This is how much it'll cost you to swing a cat in London

Last week we found out that the cost of living in London is so high that one landlord is renting out a one-bed flat with a shower under the bed for £520 a month. (For perspective's sake, it costs £450 to rent a two bedroom house in Liverpool.) To illustrate just how crazy our capital's housing situation is, a group of developers from Nice and Serious have teamed up with Shelter on Catswing, a website which takes your postcode and works out how much it's going to cost you to own a space large enough to swing a cat about in it.

They've done the sums too. The average length of a cat from paws to tail? 2.5 feet. The average length of a human arm in cat swinging position? Another 2.5 feet. So the next time you get let into your Shoreditch shoebox by a cash-hungry landlord and think aloud: "There's not enough room to swing a cat in here", there's now an app that can check just how much that would cost in your area.

And anyone concerned about whether or not the programme's all good and proper, rest easy: it's approved by the highly-respected academic establishment, the National Institute of Feline Orbital Studies.

I live in SE5; according to Catswing, it would set me back £38,720 to own a space large enough to grab an average cat by the tail and swing it around. If I lived in SW3 I'd have to part with £158,180 to own a mog-swinging space, whereas N19 is slightly more reasonable at £57,020.

Once you've had fun working out just how expensive and miserable your rent in London is, Catswing encourages you to sign Shelter's affordable homes petition, a call for politicians to "roll up their sleeves and do something about it".

We also want to hear your housing horror stories. Have you lived in a shithole that made you depressed? Tell us about it.