Laura Kay, who describes herself in her Guardian profile as a ‘free-lance writer and part-time sandwich maker’, has written a comment piece for the Graun exhorting ‘Generation Rent’ (the growing numbers of people in their twenties and thirties who can expect to be renting privately for the foreseeable future) to buck up – renting is actually a great lark, and we should be sanguine about skyrocketing house prices and static salaries.
I find this article extraordinarily irritating. Which is a bit unfair, as it’s only her opinion. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve been saving about a third of my income for a mortgage deposit for the last year and a half, and keep thinking about how many pairs of boots I could have by now if I hadn’t been! But mainly it’s the senseless optimism and lack of logic that nabs my nannygoat.
Quite apart from apparently having the political consciousness of a dishcloth, Pollyanna here seems to have forgotten a few very important caveats to her ‘4 great things’:
1) Not living in fear of breakages: I actually live more in fear of breakages as a renter than I would if I owned the place. If the boiler breaks in my flat, I have to
(a) get in touch with my landlords, who are a bugger to get hold of as frequently out of the country;
(b) get their permission to get the problem solved, deal with their angst about how much it’s going to cost, potentially have to put up with them trying to get it done on the cheap by some dodgy geezer with no qualifications before they eventually admit defeat and let me get a professional in;
(c) go through the whole process again if the first intervention doesn’t work, although this time with the angst amplified, and with passive aggressive noises being made about how much expense/hassle is involved in renting the flat to us and ‘maybe we should just sell it’, leading me to be incredibly anxious and inexplicably guilty every time several things need sorting in quick succession.
If I actually owned the flat, and thus the boiler therein, I could simply get the damn thing fixed or, if I couldn’t afford it, live with it. I wouldn’t spend my life in a state of anxious powerlessness.
2) Freedom to move: Only if you have a massive deposit sitting handy, or someone rich to sub you. Most landlords won’t give you back your deposit until weeks after you vacate the property; paradoxically, new landlord won’t let you move in until they have the deposit. So unless you have a few grand going spare, upping sticks is not exactly the carefree process the author implies.
3) Housemates: I’ve had some bad ones. I’ve had some great ones. But ultimately, I’m nearly 30; I’ve been in a relationship for over 5 years; I know who I want to live with. My parents had bought a house and had two children (and, fair dos, a divorce) by my age, whereas I am still living like a student. It’s not such a ‘great experience’ any more.
4) Not a symptom of a ‘lost generation’: Ah, this is the one that really had the cerebral fluid boiling out my ears.
“We may be a generation struggling to find jobs and affordable housing, but we’re also a generation who can talk about it, laugh about it and get on with it. There are worse things to be known for than not owning four walls: at least we’re not Generation Plague.”
I detect a strong aroma of the Four Yorkshiremen here – “oh, but we were happy in those days, though we were poor!” “BECAUSE we were poor!” – along with a sewage-y underwhiff of Tory pull-your-socks-up-never-had-it-so-good-ism that makes the gorge rise in my throat. It could be worse, so stop complaining? I’ll accept that as a socioeconomic argument when you can spit into my open coffin, thank you very much.
Yes, there is nothing intrinsically awful about renting; indeed, in many other countries it is the norm and people are perfectly happy to do it. But those countries have social housing, rent control, tenancy rights, and a living wage, as well as a reasonable expectation that when you’re old, state provision isn’t going to be so paltry you will have to make a choice between eating and heating. In Britain, unless you get very lucky with your landlord, to be a renter is to be a second class citizen, with very little of the ‘freedom’ Kay extols – not even the freedom to paint the walls or keep a cat – and no security at all.
Everything is better in a Fairisle Sweater 