At 34 years old, I’ve called at least 26 places home – most of these were privately rented. After the fallout from my parents’ divorce when I was a child, our single-parent family moved eight times until I left for university, not including some weeks spent in a family friend’s spare room while we waited for a council house. My mum went on to live in eight different properties. Home has always felt precarious, temporary, not ours. I still rent today, as does my mum. She retires this year and will never own her home again.
The one thing that has remained consistent while moving around is the TV set. It’s the first thing to unpack, offering escapism after a day of lugging boxes. But I have also always watched TV for “relatable content”. To see something of yourself on the screen is to feel seen in the world. However, I never saw a real reflection of our living situation on it while growing up.
The most memorable TV families living in social housing were the Gallaghers in Shameless and the Battersbys in Corrie. The Harpers on My Family, meanwhile – with their dentist dad and detached house in the suburbs – were depicted as “ordinary”. And those endless property shows after teatime? I don’t recall Linda Barker having to ask a landlord for permission to build a hanging teapot display on Changing Rooms, or Phil and Kirsty haggling a deposit on a house so that a low-income family could have a home for six months. I assumed that good, normal families lived in nice houses together for ever – unless two posh people came and showed you an even nicer house to buy.
Today, of course, I know that our situation wasn’t out of the ordinary at all, that TV was just perpetuating society’s perennial narrative that homeownership is The Goal. But renting has now become a crisis that affects millions: the number of households renting has more than doubled since 2001; rents are growing at the fastest annual rate for more than a decade; and the housing charity Shelter claims that we are short of 1.5m social homes. My own landlord recently increased the cost of the two-bed flat that I share with a friend by £200 a month, negotiated down from £400. I get paid a decent salary and have no dependents, and yet I can only just about afford to live in the city where I’ve worked for eight years without losing sleep over money at night. It’s also a reminder that my security is still, and might always be, in the hands of the person whose mortgage I’m helping to pay off.
Renting is a horror show, yet this is still rarely acknowledged on screen. There has been a glimmer of relatable relief in some recent shows. Take the Paramount+ romcom The Flatshare, which followed two single people who can only afford a bed they timeshare with a stranger (if you’ve been on SpareRoom lately, this doesn’t seem too far-fetched). In BBC Three’s Mood, sex worker Sasha survived with sofa surfing. And, in the BBC Four monologues Skint, we heard a new mum talk about having to live in temporary accommodation, despite having a regular and shared income with her partner. There’s even an interior design show specifically for renters, Flat Out Fabulous (BBC Three), which provides inspiration for those who risk eviction for painting a wall.
Most refreshing, though, is the new docu-series Evicted (BBC Three). It simply follows young renters around the UK – crucially, not just London – and shows the human stories behind the headlines and statistics.
“It’s just not home, is it?” cries Dawn, a personal trainer in the Midlands – nailing the mood of a fifth of the nation. Despite paying her rent on time and being a “good” tenant, her landlord has served her a “no fault” eviction notice and she needs to move weeks after giving birth. “This might be the last time that this key works,” says Danielle, a housing association worker living in London, who was also served a notice after refusing to pay £200 extra per month. In Bristol, marketing manager Thai, whose rent is going up by £300, tells the maddening reality of the average single renter who spends 35% of their wage on housing: “I feel like I’m not allowed to be here any more, I can’t afford it … on my Tinder profile, I’m going to say, ‘Dual income? Let’s do this.’ If I’m earning £25k and they’re earning £25k that’s a £50k dual income.” Security, she says, is what she wants more than anything.
This is not exactly the sexiest reality series, but that’s because, rightly, it doesn’t sensationalise, perpetuate negative stereotypes, or ask for pity – it just tells the truth of what renting in the UK is like right now. Like the specific shade of rage of somebody telling you to pay even more for a box room or get out. The limited pleasure of sneakily putting up a framed print given that you’re not allowed to decorate your home. The devastating letters, emails and estate agents that hide the face of the landlord behind them. The jobs and friends in a beloved city that you need to leave because you just cannot afford to stay. The fact that all you can do is suck it up, get ready for work, hope for the best and see what happens. Such relatability stirs up both relief and recognition. Hopefully, seeing how people deal with their evictions might give other people going through the ordeal some idea about what to do next.
Evicted follows last year’s Channel 4 Untold documentary, Help! My Home Is Disgusting, which was a damning report on the bleakest end of the renting crisis. The brilliant housing activist Kwajo Tweneboa visited people living with severe black mould and damp, or mice and bug infestations, who say their complaints are ignored. It’s a shameful watch – for the people in power whose decisions have made this acceptable, not for the tenants – and yet we see residents such as Tracey, whose ceiling has caved in with damp, carrying the shame: “It makes you feel like you’re completely unimportant”.
Such uninhabitable conditions, thankfully, aren’t something I’ve experienced, but that’s why we need TV to show us how people really live in the UK. Most notably, the majority of shows make the assumption that the crisis only affects young people. Why can’t my mum see herself on the screen? And who are the 55- to 64-year-olds looking for house shares whose numbers have increased by 239% since 2011? Commissioners could consider how fascinating these stories would be, rather than announce, say, another visit to Sarah Beeny’s country mansion.
I understand that TV is also a place for makeovers, dreams and escapism. But with the divide between the haves and have-nots at its most heightened, it needs to be said that, for so many of us watching, owning Pat Butcher’s old house in EastEnders is as out-of-reach as owning Kendall Roy’s penthouse in Succession. If I’m going to be part of the third of millennials who are “cradle to grave” renters, I want television to start reflecting my reality. Because I really don’t want the last thing I ever watch to be the 196th series of Location, Location, Location.
Evicted is on BBC Three on Thursday.
