Never precious, always impermanent: notes on moving house
In 2023, I had to find a new place to live. The following text is based on journal entries I wrote during my search
The listing had been live for less than 24 hours. The first image showed a spacious living room with a large window and a fireplace. It had a green ribbon running across the top-left corner which read ‘New’. The description said the flat was the landlord’s former home, and that they were very easy to deal with.
The flat was slightly further out than we had hoped for, but the prospect of moving further away from where we currently live was justified by the property’s proximity to a tube station.
The listing said the flat had a mix of furniture, but the landlord was willing to remove what wasn’t needed. This was another factor in why the flat seemed so good: years of moving between rented accommodation had left us with a rag-tag collection of side tables and chairs, with every let requiring the purchase or disposal – ideally through some sort of charity or scheme, but the reality of shifting quick, meant many items had been abandoned on the curb, with a slap-dash sign reading ‘free’ – of whatever items the given landlord may or may not provide. Never precious, always impermanent, in case of only finding a furnished flat or recalibrating one’s life around the possessions of new housemates.
“It’s a charming flat which you’ll love,” the listing said.
We requested a viewing, careful to lay out our candidacy: Late twenties, early thirties; fair salaries; an editor and a designer; three years together.
Within a few hours we received a message from the landlord sent to a large group chat of people who had enquired. “I’ve got half a dozen viewings tonight,” it read. “I’ve been overwhelmed by the number of inquiries – about 30. In past years, I’ve had a handful. It must be really tough finding a place right now, so best wishes with that.”
*
After that first listing, we quickly realised the best chance of us getting a flat would be finding one before it was posted publicly, either in an estate agent window or on a website. So we emailed a landlord my partner T. used to rent a flat from, hoping to avoid the scrum.
The landlord has a property portfolio that’s on the expensive side, but the flats are clean, decorated well, warm and dry. In other words, they haven’t been neglected. Mould won’t appear from under a deceptive coat of paint.
We asked if he would have any flats available from September. He explained that he was currently in the process of selling to an investor so he wouldn’t have anything coming up, but there was a one bed flat available and he would check the price with the letting agent and put them to the new owner.
T. chased him a week later to see whether he’d found out the price. He emailed back to say he had, that the flat will likely be £1,800 per month and the other flats will be rented out for up to £2,000. These prices are higher than what T. paid before and over our budget, but they are in line with what a clean, well decorated, warm and dry flat goes for in this area.
In the email we sent back declining a viewing, T. wrote: “I think we are coming to terms with the fact Hackney is now too expensive for us.”
It felt like a small jibe to make him reflect. Yes, the rents are too high. The rents are changing this place. Hell, if we can’t live here, what about anyone in low-paid work, in precarious employment or with no work at all? Can he see the role he’s played?
I doubt he had these thoughts. But I realise that even if he did it doesn’t matter. He’s getting out, after all.
*
A friend, who bought a house with his wife three years ago, sent me an advert for a 40-year mortgage scheme with a puppet raccoon. “The property ladder stinks'', the ad reads. But 40-year mortgages with lower monthly payments, “is a whiff of hope.”
He queried whether this truly is hopeful. I said it’s probably more hopeful than renting. He asked whether a mortgage you’ll never pay off is better than renting. I said yes, because you can’t paint a wall or hang a picture, that a landlord can evict you, even if you always pay your rent, which is what is happening to me.
“I’ve forgotten how bad renting is quite quickly,” he said.
*
I saw a clip online from an interview with Lea Ypi, author of memoir Free: Coming of age at the end of history, which documents Ypi’s experience growing up through the fall of communism in Albania.
In the clip, Ypi explains that you don’t just lose your freedom when a person, an agent, party or state tells you that you can’t do this or that, but that you lose your freedom through anonymous, societal structures that demand you to play a certain role.
In London, she explained, that structure is a capitalist structure, which generates poverty, social exclusion and a sense of alienation and division. She says the result is “you have a part of London that doesn’t care about the other.”
For Ypi, London is the heart of capitalism and development. So to come from Albania, she says, you think – or hope – this massive wealth gets distributed. But, she says she found it shocking to travel through some parts of the city where there are rundown houses and people struggling.
Ypi says that in London there is a level of “social anomie”, a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of moral standards and lack of ideals, that would have reached revolutionary consequences in any other context, where people were aware that is a systemic rather than just a failing of the individual.
So no, she says, she does not see us as living in a free society. But nor does she see the willingness to change the conditions of our subjugation.
*
The landlord of a flat in Camberwell asked if they could interview us on the phone. In our search we quickly realised this has become commonplace. The interview acts as a vetting process to filter the high number of inquiries landlords receive for a property before agreeing to a viewing.
The landlord explained that she wants young professionals with no pets. That’s us. We told her our combined salary and that we would be able to comfortably afford the rent, which is only true now we’ve accepted that we won’t save as much as we’d like.
We were offered a viewing and after the call, I expressed a concern to T. about how this interviewing process feels wrong. It wasn’t just the money, jobs and lack of pets; we were appealing in other ways, too. All the landlords who have offered us viewings thus far have been white, middle class and well spoken, as we are. Even if we are not as wealthy, we can understand them and they can understand us. Our shared similarities made the chummy-yet-professional tone of the messages explaining our interest easy to write. We fall back on presumed commonalities, which is another way of saying, we fall back on our entitlement. This made hearing that we didn’t get the flat confusing – quietly embarrassing.
When we asked why we didn’t get it, she said that the tenant offered more than the asking price and two months rent in advance, likely taking their initial outlay to over £5,000. The tenant also wrote a “heartfelt letter” explaining why the flat was perfect for them, and why they were perfect for it.
The fact the letter was mentioned as a reason speaks to the moral difficulty some people feel renting their property. They are, in some cases, reluctant exploiters, hoping to find worthy custodians for their assets, wanting to feel they are helping those in need of housing. They are aware of the horrors of renting, it seems, yet still play the role of landlord – even accepting more cash.
*
We viewed a flat in Peckham owned by a couple who now live in a house in quieter Brockley. The wife showed us around. The flat is on the top floor of a converted house, with a large living room at the front with a high ceiling. The bedroom is small, with exposed shelves for clothes storage, but it’s carpeted for warmth. The bathroom is long and narrow, with a view into the neighbour’s house. The kitchen is fine, functional, used but usable. It has a table and there is a drying rack folded up in the corner. The whole place is sparse but chic with the current tenant’s collection of bold oil paintings, unframed, hanging on the walls.
She said that she doesn’t like how capitalist landlordism is. That is why the rent was low (it was still high). She told us she wouldn't accept any offers above the listing price of rent, but she wasn’t sure that her husband wouldn’t.
As part of our plea, we told her that we are being evicted. She tried to reassure us that our landlord couldn’t evict us if we didn’t have anywhere to go. Standing there, I muttered, Oh really, I didn’t know that. But I thought to myself, they can try and they could take us to court. It sounded like she had misinterpreted the Renters Reform Bill that aims to put an end to section 21, or ‘no-fault’ eviction notices, and for some reason, believed it had passed.
We said we were interested in the flat, and after our experience with the last viewing, we wrote a letter expressing just how much we would like it, and how it was just the kind of place we were looking for.
After a few days, we decided to chase the landlord to ask if she’d come to a decision. Soon after, she texted back to say they had given the flat to someone else. We asked why. She said the couple they chose already lived in the neighbourhood (another hurdle). We wondered if that was the whole story; whether she said, adamantly, that we couldn’t be evicted because she had already settled on a tenant (there had been viewings before us) and didn’t want to feel responsible for extending our search; whether they had been offered more money (how principled were they, truly?).
We re-read the letter we sent pitching for our tenancy. Did it seem too keen, or not keen enough? There is a struggle here. A balancing act between formality and cordiality. My Italian friend told me this whole thing sounds so British. It does. Serious, yet laughable, ultimately constipated.
I walked past the estate agents near our flat hoping to spot a listing or two in its window. But I discovered it had been converted into a workwear pop-up shop. In place of the drab desks now stand clothes rails filled with blue jackets. It’s called The Good Neighbour.
*
In London, people meet your horror stories with their own.
A friend said she attended a group viewing. The prospective tenants were assembled in the flat and made to bid in front of each other, right there and then.
Another said they fear complaining about the crack on the front of their property will result in eviction rather than building work.
Someone else told me how they viewed a flat, for which there was a queue stretching down the road. They said they’d take it, but they didn’t hear back, until the estate agent filled them in on what happened: someone from the queue had offered to buy it.
*
Relief. The agent said the first people to place an offer would get the flat. We were the first to view it. Better still: No bids will be accepted because the flat is part of a housing association.
It was large, warm, with a shared private garden we can access through sliding doors. The paintwork wasn’t great, there was a dank smell in the hall, and it was on the Old Kent Road, far from where we want to live, but at this point, I didn’t care.
On the way out, I asked if the bathroom, with no window, had an extractor fan.
The agent said that if I turn the light switch on and a fan starts, it has one. Was this some kind of mind game? I flicked the switch and no fan started. We all looked at one another. No fan.
In the park nearby, we got ready to send off our application form to take the flat, buoyed by the fact we would get it, and willing to overlook the shortfalls. We already have a dehumidifier. It would be inconvenient to have to manage the bathroom – but so what? We had to find somewhere. We had to. Switching on a humidifier would be a fine pay off for securing a place to live.
Before we sent the application, T. suggested we looked up the housing association, L&Q, just to see if there was anything we could glean. We found an article: “Landlord L&Q told to pay out to tenants after finding of severe mismanagement”. The article said that an investigation by the housing ombudsman found L&Q, “‘failed to consistently identify damp and mould’ as a key problem, disregarded its own antisocial behaviour policy and presided over ‘a period of significant failure’ as a landlord.”
Later, I read the original exposé of L&Q published by the Observer in 2018. It includes testimony of water pouring through ceilings and raw sewage flooding a parking area. A mother explains how she complained of mould and its effect on her daughter. She was then moved to another estate where problems continued: “I’ve been to hell and back with L&Q”.
*
L&Q was founded in 1963 to tackle homelessness through low-cost housing, but, like other housing associations, it has become commercialised, building fewer “genuinely affordable” homes.
In 2010, the Conservative-led coalition cut the budget for subsidised social housing by 60 per cent, redirecting money towards more expensive “affordable rent” properties. In 2015 George Osbourne imposed a 1 per cent annual rent cut for four years, reducing the income of housing associations who fund social projects through building, renting and selling homes.
Data published in 2022 by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities shows 40 local authority areas “neither built nor acquired (either via councils or housing associations) any new social rent housing units between 2016-17 and 2020-21, the most recent year for which figures are available.”
In 2021, the National Housing Association (NHA), which represents housing associations, said there were 4.2 million people in need of a social home across the country, 1.3 million of which were children. The NHA points to the government’s Affordable Homes Programme, announced in 2020 and the first commitment to funding for social rent since 2010. The programme committed £11.5 billion to build 180,000 affordable homes over 5 years, but the NHA says it doesn’t go far enough. It says research by Heriot Watt University for Crisis and the National Housing Federation shows 90,000 social rented homes must be built each year to meet demand. That would mean 450,000 homes over 5 years, not 180,000.
Shortages in housing supply and mortgage rates pushed costs up by 10 per cent over the previous 12 months. In October 2023, private home rents increased to their highest point on record. Rightmove, the UK’s top property website, found the average rental price in London to be £2,627 for the quarter up to October – a 12.1 per cent increase on the same time the previous year. Rightmove also said rents asked by agents have risen by more than 20 per cent over the last year in Loughborough, Edinburgh, Paisley, Preston and Staines, with other towns recording increases between 10 and 20 percent.
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Housing has always felt like a struggle. In 2017, when I was still with my ex, I moved into their house once the tenancy on mine was up.
The 2021 census describes how the proportion of couples living together that are cohabiting, rather than married or in a civil partnership, increased from 20.6 per cent in 2011 to 24.3 per cent in 2021. Despite cohabiting rising in almost all age groups, according to the census, the greatest change in the proportion of people living in couples who were cohabiting was in those aged 20 to 34, with 20 to 25 year olds showing the greatest proportional increase, from 56.5 per cent in 2011 to 71.6 per cent in 2021.
This trend appears to be the same in the USA. An article I found says 12 per cent of millennials were cohabiting and unmarried in 2019 compared to 8 per cent of Gen Xers in 2003. It frames much of its discussion in relation to marriage. It references research which says cohabitation has become less of a trial-run before getting married and is now a practical decision, driven by reasons including “convenience and economic benefit” – reasons that strike me as codewords for affording to live and making rent.
When we broke up, my ex offered to move out, but I couldn’t cover the rent of our shared room in Hackney alone. My retail job paid pittance and the rent would have eaten my pay check to the point where a good quality of life was impossible. So they stayed and I quit my job and moved cities, my life reflecting another growing trend: adults, particularly men, living back home with their parents, confronted by unaffordable housing and often unemployed.
*
Ypi’s assertion that there is not a willingness to change the conditions of our subjugation may be too damning, too broad. Who doesn’t want to change their conditions for the better? Maybe the issue is locating the agent of exploitation, or understanding who constitutes the “our”.
To explain the reproduction of capitalism, people often describe two forms of power: violence and ideology. Rulers can employ violence to make people immediately do certain things. Ideology can be used to shape how we (consciously or subconsciously) think of ourselves or the world. But in his book Mute Compulsion, Søren Mau points to a third kind of power: economic power. Economic power works on the subject indirectly. It is inscribed in one’s environment forcing them to act in a certain way. The book attempts to explain why capital takes the form of a “mute compulsion of economic relations”, a phrase Mau borrows from Karl Marx.
One example of the mute compulsion of economic relations is how capital has inserted itself between humans and their need for shelter. Bluntly, in order to acquire shelter, you must engage with capital. You must make money, you must work, in order to fulfil a basic human need. We are, as a result, compelled into reproducing capitalist relations.
Mau suggests there are mechanisms of power to which we are all subjected. The power of capital cannot be reduced to class domination, even if capital’s stranglehold affects capitalists and workers to varying – stratospherically different – degrees.
Identifying this strain of power may be a way to break free of a deadlock, to pin the agent down, to realise the “our” is far broader than we may have imagined before.
*
We eventually found a flat via a post by the landlord on our estate’s Facebook group, three months after we began looking. It boiled down to a waiting game to find what we wanted, to be offered a tenancy, but we had time, which others do not.
We had implemented the lessons we learned from our search. The message we sent expressing why we wanted the flat was persuasive without being overbearing. We carried ourselves at the viewing as if unfazed by flat hunting. We told him how much we loved this characterful Victorian estate (built for workers – can you imagine?) and wanted to stay. How we appreciate the community. How special it is here – a sentiment learned from our neighbours.
Once we’d signed the contracts and the landlord had left, I looked around, beginning to imagine where our belongings, our rag-tag furniture would go, smelling the old, sweet, woody smell that returns every time we go away. The flat’s floor plan is a long rectangle divided into thirds with windows along one side: the first third has an entrance hall, where I’ll work, looking out over the estate, at a line of plane trees shading benches where the estate’s residents sit, alongside those who occasionally come in from the busy street beyond the open gates, and a bathroom, windowless but whose fan pulls moisture away; the middle third is a living room, with a sofa bed that will fill its whole width, and whose floorboards run from the sash window into the smallest kitchen, stacked to the ceiling with cupboards, which demands one pirouettes to cook; and the final third is a bedroom, the furthest from the front door, buried inside, free from disturbance, with only a view of the top of red brick buildings and roofs intersecting one another, an enclave to enclose ourselves and settle, away from the world.
I stood there, finally with a sense of ease. But now the door is closed, we face our aspirations. I wonder how long we will stay.