Unfit homes and couch surfing – the wonderful Tory world of private renting

Lily Levin, Private tenant, London

It fills me with disgust, but not much surprise, that the Tories voted against a rule requiring landlords to keep their properties ‘fit to live in’. This rule could help protect working class people from squalor – we wouldn’t want that now would we?!

Disaster

When I first came to London I moved into a three-bedroom house with four other student actors. My ground floor bedroom window wouldn’t close. The front door was broken. The bath, sink and toilet were blocked.

One of the others put their foot through the ceiling from upstairs just by walking along. What a nutter. The electrics box exploded in another’s face.

The kitchen smelled like something extremely dead. We never found out what it was. And finally, as is traditional, there was mould all over the ceilings and walls! All our letters and photos to the landlord and letting agency were ignored. Seven years and nine moves later, I’ve seen it all.

I have just ended a six-month couch surfing stint. I was offered an acting job for very low pay. The project could not get funding – also courtesy of the Tories – but it was an incredible piece, so I took it. I had to ‘not live anywhere’ to afford to work.

What was supposed to be six weeks turned into six months. I couldn’t find anything within my budget which was ‘fit to live in’.

Four months in, my trio found a place. We did this by raising our budgets by £100 each, and lowering our living standards by a century or two. But it was worse than we thought.

Without furniture and tenants, there was nowhere for the squalor to hide. Cigarette ash on the kitchen surfaces; the traditional mould; a kitchen drawer full of mouse droppings; a mouse, obviously; front garden full of rubbish; back garden full of armchairs and a fridge; kitchen tiles all smashed and loose; broken shower; leaky bath; stale smoke from the previous tenants.

‘Choice’

We were told we had the right to forfeit the contract and get all our money back – but should we ‘choose’ to, we had to be out by Saturday. That was two days away and only a week after we moved in.

Grace period? Nope. Help? The agency took us to one viewing which they knew was both out of our budget and out of our search area. I was couch surfing for a further two months.