As we enter summer 2022, there is a markedly feral energy about the capital. It’s 35C on the regular (probably more like 50 on the Central Line), everyone’s striking, airlines are cancelling flights like it’s going out of fashion and you have to take out a three-month payment plan to buy a tub of Lurpak. Add to the mix a crazy scramble for flats and you’ve got a collective nervous breakdown.
It will probably come as a surprise to nobody that life as a young private renter in London has seen better days. We’ve all looked in horror at pictures of Zone 2 flats the size of parking spaces where the toilet doubles as a kitchen sink and they charge extra rent for the mice. But this summer is more cut-throat than ever, particularly when it comes to flatshares.
By the grace of God I managed to find somewhere on the cusp of Zone 2 last year without having to flog all of my internal organs on the black market but many of my friends looking this summer haven’t been so lucky. Purely in terms of numbers, decent multiple occupancy flats are pretty hard to come by. One brave soldier on the hunt for a four-bed in Finsbury Park told me that a flat she was looking at had been snapped up 27 minutes after being posted. I was informed by another that a listing way over her budget had offers of interest from over 2000 people after three days. “But how could anyone even have viewed it in that time?” I naively asked. What, actually looking at the place you’re going to be contractually obliged to live in for a year? Luxury, apparently. And forget about having a social life. The wild west of London flat-hunting is a full-time job. That friend you haven’t seen for six months? Sorry, you’ve got a date with a letting agent instead. At 11am on a Tuesday.
For many in their early 20s, the dream of moving to the big city with some friends and spending your golden years frolicking in Shoreditch has turned into a fully fledged, all-out nightmare. Young people are fighting in the mud for Zone 4 scraps, begging to haemorrhage half their salaries to pay someone else’s mortgage, while landlords push rents up higher and higher knowing they can get away with it. I know some who have retreated back to their parents with their tail between their legs after just a year, exhausted from the financial burden of navigating life in the capital.
This year, London rents have grown at 15 per cent, the highest ever annual rate of any UK region. With demand still high, tenants are outnumbering available properties by three to one. The situation is utter, unsustainable chaos.
As a generation, mine has become accustomed to this being simply the way things are. We have never known any different, hardwired into believing that life with a garden and a living room is beyond possibility. But surely, at some point, something has got to give.
In other news...
When Kemi Badenoch threw her hat into the Tory leadership ring, I received a text from a relative saying “Finally, a Nigerian woman at the top to show them how it’s done!”. While I understood the sentiment, I couldn’t help but groan.
Much ink has been spilt about the ethnic diversity of the candidates. As a mixed race woman, I believe it is hugely positive that people of colour in this country are in positions to be vying for such high office. But the politics of representation is often an oversimplified one.
Many of these Tory hopefuls backed the Government’s cruel and costly Rwanda immigration policy, which would make their own inspirational family journeys to this country impossible.
Brown and black faces in high places mean little if they are not matched by policies which will help improve the lives of marginalised groups. True diversity is not just about a system that looks different but behaves in the same way.
