the wellcome collection on euston road has these big leather sofas near their cafe that are basically designed for people to just exist in for hours, and the staff are used to it.
have you tried the british library? not just the main one but there's smaller ones like the kensington central library. they have quiet reading rooms and sometimes random events during the day. also some parks have indoor pavilions that are heated with seating, like in hyde park near the playground. not super busy but you get a mix of people
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What are some innovative ways to anonymously compare rental prices in a city?
SpareRoom's "rooms wanted" ads are underrated for this. people post what they're currently paying alongside what they want next, so you can scrape a rough sense of going rates by postcode without anyone knowing you looked. it skews young and flatshare heavy tho, so not much use if you're after 2-beds in zone 2.
Another one is just the depozit or tenancy deposit scheme data. not public-facing, but your council's housing officer can tell you median rents from deposit registrations if you email them under FOI. takes weeks, but its proper anon and nobody clocks u.
Rightmove and Zoopla only show asking rents, which are often 10 to 15 percent above what a place actually goes for, so they're a poor benchmark. The trick I've used is the ONS Price Index of Private Rents, which breaks things down to borough level and is genuinely anonymous since it's aggregate data, no listing or account needed. For something more granular, the London Renters Union runs a rent reporting tool where you submit what you're paying with your postcode and it maps it against others nearby, though the coverage is patchy outside the inner boroughs.
the openrent "rent check" thing is decent for zones 3-4 where the unions tool barely reaches. also worth checking the london.gov.uk planning portal for new build applications, they list "affordable" and market rent figures per unit in the viability assessments, which is basically the developer telling the council what they expect to charge. bit of a faff to dig through but its public, anonymous & nobody knows ur looking