How the housing crisis is trapping people in dangerous situations

Kate’s* first for­ay into the rental mar­ket got off to a bad start. After being scammed out of £2000 by a fake list­ing in 2021, she con­tin­ued her search and was sent a video of a prop­er­ty in North-West Lon­don. After quick­ly putting down a deposit she moved in two weeks lat­er, but was shocked by what she found.

“The walls were stained, the bed was stained with what I now know to be semen, the toi­let and the bath­room were cov­ered in mould. It was just grim. I rang my mum in tears say­ing I can’t live here.” At first the land­lord was reluc­tant to fix any­thing but even­tu­al­ly offered to put in a new car­pet and paint the walls. 

The prop­er­ty Kate now lived in was shared with four oth­er peo­ple. Her house­mates would often for­get to lock the door and one day Kate came back from work and found a man from their build­ing, who had been stalk­ing her at the time, stand­ing in her flat. ​“I moved in in August and by Novem­ber I thought I can’t do it any­more.”

Things went from bad to worse when one of Kate’s male house­mates sex­u­al­ly harassed her. Then, a new house­mate moved in and poi­soned her food. ​“I’ve been poi­soned, my land­lord wasn’t doing any­thing, we’ve got a mouldy shared bath­room; this is not a nor­mal thing to be going through at 24.”

While the data across Europe shows a rise in sin­gle per­son house­holds over the past decade, the real­i­ty for young peo­ple is marked­ly dif­fer­ent. A gen­er­a­tion gap is at the heart of this issue. Old­er indi­vid­u­als have increas­ing­ly lived alone over the last two decades, which comes with its own set of chal­lenges includ­ing lone­li­ness and risk of pover­ty, while younger peo­ple have been liv­ing alone less fre­quent­ly – not because they don’t want to. Some peo­ple love hav­ing friends or a part­ner to chat to in the evening. Oth­ers cher­ish their alone time. Today, how­ev­er, what was once a per­son­al choice, or even in some cas­es a neces­si­ty, has now been reframed as a lux­u­ry; one that many sim­ply can’t afford.

While look­ing for poten­tial house shares, Kate expe­ri­enced racism and microag­gres­sions from those she reached out to and so start­ed to look into rent­ing by her­self. Despite earn­ing an above aver­age salary, Kate hasn’t been able to find a sin­gle prop­er­ty in her bud­get in the year and a half she has been look­ing. ​“If a one bed was afford­able I would take a one bed because then it would be my own space and I wouldn’t have to put up with flat­mates. But I can’t afford it.”

An ONS analy­sis on the spend­ing of indi­vid­u­als aged 25 to 64 revealed that those who live alone spend 92% of their dis­pos­able income, under­stand­ably high­er than the aver­age spend­ing of two-adult house­holds (83%). This high­er spend­ing is attrib­uted to a larg­er por­tion of their dis­pos­able income being used for hous­ing-relat­ed expens­es such as mort­gages, rent, coun­cil tax, water and ener­gy bills. Then there’s the small­er stuff: stream­ing sub­scrip­tions, toi­let paper, bin bags etc. Peo­ple across the board are penalised for liv­ing alone.

Giv­en the dire state of the rental mar­ket, it’s not real­ly shock­ing that there’s been a 400% increase in the num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing in shared hous­ing over the past decade. Accord­ing to Spare Room, which hooks renters up with poten­tial room­mates, over half of its users end up going back to shared liv­ing after try­ing to rent a place solo or with their sig­nif­i­cant other. 

Flo­rence had pre­vi­ous­ly lived in house shares before mov­ing in with her boyfriend at the age of 26. After liv­ing togeth­er for four years, they split up in April 2022. It took until August 2022 for her to find some­where to live and move out. ​“I want­ed to live on my own,” explains Flo­rence. ​“I was 30, had lived with a part­ner for four years and the idea of going back to house shar­ing with peo­ple I did­n’t know and los­ing all that free­dom and auton­o­my… I did­n’t want to do that.”

The place Flo­rence moved into was right at the top end of her bud­get, but she was will­ing to sac­ri­fice most of her dis­pos­able income to make it work. How­ev­er, six weeks ago her land­lord increased her rent by £150, stretch­ing it beyond her already stretched bud­get. ​“I’ve been try­ing to look for a place and have realised I’m not gonna be able to afford to live on my own again,” Flo­rence tells Huck. ​“I’m gonna have to move in with my par­ents at the age of 31, even though I have an above aver­age salary, and then try to look again in a few months.”

While for some this is no big deal, for oth­ers being forced to share your liv­ing space, rather than choos­ing to do so, can have a big impact on your qual­i­ty of life. Research by Shel­ter from 2021 found that one in five renters were expe­ri­enc­ing poor health due to hous­ing prob­lems, with 39% feel­ing stressed and anx­ious. For oth­ers, the impact goes beyond even that.

Saman­tha, 48, is a sin­gle par­ent with two chil­dren who have now left home. She has been in the same pri­vate rent­ed accom­mo­da­tion near Man­ches­ter for the past 30 years, where she cur­rent­ly pays £650 a month for a two-bed­room prop­er­ty. How­ev­er, since her land­lord passed away six years ago, she is antic­i­pat­ing the moment his fam­i­ly choos­es to sell up and she is forced out to grap­ple with the cur­rent rental mar­ket. ​“I’m try­ing to get ahead of the game a bit by putting feel­ers out look­ing for places,” Saman­tha explains. ​“I don’t feel like I’m catch­ing a break at all.”

As Samantha’s two chil­dren have now left home, she is classed as a sin­gle adult. ​“If I was to be thrown out and not have any luck find­ing some­where, if it wasn’t for friends and fam­i­ly, which I’ve had to fall back on numer­ous times, I would end up in a hos­tel,” she explains. A 2023 report from the char­i­ty Gin­ger­bread, which works with sin­gle par­ent fam­i­lies, found in 2022 each week they were typ­i­cal­ly spend­ing 87% of their aver­age dis­pos­able income, com­pared with cou­ple par­ents who were spend­ing 67%. It’s like­ly this num­ber has only crept up. DWP Local hous­ing allowance rates have been frozen since April 2020 and ris­ing rents mean ten­ants on hous­ing ben­e­fits are strug­gling to cov­er the short­fall, with the aver­age being £151 a month.

Despite now being classed as a sin­gle adult, for Saman­tha it is impor­tant that she has some­where her chil­dren can call home when they come home. ​“I’ll live in a box,” she tells Huck. ​“As long as my chil­dren have space that they can call home, and that they can come back to and be com­fort­able and not have to sleep in a dou­ble bed with their mum.”

​“I’m at an age where I’m not going to buy my own house. I’m not going to be in a posi­tion to get a mort­gage,” explains Saman­tha. ​“I’m try­ing to do some­thing pos­i­tive using this time whilst I have got a roof over my head to try and put the feel­ers out for what’s avail­able.” How­ev­er, as Saman­tha has only recent­ly gone full-time at the food­bank she works at, she doesn’t have the nec­es­sary payslips to prove she can pay the rent and as a result is being asked in most cas­es to pay six months in advance. ​“I feel like I’m try­ing to be proac­tive but at every step I’m being knocked back.”

Then there are those for whom ris­ing rents have trapped them in poten­tial­ly life-threat­en­ing liv­ing sit­u­a­tions. Almost all sur­vivors of domes­tic abuse (96%) respond­ing to a report by Women’s Aid had seen a neg­a­tive impact on the amount of mon­ey avail­able to them as a result of cost of liv­ing increas­es.

Women’s Aid found that almost three quar­ters of sur­vivors sur­veyed (73%) said that the cost of liv­ing cri­sis had either pre­vent­ed them from leav­ing or made it hard­er for them to leave.The charity’s head of pol­i­cy, Lucy Hadley told Huck, ​“Domes­tic abuse is by its very nature a hous­ing issue, with per­pe­tra­tors cre­at­ing a con­text of fear and con­trol usu­al­ly with­in the home, a place where women and chil­dren should feel safe.”

Fran Fer­ri­er, Eco­nom­ic Empow­er­ment and Part­ner­ship Man­ag­er at Refuge explains how on top of exist­ing bar­ri­ers to leav­ing a rela­tion­ship and deal­ing with the trau­ma of domes­tic abuse, sur­vivors now have a new set of bar­ri­ers to face when con­sid­er­ing whether they can escape abuse.

​“On aver­age, sur­vivors of eco­nom­ic abuse are like­ly to have about £3200 of debt as a con­se­quence of the abu­sive expe­ri­ence and a quar­ter of sur­vivors are like­ly to have that over 5000 pounds,” Fer­ri­er explains. ​“Which equates to about 14.4 bil­lion pounds worth of UK debt direct­ly attrib­ut­able to eco­nom­ic abuse.”

Women’s Aid’s Lucy Hadley adds, ​“We know that lack of access to safe and afford­able hous­ing is a fun­da­men­tal bar­ri­er to women’s abil­i­ty to escape. This is why we con­tin­ue to urge the gov­ern­ment to pro­vide emer­gency finan­cial sup­port for those expe­ri­enc­ing abuse, the need for which is made even clear­er giv­en that our emer­gency fund had to close with­in a week due to high demand.

Those who are finan­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble are often forced to make the best out of a bunch of bad options. Data shows that most sex work­ers are moth­ers work­ing to sup­port fam­i­lies and 74% of off-street sex work­ers ​“cit­ed the need to pay house­hold expens­es and sup­port their chil­dren.”

​“That fig­ure is as true today as it was then, if not more,” says Niki Adams from the Eng­lish Col­lec­tive of Pros­ti­tutes, with the cost of liv­ing cri­sis caus­ing a sig­nif­i­cant rise in the num­ber of women return­ing to sex work. ​“If we accept that the major­i­ty of sex work­ers are moth­ers, then the ques­tion auto­mat­i­cal­ly aris­es: why is it that moth­ers feel that sex work is one of their best options out of a set of bad choic­es?”

Niki lists com­mon com­plaints they hear from their com­mu­ni­ty include exor­bi­tant rent ris­es, evic­tion threats and abu­sive land­lords. ​“For sex work­ers, there’s the added prob­lem that, because sex work is not recog­nised as work, they don’t have the doc­u­men­ta­tion that is need­ed to take on a ten­an­cy with a rep­utable agency.” She adds, ​“Your land­lord can try and take advan­tage either by putting the rent up or by just gen­er­al­ly being abu­sive or threat­en­ing, safe in the knowl­edge that it’s hard­er for you to com­plain and hard­er for you to leave and find alter­na­tive hous­ing as a sex work­er.” Niki notes that this sit­u­a­tion is made worse if the sex work­er is a migrant or trans.

Com­pared to this, a sit­u­a­tion where you can choose when you work, what you spend your mon­ey on and even where and who you live with is a lux­u­ry. Auton­o­my over your hous­ing sit­u­a­tion is now a mark of dis­tinc­tion and suc­cess and a dream for many stuck in unsuit­able rentals. Liam Miller, a spokesper­son for Lon­don Renters Union, explains, ​“Lots of peo­ple enjoy the social side of shared liv­ing, but oth­ers find it claus­tro­pho­bic. The con­stant revolv­ing door of house­mates and changes of con­tract can make shared liv­ing feel unpre­dictable and inse­cure. For some, hav­ing no con­trol over who you live with can mean an increased risk of expe­ri­enc­ing racism, homo­pho­bia, or trans­pho­bia.”

As with most things, this is a struc­tur­al prob­lem rather than per­son­al fail­ure. ​“The UK’s rental cri­sis was a polit­i­cal choice. Rather than intro­duc­ing caps on rents and invest­ing in social hous­ing, the gov­ern­ment has presided over a pri­va­tised wild west of a hous­ing sys­tem where land­lords stand to gain from a lack of afford­able hous­ing.”

Once the book­mark of free­dom, hav­ing a space to call one’s own is now a priv­i­lege of the finan­cial­ly-sta­ble few while the rest must endure at best low-lev­el ten­sion in shared rentals in the ongo­ing strug­gle for domes­tic bliss.

*Names have been changed for pri­va­cy.

Fol­low Eve on Twit­ter.

Enjoyed this arti­cle? Fol­low Huck on Twit­ter and Insta­gram.