The shit flat expert

Illustration by David Foldvari

I write what I know. And what I know, unfortunately, is shit flats. As expert topics go, this is a depressing one. I would like to say, “I write what I know”, and for that to be quantum physics or ancient Greek or archaeology of the Mesopotamian era. But shit flats is the only expert topic I have, and so I’m leaning into it.

I leaned into it so much this year that I wrote a book about housing. That book, I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There, is about the horror of renting in an anonymous, London-esque city, about what the pressure of it all does to your mental health and relationships, and about how living in a property with a creeping black-mould problem can apparently make you totally evil and insane.

Writing a book about housing, even if it’s fiction, as mine is, is an odd experience for a few reasons. For one, it means that people keep asking me how to solve the housing crisis, as though I am some sort of smaller, Irish-er, girlier version of Keir Starmer. (I don’t know how to solve it! That’s not my expert topic, I’m sorry!)

The other bad thing about writing about housing, particularly as part of the deeply irritating demographic of “millennials with no generational wealth who will thus never own their own home”, is that sometimes people who are not in this demographic think stories of bad flats are fantasies. It can’t possibly be that bad, these people think. Surely if you lot just gave up on lavender matcha, or small-plates restaurants recommended by TikTokers – or whatever the current stereotype of millennial financial irresponsibility is – you’d be able to sort your life out and get your own property.

I am weary to my small print of answering these questions, so instead I include here an abridged list of my shit housing, renting, estate agent and landlord-enduring experiences. In the interest of full disclosure, these have all taken place over the period of a decade or so, all in London. I’ve lived here since 2014, and in the course of that time I have rented a lucky baker’s dozen of flats. Some of the 13 I stayed in for years, some just a few months. I have not bothered to work out how much money I’ve spent on them cumulatively, because it will make me want to kill myself.

Also, you’re not allowed to read any of my selected anecdotes and say to yourself, “Well, just go home then.” This is because: a) the situation is just as bad if not worse for housing in Ireland; and b) these days you’re actually not allowed to tell Irish people to go back to their own country any more, thank you very much.

I once lived in a flat in Haggerston where there was only one washing machine for the entire building. This led to an all-building internecine feud over the use of said washing machine (at one point its powder drawer was taken hostage by a man on the top floor, and had to be negotiated back to the common area), which culminated in someone pooing in protest in front of the washing machine. Another time, I came home to find the hallway covered in blood and Metropolitan police tape, and when asked politely the police said it was not their job to clean up either of these things. The bathroom had no windows. £550pcm.

I once lived in a flat in Hoxton in which the hot water stopped working. Fairly standard. After several weeks of begging, the landlord sent out a handyman, who covered the boiler in “Do not use” red tape, and told us it had been leaking carbon monoxide into our bedrooms. For accidentally trying to kill us, the landlord said we could have one week rent-free that month. Again, no windows in the bathroom. £700pcm.

I once lived in a house in East Dulwich owned by a jolly hockey sticks landlady who did not enjoy the stress of owning property for profit, so to deal with the psychic pain she would send her friends around at random intervals to remove pieces of furniture she thought were too nice for us to use any more. Eventually her stress got to such high levels that this woman – an adult, in her late 20s – had her dad ring us to say she had been crying over the damp in the flat, and it was our fault for not putting the lids on our pots while making fusilli. £750pcm.

I once lived in another flat, also in East Dulwich, where my landlord kept raising the rent, and when I eventually asked him not to do this any more, pretty please, he said, and I quote: “I will have to wait and see what happens in the Middle East.” This was weird because he lived in Devon. Somehow, nearly £2,000pcm.

So, I know bad housing, I know awful landlords. I know being fleeced out of thousands of English pounds by shiny-suited pimply estate agents who look, sound and act like they’re 12 years old. I know every trick in the book when it comes to withholding deposits. I know “items missing from inventory” (when invariably the inventory is full of photographs of items from 2005). I know “toilet seat-hinge wear and tear”. My personal favourite excuse for withholding a deposit: “We believe you may have a secret cat on the property without paying the requisite pet-rental fee.” Reader, I have never had a cat in my life.

You can make up your own mind about whether my experiences are sheer bad luck, a smattering of examples that reveal a wider trend or that the private rental system is broken to the point of the bizarre. I have spent enough time thinking and talking about it to know I belong in the latter camp. For what it’s worth, my current landlord is nice enough, but that doesn’t mean I’m safe for ever. Horror stories are ubiquitous, and a lack of choice means you’re never sure whether you’re going to find yourself stuck in one every 12, 18 or 24 months. Just like you, I’m only one flip of the coin away from walking into more mould, carbon monoxide and excrement-inducing turf wars. Sometimes, the reality is scarier than any writer of ghost stories could imagine.