‘Money is draining through my fingers’: UK tenants on soaring rents
Elle Young*, 29, who works in arts funding, lives in an illegal sublet in London to make her rent more affordable. She is one of five people living in a three-bedroom property. There is mould and damp in all of the rooms and the window panes are rotting. In the kitchen, the rot has caused the glass pane to fall out, meaning the cold air seeps in.
Young is not named on the contract, so she is powerless to get in touch with the landlord. When her housemate on the tenancy agreement contacted the landlord, they were told he had “no funds available to make any repairs this year”. Young is terrified that if they keep requesting repairs, they will be issued with a section 21 notice, which allows private landlords to evict tenants in England and Wales without having to establish they are at fault. She fears that if she isforced to move out she would have nowhere to live due to soaring rental costs.
“I’ve seen rooms in house shares being priced between £850 and £1,200 where I live. I can’t afford that,” she says. “We’re not allowed to be here and I’ve also got no protection but I have no choice.”
In 2018, she was made homeless from after consistently asking her landlord in a previous rental to fix a broken window. “It doesn’t really matter whether you are in a contract or not because of the section 21, your landlord can just kick you out.”
If she loses her home, she will be up against rising rental demand and will probably have no choice but to live in another insecure property unless she can come up with another £400 a month. Against the backdrop of a cost of living crisis, with rising food prices and energy bills, this seems impossible, she says.
Like Young, thousands of renters live in a climate of uncertainty, finding themselves
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