Landlords are taking Generation Rent for a ride

When I first moved to London, a group of friends and I were looking for a house to rent and came across a crumbling Victorian property in Brixton. The interior was straight out of the 1960s, but it was just about within budget and had a garden, which was enough to make us look past the chalet-style bathrooms. 

The house, however, was not as much furnished as it was filled to the brim with furniture. Tea-stained chests of drawers lined the rooms and mismatched dining chairs were dotted around the downstairs making the house resemble an antique shop more than a rental property. As we stood and discussed whether it was worth spending almost half our paychecks on each month, we noticed that every drawer and cupboard in the house was also stuffed full; envelopes poured out of a cabinet in the living room, the kitchen shelves were lined with old crockery and rusting cutlery. Toolboxes piled up in the cupboard under the stairs.

Had the previous tenants not moved out yet? we asked the landlord. They had, he said, everything in the house belonged to him and wouldn’t be removed. It was his house, after all, we would have to live around his belongings. 

This is a mild case of landlord lunacy but ask any of the 4.4 million households that rent in the UK and you will hear many similar stories. Rent prices are soaring and landlords are more than happy to pocket the cash, whilst renters are forced to adjust their standards to odd demands and poor living conditions.

According to the English Housing Survey, 25 to 34-year-olds account for 32 per cent of private rented households, but the need for regulation and reform in our rental market is something that is often left out of the discussion about whether Millennials or Gen-Z’ers will ever be able to buy a house. Rather than squabbling about the cost of avocado toast or Netflix subscriptions, it’s time to look at why young people aspire to buy houses and what we can do to make renting more endurable.

I think it is fair to call us Generation Rent; we rent our clothes to be sustainable, rent zip cars to reduce traffic and pollution and stream music, films and television instead of buying them on iTunes. Ownership doesn’t mean the same to us as it did to our parents; the ambition to buy a house, more often than not, is accompanied by a strong desire to stop renting. 

A house is, by definition, shelter — somewhere to call home. But it’s hard to make a house a home when you can’t hang anything up, paint the wall and live with the knowledge that the landlord could increase your rent or decide to sell the moment your (typically 12-month) contract is up. The English Housing Survey also found that 53 per cent of private renters had lived in their current accommodation for two years or less in 2019-2020; rental turnover is high and the cost of moving — in terms of finance, time and stress — is steep.

When I think about the possibility of never owning a house, being unable to own a pet in a rental property is a huge barrier to seeing it as a long-term living situation too. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, landlords can request a higher deposit to allow you to move in, and in England, there are no regulations stopping landlords from charging higher rent to live with a pet. It’s hard to imagine settling down and starting a family in an environment that forbids you from owning an animal and can kick you out for doing so. 

A silver lining is that it seems the government is finally beginning to pay attention to the rental market. In a recent white paper, Michael Gove proposed reforms to private and social renting, such as; ensuring all privately rented homes meet the Decent Homes standard, abolishing “no fault” evictions, plans to introduce a landlords’ register and a crackdown on criminal landlords to avoid repeat convictions. 

In the past, the Tory government has always been quick to encourage and support homeownership, but Gove seems to have realised that his levelling up agenda must prioritise providing affordable housing for renters too. This is a good start but similar ideas were first promised by Theresa May back in 2019 without much progress — we need a simple and proper code to what renters are entitled to and we need it as soon as possible.

We have accepted renting over buying as the solution to more accessible and sustainable living in many other areas of our life, but a “boomer” mentality still presides over homeownership. It’s time to accept that buying a house isn’t the same end goal for everyone and fixing the rental market is essential to improving the quality of life across Britain.