“There is despair – I don’t sleep, I feel unwell, very anxious,” says Esther, a Hackney resident who moved to London from Barcelona 25 years ago.
“It is horrible that people of my age feel obsolete, irrelevant, like we have nothing to give to society. That is how this situation makes me feel,” continues the 61-year-old artist.
What has driven her to the point of despair? Esther says it is a cumulation of factors, but the “final straw” for hers has been a decade of worsening living conditions in the capital’s increasingly brutal rental sector.
After separating from her husband, the artist moved into a studio flat on Kingsland Road in 2014 but was soon forced to move out when it was split into two student rooms. Two years later the story repeated itself as her latest building, in the same neighbourhood, was converted into luxury apartments.
“I was evicted in late 2016 and moved to my current Hackney studio in early 2017. It is not insulated, the heating system breaks down every winter, there is condensation and spores. I’m on the fourth floor and for two years we’ve not had a working lift.”
Esther, who works as an artist and has fluctuating income, pays £1,175 per month plus electricity and water bills to live in this environment. Sometimes she finds it unbearable and decamps, such as one bitterly cold winter week when she found solace at her former mother-in-law’s Barbican flat.
I see places in my budget that shock me. I am not accepting a place where the bed is next to the kitchen. It is undignified.
Now the landlord has put the rent on her studio up to £1,620 per month. Unable to afford the hike, Esther has been served with a so-called ‘no fault’ section 21 eviction and given until the end of this month to leave. But she has found the hunt for a new home harder than ever before.
Average rents are up more than 10 per cent across the capital in the last year, according to recent data, with hundreds of people sometimes competing for each property that becomes available.
"I can’t find anything decent,” says Esther. “I see places in my budget that shock me. I am not accepting a place where the bed is next to the kitchen. It is undignified.”
As the days tick by, she fears what lies ahead. After completing masters degrees at Central Saint Martins and Kingston University, she is hoping to begin a PhD as well as continuing her painting and community work in east London. But the future is uncertain.
20 per cent of tenants are drinking more alcohol to cope with the stress of renting
Esther is far from alone in feeling the weight of London’s frenetic rental market on her mental health. A poll by wellbeing service provider Unmind this summer found that more than half of renters in the capital were suffering higher levels of stress and anxiety due to a housing crisis exacerbated by soaring inflation and interest rates.
Four in 10 London tenants reported that their sleep was suffering as a result, while a fifth were drinking more alcohol in an attempt to cope.
More than a quarter said they were struggling to maintain performance at work while a similar proportion felt their personal relationships had been impacted.
‘The biggest anxiety in my life is long-term housing security’
Kat, 32, has seen first-hand how the stress of negotiating the capital’s rental market can dominate a couple’s time and energy. When she made the decision to move in with her boyfriend at the start of this year, the paucity of affordable choice hit hard.
"Ben’s housemate wanted to move out but I couldn’t afford the rent to replace him,” she recalls. “I was living in a warehouse conversion in Haringey, paying £700 per month for an ex-squat with no windows and a metal roof.
£3,124: the new record high average asking rent in London
"We heard so many horror stories of people being outbid for places. I was quite stressed because there was very little in our price range.”
When friends told her they were planning to leave their one-bed flat in Nunhead, near Peckham, Kat saw a chink of light and immediately contacted their landlord.
“I got in there before it went on the market. I thought I had lucked out. But their conditions were that we signed a 24-month lease without a break clause and the rent went up £100 per month to £1,400.”
While Ben wanted to continue looking for a better option, Kat was “panicky” and convinced him to accept the deal.
“The biggest anxiety in my life is long-term housing security,” she explains. “I am 32 and have no savings because I’ve been paying London rent for so many years. I want to start making tiny savings towards a deposit.”
However, the circumstances surrounding the move didn’t lend themselves to a blissful honeymoon period for the couple.
‘I feel like I can’t progress’
“Money is an issue in the relationship. Both of us are very stressed about money and rent is the biggest outgoing. When you are stressed it’s easier to argue. It then made for a more stressful living situation.”
This was further exacerbated by the physical condition of the property.
"The estate agent rang us a week before our moving-in date and asked if we could push it back so they could do some work – but we would have had nowhere to live. So we moved in and they still haven’t done the work.
“There is paint peeling off walls, spots of mould everywhere. A contractor came round, stapled blue planks of wood all over the bedroom walls for insulation panels but left five months ago and hasn’t come back to finish it.”
Kat says that despite these “frustrating” living conditions, she is still unable to save the sort of sums that would build up a deposit to get her “anywhere close to the housing ladder”.
“I feel anxiety about the future. I feel like I can’t progress. I can’t even think about having kids. It is always pushed back and that is a bit concerning. Everything is always on hold.”
There is a knock-on effect to the rest of life, and drastic solutions are under consideration.
Trapped in a cycle of insecurity
"Housing anxiety is always in my head and gives me less bandwith for with everything else. I find myself redoing my budget over and over again. We are thinking about moving in with my boyfriend’s parents in Dundee just to save for a deposit.”
Kat fears this would mean calling time on a hard-fought career as a children’s book editor, as well as her current social life.
“Publishing doesn’t really exist [at any scale] outside London. I went to university, got into a difficult industry and I might have to give it up for the chance of family life, my own home. It is a depressing outlook. It is a downer that we moved in together and we are already having to plot a way out.”
The soaring price of putting a roof over your head is having a huge impact on mental health. Almost 40 per cent of tenants polled by technology providers Goodlord and Vouch for their latest state of the industry report described paying the rent as their “biggest worry”. Six in 10 said they wanted to get on the housing ladder but didn’t have the necessary deposit.
A spokesperson for the London Renters Union, which campaigns on behalf of tenants in the capital, says the housing crisis is having a “devastating” impact on mental health.
“Skyrocketing rents and a tidal wave of evictions are pushing families into poverty and out of our homes. Renters are trapped in a cycle of insecurity and it is impossible for many of us to make plans for the future because we don’t know where we will be living in six months’ time.”
