Cancel Xmas. To Pay The Rent.
Too many people can't pay their rent. Due to a noxious combination of low wages, high rents, soaring utilities, job insecurity (zero hours contracts with exclusivity clauses) and the looming threat of...
View ArticleThe Five Horseman of 2013.
2013 has been every bit awful as I feared, due to the five horsemen of indifference. Cruel policies implemented – or rather inflicted - by a party of out of touch millionaires caused chaos, despair,...
View ArticleI Look Down On You Because…
In every city, on every street, across the country, in every building, a quiet battle is taking place, between ‘them’ (who’s ‘them’?) and us (who, exactly, is ‘us’?) The battle lines are fixed, and the...
View ArticleRein In Those Wilsons.
I’m battling with feeling peeved that it took some media outlets years to wake up to the fact that renting is frequently horrific. I’m pleased for the publicity, feeling vindicated, but equally certain...
View ArticleWorried.
For some tenants, renting is a constant source of joy. Just one, vast panorama of happiness. A gorgeous extemporanea full of glee. For others, mostly the impoverished renter, whose work is precarious...
View ArticleBecause We Want To
Imagine this: being refused entry to an open supermarket because it’s Wednesday. Or being denied the use of a road because the council, without justification, feel like it – or because you’ve got funny...
View ArticleWhere To Stick Your Bike
This blog has moved from writing about my previous, falling down home within the horror-scape of Dovecot Towers, on to the design of housing, to the nature of being a tenant, or rather the nightmare of...
View ArticleAmateurs.
‘Mummy, when I grow up I want to be a landlord.’ ‘Well, study hard my child and maybe, just maybe, one day you might just get there.’Nobody. Ever. I have mentioned many times before that being a...
View ArticleLosing Everything.
Most tenants are itinerant; inadvertent, perpetual nomads, moving from one home to the next, living the life kinetic, but with all the restless, roaming energy travels sideways and backwards, seldom...
View ArticleRoom-mates.
The magic moment is here. The third; perhaps the fourth date. Or the first…or whatever. You’re bringing someone home ‘to physically express your affection for them’. You open the bedroom door. Then...
View ArticleRenting Is A Feminist Issue.
Feminist website Vagenda recently discussed condensation in housing, which got me thinking about the affects of rented housing specific to women; if there are any…Of course there are. Firstly, women...
View ArticleAll Aboard The Clipboard.
When letting agents inspect rented homes (which they do - quite a lot) they are known to arrive with a clipboard, laptop, tablet or even an old-school documentation facilitation device (ie a paper...
View ArticleAffordable Rent?
Such a good idea, those affordable home things, mentioned so frequently by politicians and campaigners. They're brilliant. They're brilliant because, well it's obvious isn't it? People can afford to...
View ArticleTenants Will Come To A Party.
Now is the time for all good parties to come to the aid of the tenant. Does anybody out there care? Politicians must wake up to renters, because right now, across the board there is too much empty,...
View ArticleIs It Really So Bad?
Most recent studies about renting indicate that mostly – all is well. Tenants are happy. Renters stay as long as they choose then move on because they’ve found somewhere better or cheaper. This blog is...
View ArticleWho Houses The Homeless?
If ever I wonder what hateful people think, I head straight for my search term counter. Mindful that I cannot unsee the horror, I brace myself for an onslaught of cruel and unusual bigotry in the form...
View ArticleSeven Years Here.
So it’s my blog’s birthday. Rentergirl is still here. Now we are seven, and I’m still furious.I have enough subject matter; in fact there’s plenty. I thought I’d run out of material within a few weeks....
View ArticleGermans Bitten
I recently spent a fascinating few days with a group of artists and designers, some of whom had travelled from Germany. We discussed art, design and vegan food in Glasgow (it’s odd, but we have more...
View ArticleHooray For Labour – Sort Of.
So kind lovely Labour have realised that renting is horrible. As I've been saying hereabouts, renting is often a hideous experience because of the inherent insecurity, lack of stability, aka no control...
View ArticleScared To Leave.
The many negative effects of renting are well known and often shared hereabouts. Firstly, there’s the constant insecurity, then the ever present threat of revenge evictions or being given no fault...
View ArticleThis Is Why We Hate Them
Letting agents wonder why we loathe them so vehemently; why we hate them with passion. They ask why anyone would introduce laws to control them. Commiserations then to English readers, who just last...
View ArticleSecret Hidden Homelessness.
It’s a tragic, hideous, inevitable, and scandalous but sure and certain fact that homelessness is rising everywhere. Paradoxically, the causes are both simple and complex: there is a straightforward...
View ArticleArmy Life.
I owe this post to the excellent Digs: the action group campaigningfor better renting in Hackney (look them up, support them, follow them - they're brilliant.) They were holding a public meeting about...
View ArticleCheap At The Price
This much we know for sure; where demand for rented homes is high, rents are racing upwards ever upwards. Elsewhere, i.e. the country know as Notlondon, rents do not rise so much.We also know that the...
View ArticleConsequences.
In certain places, rents are out of control. Mostly in London of course, but also cities and towns such as Aberdeen and Warwick – historically beautiful locations where building is controlled or...
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