The sad cost of renting: never having somewhere to call home
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Version 0 of 1. Moving house is one of life’s most stressful experiences. I have done it 16 times over the past 13 years and, in comparison with some of my friends, that makes me one of the settled ones. I know it is one of life’s most stressful experiences because, whenever you move house, someone will inevitably tell you so. As you stuff a duvet into a pound-shop laundry bag and wonder if it is possible to load your life-in-boxes into the van, drive across the city and empty it out again within an hour, that cheerful text will arrive. “Don’t panic! It’s worse than getting a divorce!” That there is a housing crisis in the UK has been unforgivably obvious for years. More people are renting and fewer people are able to buy homes, particularly young people, for whom the idea of even attempting to save for a deposit is a sisyphean feat that no longer seems worth it. Grotesque headlines such as “Tories reject move to ensure rented homes fit for accommodation” are by now so familiar that their stark ugliness has somehow dulled, and we seem to be acquiescing, too knackered, perhaps, from lugging our worldly possessions up and down the stairs twice a year. By 2025, it is expected that 60% of people living in London will rent. If we are hurtling towards the majority of people renting in some parts of the country, and this government is so disinclined to protect such basic needs as not stuffing five people into a room where the wallpaper is actually black mould, then you suspect moving on a regular basis is going to become the norm. It is only when filling in forms that I realise quite how many times I have moved. I have memorised a litany of postcodes with which to fill out those “addresses for the last five years” sections. The longest I’ve lived anywhere was 18 months; the shortest, three. I’ve got multiple man-with-a-van suggestions on hand for people asking on Facebook. Relatives have taken to measuring time by where my flat was. “I haven’t stayed with you since Whitechapel,” my brother told me last month. There are benefits to being peripatetic. It is hard to be a hoarder when you get a visual measure of what you own at least once a year. Impulse purchases, particularly when they are bigger than a medium-sized brown box, lose their shine. I lugged an armchair that did not quite fit into any room of any shape around the city for five years because I thought having one piece of furniture that wasn’t from Ikea made me an adult. Eventually, I left it in an unfurnished property that I moved out of because when it rained outside, it rained inside, and my landlord, a nonagenarian, had no plans to replace the roof before he died. Any furniture I’ve had to buy since is portable or foldable, or both. I am portable. I have become adaptable. I can fall asleep in almost any strange room to the noises of any strange pipes. Perhaps this is what people talk about when they talk about freedom. It is only now, after more than a decade of this relentless packing and unpacking, of deposits and “inventory fees” and reference checks, that it is possible to see the corrosive effects of moving so much, in large part due to moving into a (rented) flat that I love, at last. I know that in having a roof over my head I am luckier than some and my complaints of tepid private rental disasters are nothing compared with people in genuinely awful situations, but there is a chipping away at the notion of what a home is that is upsetting, over time. Home becomes a disposable concept. There have rarely been pictures on the walls of the places I have lived because it’s not allowed, and I don’t want to be penalised for a chip in the paint. When I go and see family, their walls are covered with photographs, posters, paintings, slogans about how only boring women have spotless houses. Millennials are portrayed as feckless kidults unable to grow up, but it’s hard to be a grownup when you furnish your life with the cheapest sofa in Ikea. This is not the kind of sofa that invites snuggling up with a shaggy dog and your 2.4 children. It’s bare-bones, functional, don’t-get-too-attached living. The ability to settle, or feel settled, becomes eroded, almost lost. It is easy to romanticise this as nomadic but that implies more choice than the reality of it presents. Ultimately, “home” is morphing into “housing”, and that is appalling, and it’s desperately sad. If anyone needs a man-with-a-van, though, get in touch. |