Carrying on from my article on my free blog, where I talked about how privately renting can be harmful to your wellbeing, with tips on how to better manage that. I’ll now share my experience with renting, which has been one shitshow after another.
Privately Renting: Shitty Landlords
I’ve been privately renting my entire adult life, and in the last 19 years, I’ve had many shitty landlords. When I moved to London to attend the University of Greenwich and do my undergraduate degree at 25 in 2005, I would meet my first shitty London landlord and shitty estate agent.
Back then, estate agents could add a truckload of extra costs when using them to find a place to live too. And they would find loads of ways to rinse you.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. During my first year at university and living at this address, I was greeted one day by bailiffs who kicked us out of the property. It turned out the landlord, who was also living at the same address, hadn’t owned the property in over a year.
The bailiffs were there to remove all of us. The estate agent hadn’t done their due diligence. So without any notice, I had just found myself homeless again.
Everything I owned was now piled up in the front garden of the property that I was living in earlier that day. This obviously presented me with a problem. Where was I going to live and what was I going to do with my possessions?
I tried my university first, hoping they would allow me to stay temporarily in their university halls of residence. But they wouldn’t let me stay there while I found someone else to live unless I paid for the whole year. Fuck that, I was poor as fuck.
My university then gave me some information so I could go to a homeless shelter. My university really didn’t give a fuck. Especially as that didn’t solve the issue with all my positions.
I had no choice but to use the same estate agent that put me in this situation in the first place, and they found me somewhere I could live, where I could move my stuff there that day. However, I wouldn’t be able to live there right away.
This was the best I could do at that point in time, so I worked my way through ‘man with a van’ adverts and businesses until I could find one that could help me that day. So I was able to move my position somewhere safe.
Once that was done, I just looked for a local B&B that I could afford and ended up staying in a B&B for about a week.
To add insult to injury, I didn’t get my deposit back from that property I was kicked out of without warning. The “landlord” had also known the entire time this was going to happen, and the police were there to make sure we were kicked out of the property. The landlord just didn’t care about giving us a heads-up. There was also meant to be someone new moving in the following week as well.
The property I moved into after this one was meant to be all bills included, but it turned out that was a lie. None of the bills was included, and they had a stupid pre-pay meter which constantly ran out of money. When living in shared accommodation with a single pre-pay meter, no one wants to pay for it. And that included me, as I was paying for the bills with my rent money.
Six months after living there, the landlord asked me to leave, which was fine. When privately renting as a student, with a very limited budget, I only wanted to live in accommodation that included all bills, so it didn’t bother me that I was moving yet again, except for how much money this was costing me. I’d not been in London for two years yet, and I was already moving again. Did I get my deposit back? Of course not.
On to the next landlord. Again, I was living in shared accommodation. This time the landlord had a problem with the woman the other tenant was dating and kept encouraging me to treat this woman like she wasn’t there. Really weird situation.
After six months of living there, the landlord wanted me out, so they could have work done on the property. However, they wanted me to come back after. But why would I? I needed to find another place to live, so it’s not like I can just return when the work has been done. Did I get my deposit back this time? Nope.
My fourth move and my fourth address in two years. I’d spent so much money on lost deposits, moving, and estate agent fees that it was no longer funny.
Again, the fourth place I’d moved into was meant to have all the bills included, but again it had a pre-pay meter. That meant someone had to keep paying for the energy. So of course this caused issues, yet again. To make matters worse, the windows in my room were rubbish and were extremely drafty.
One of the tenants I was living with also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from being a soldier, which didn’t exactly make you feel safe. There were also issues with the person they were dating, who also had a load of issues as well.
We had to call the ambulance once to deal with this person as well. To rub salt into my wounds, my BMX was stolen while living there by one of the other tenants. It really sucked living there.
But the reason I had to move out was that my friend tried to kill themselves by jumping out of my bedroom window, which caught me and our other friend completely off-guard. One minute they were talking on the phone to their mum, and the next minute they were acting weird and suddenly ran across my room and jumped headfirst out the window.
I bolted for the front door, shouting at my friend to call an ambulance. My friend’s eyes were looking in two different directions, which made me worry about brain damage. They kept trying to get up, but I held them down with as little pressure as possible because they weren’t in good shape. I also didn’t want to make things worse.
The ambulance came, and so did the police. My friend and I were arrested but later released without charge. We were kept there overnight, in a cold cell and without any way of washing ourselves, not even our faces. We weren’t able to leave until late the following afternoon. A doctor and police officer also put me through a demeaning, full-body inspection.
At no point would they tell me how my friend was doing after being taken to the hospital. I asked for an update throughout my time being kept there. I had to request a solicitor in the end so they could find out what happened to my friend, so they could tell me if they were ok or not.
When I was eventually released, they kept all my clothes, and for some reason, they’d only pay for train travel back home, even though a bus would have taken us directly home. So we had to zigzag the lines to get back home. When I was eventually allowed to get my positions back, it took them half a year to arrange that for me.
The first thing after getting home was to wash and rest up, as I’d not slept at all. The following day, we then visited my friend in the hospital, and it turned out that they were now going to need to use a wheelchair for the rest of their life.
The fall had caused considerable damage, but they were lucky they didn’t break their neck and die. All this because they jumped headfirst out of my first-floor (second-floor for you Americans) window.
The landlord didn’t respond well to what happened, even though there was no damage to the property and they weren’t paying for the bills out of our rent money like they were meant to be doing anyway.
So again, I was looking for a new place to live. And that would see me privately renting from an even worse landlord. At the time, I had no idea what my rights were when renting. I would eventually find that out with my next landlord, as I had no choice but to find out.
Privately Renting: Slumlord
When privately renting my next shared accommodation, a house in multiple occupations (HMO) to be precise, would go on to have just a shit tonne of issues. My friend helped me move into my new place, after yet again being forced to use the same shockingly bad estate agent, as I couldn’t afford any of the others.
I heard a lot of strange noises on my first night there but didn’t think anything of it. The next day, I found out the property was infested with mice when I saw the mouse droppings. This was then confirmed by the other people living there. Not only was the property infested with mice, but it had been for a very long time. Our slumlord wasn’t interested in tackling the problem. It was a known problem, yet no one told me before I moved in.
By this point, I’d graduated from my undergraduate degree and lost my student loan and grant to help me move for a sixth time. I would end up being stuck living there for 15 years, I think. For eight of those years, the property was infested with mice before the slumlord finally got exterminators in.
What makes this worse is how one of the other tenants brought bedbugs into the HMO. When they brought in an exterminator, the exterminator told us to put all our possessions into one storeroom. They’d then spray our rooms, and then we could move our stuff back in.
At the time, I didn’t think much of it. But then, those who hadn’t had bedbugs in the property now all had them. By putting all our stuff into a room that wasn’t sprayed when our rooms were sprayed, it meant that everyone’s stuff had become infected by being put in contact with the possessions of the person who brought them into the property.
So at that point in time, we had a mice infestation and a bedbug infestation at the same time, and the two issues overlapped for two years. Yeah, two years. So there’s me, still struggling with daily psychotic episodes, living in a place with two different infestations, trying to stop myself from losing my mind.
For about 18 months, I didn’t have a bed and just curled up on top of a word box in the centre of my room, which was approximately 91cm by 60cm. Unable to sleep while being permanently psychotic, as I felt things crawling over my skin constantly. For 18 months. Without a single respite.
The slumlord decided it was easier to kick us all out rather than deal with both infestations. But I couldn’t afford to move, and I didn’t want to move if it meant I’d bring the bedbugs with me. This was when I started finding out about my rights. Until this point, I was living in constant fear of finding myself on the wrong side of a revenge eviction. Not that this fear ever went away.
I asked the council for help with finding me somewhere else to live and explained everything that was going on, but they wouldn’t help me without a Section 21 Notice. Even though I was living in a slum. I’d never heard of this before, so I told my slumlord I couldn’t move out until they provided me with my Section 21 Notice. Everyone else had left the HMO by this point, without needing to because they never got their Section 21 Notice.
The slumlord wouldn’t provide me with my Section 21 Notice, so I ended up being stuck there for years. That’s how I ended up living there for 15 years. Now that I was stuck there, I arranged my own bedbug exterminations and did several home exterminations myself over a short succession and then a few follow-up ones just to make sure they were gone for good.
So yeah, if your landlord wants to get rid of you, they have to give you a Section 21 Notice or Section 8 Notice (for rent areas); otherwise, you’re safe to remain.
Because I never got my section 21 notice, I was stuck at this property because they considered it as me having a roof over my head, even though it was a slum. Then you have the court case that will determine if you’ll actually have to move or not. That’ll easily add an extra year before you’ll have to move out.
This was only half of the issues. The boiler rarely worked during the winter. They’d keep getting someone they knew to fix it, but it would stop working almost right away. I spent most of my winters either freezing and not wanting to have a shower in ice-cold water or keeping my portable electric heater on 24/7.
The windows, like my last place, were a drafty nightmare as well. I spent a lot of time living in my room wrapped up in layer after layer when the boiler would be out of action for up to five straight months on a regular basis.
It’s worth noting that Mind and Independent talk about how poor living conditions, such as a damp or cold environment, can cause physical health problems. With no hot water and ice-cold rooms, self-care and basic hygiene were also a problem.
Generation Rent also found that 75% of people privately renting experience anxiety and depression when compared to homeowners. This is supported by Clark and Wenham (2022), who found that people privately renting were twice as likely to suffer from anxiety when compared to homeowners.
And then there’s me, coming into this slumlord situation, already with two anxiety conditions and experiencing psychosis. Not a fun situation by anyone’s imagination.
It was so bad that one of my portable electric heaters melted the plug and plug socket because they had to be kept on so long just to make the room kind of bearable. But no matter how many times we complained, they wouldn’t do anything, and I was still scared of a revenge eviction, as I couldn’t afford to move.
Speaking of my plug sockets, I only had one plug socket that worked in my room, and that eventually packed in. My slumlord wouldn’t do anything about it, so I was forced to get an electrician to fix that plug socket, as I couldn’t afford to get them all fixed.
To make matters worse, in the spring and summer, my room would turn into an oven because there was no insulation in the roof. I had heat stroke several times. One time it affected my breathing so badly, they sent me for a chest X-ray and gave me an inhaler.
Even though I brought this to the council, they again wouldn’t do anything as long as I had a roof over my head. Thankfully, my partner bought me an AC unit, because it just wasn’t safe for me to be in that room with my heart issues.
I’d already seen what the slumlord was willing to do when people made too many complaints, so I lived in an infested and unsafe room because I couldn’t afford to move out.
After completing my undergraduate degrees, I went on to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), a state benefit in the UK for people with health issues, as my psychosis and general health and mental health were declining. I managed to do some volunteer work at the time, but only 1-2 days a week.
During covid, and the issues that came with the other people I was living with, I eventually had enough of living in a slum. I got the council involved, who came and did an inspection. Although both infestations had been dealt with by this point, it turned out they were running an illegal HMO that was completely unsafe to live in.
Then we found out that my slumlord was subletting, and their landlord had never permitted them to sublet. Now I was being evicted with just a week’s notice, and as it turned out, I had no rights as a subletter.
The council weren’t of much help either, as they would only suggest accommodation over 100 miles from where I lived. By pure chance, my partner’s parents were able to help me find a place to live, and my nightmare of living in a slum was over.
I can’t believe I had to live in that slum for so long simply because I was too poor to move and because I had somewhere, slum or not, the council wouldn’t help me move out until it was already too late.
Compared to the city I lived in before London, privately renting back then was first class. London has been nothing but one thing after another.
Privately Renting: Problem Tenants
While living in the slum, I also had to deal with a fair few problematic tenants as well. One tenant, one of the oldest to live there while I was there, being in their 50s, almost got into a fight with two different tenants. I had to physically separate them during such a situation during covid.
The tenant who kept finding himself getting into fights was also a passive-aggressive nightmare to be around, and their general behaviour would just rub you the wrong way. So it didn’t surprise me that they kept pushing people too far.
Although the worst thing this person would keep doing, from my perspective, was literally shitting all over the toilet seat, and not clearing it up. This happened three times. I have no idea how that happens to an adult.
Another tenant I had while living there would often pee in the kitchen sink and borrow other people’s plates and cutlery. But instead of washing them and putting them back, they just barely run it under a tap and put them back. I ended up buying them their own plates and cutlery so they’d stop doing that with ours.
And then there was the tenant with the PTSD that I’d already mentioned, which was a strange time, but surprisingly less of a nightmare than living with those people in the slumlord’s property.
I hate privately renting!
References
Clark, T., & Wenham, A. (2022). Anxiety nation? Economic insecurity and mental distress in 2020s Britain. Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.jrf.org.uk/anxiety-nation-economic-insecurity-and-mental-distress-in-2020s-britain and https://www.fenews.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/anxiety-nation.pdf.