My landlord more than doubled my rent because our housing system is broken
The value of a home is no longer what it means to the people living in it, but what it can extract for profit, writes Pete from Hackney
For years, I’ve lived in Hackney, sharing a 6-bedroom house with five other people.
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We’ve been living together for nearly a decade and have built something that goes far beyond a tenancy agreement.
On the day I found out I was being made redundant from my academic position, I received a message from my estate agent saying he could get £1,200 per room. I’d been paying £495 at the time, and hearing this, my heart sank.
That price gap tells you everything about what has happened to housing in London: the value of a home is no longer what it means to the people living in it, but what it can extract for profit.
The house isn’t perfect. There’s been a leak in the bedroom ceiling for the entire time I’ve lived here. But because the rent is (was) relatively affordable, we’ve all tolerated the disrepair. It’s not ideal, but it’s been stable enough to build a life around.
In theory, licensing standards protect tenants from living in substandard housing. In practice, underfunded councils struggle to enforce regulations, and landlords often remain one step ahead. It leaves renters stuck in homes that are technically regulated but practically unsafe, with little leverage to demand change.
When the private rental market is treated like a commodity rather than a right, we lose the people who create community. One of my flatmates works at Homerton Hospital, supporting people with mobility issues. Others are active organisers for Palestinian solidarity. We ran London Renters Union (LRU) meetings in the front room to support tenants in insecure housing during COVID. We’ve hosted fundraisers for friends and family in our community who are facing eviction.
This home is where we’ve practised solidarity.
Hackney is a place with such a unique culture and make-up and it’s been my home for so long. There’s a mix of working-class families, long-term residents, and newer migrants and families. It’s a borough shaped by political history and ongoing activism. You see it on Ridley Road Market and along Mare Street, where traders and organisers intersect in everyday life.
The truth is, renters have little room to negotiate obscene price increases. We’d have to go through a tribunal which often defaults to unaffordable market rates. Rent has risen by around 40% in four years but wages have not kept pace. Upcoming reforms in the Renters Rights Act on May 1 may help, but for my home, and many others on my street, they come too late.
We are now breaking up as a household. The six of us who built a shared life can’t find another home together. I’ve managed to find somewhere on the other side of the city which is secure, but it’s far from Hackney. It means leaving behind the local networks, from my local union branch to places like the Mildmay community club, where so much of our organising life happened.
We cannot afford to treat housing as a commodity governed solely by “market rates.” Introducing rent controls is necessary. Without them, the city will continue to expel the very people who make it livable. A home is not just a house; it’s the infrastructure of a community. And once that is broken, it cannot easily be rebuilt.
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Pete is an academic and organiser with the Hackney branch of the London Renters Union.
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