There is no shorter fling than a renter with their furniture. Having shifted so much of my stuff already, it’s making me wonder: is rental culture killing us?
Newcastle, My Newcastle
I moved into Newcastle when I was 20. I fell in love with the city one metro over, and although I’ll never be far away, it’s hurts to be leaving it. It feels like where I’ve always wanted to be, but living in the inner-city suburbs is just not my idea of home.
I started renting this place in 2021, and since then, I have watched it’s complete and utter decay at the hands of the worlds thickest landlord. Bloke looks like Dr Eggman if someone stole his moustache. His legs are akin to the skewers running through a kebab. He owns three properties; the upstairs neighbours and somewhere else, yet runs deliveries for Sainsbury’s for a living.
The floor of the bathroom is rotting in, and with my first refusal on the place- I say this: I refuse.
Divestment?
Hawking your shit on Facebook Marketplace is more mentally harmful than taking a frying pan to the bonce, so I donated most of the furniture to Orange Box. It’s a local furniture non-profit that will dutifully heave all of your stuff out of your flat never to be seen again.
I love this, because it helps other renters avoid furniture waste that usually comes with moving. Newcastle City Council’s bulky waste collection must shift at least a thousand couches a year, and it’s all because of the sheer level of renters in the city.
To be frank, I don’t see the point in owning a flat. You can only have it leasehold, and in this area especially, the floors are built a touch too flimsy to feel comfortable in.
So, out of all of my stuff, I’ve only really kept really versatile furniture. Kallax units, a dropleaf table, and some ikea drawers. The rest of the stuff is all in plastic storage containers.
Movin’ on up
I don’t think renting is a bad thing, I think being a landlord is the issue. Having a healthy stock of housing offered at a sensible cost by a local government (see: council houses) means we can get economies of scale in looking after properties. Private landlords often rely on letting agents to provide this same service, which to me feels lazy.
Seriously, how can landlordism be work if someone’s doing the job for you?
Inner city locations with a high proportion of rentals like Arthur’s Hill, Jesmond, and Heaton should be top targets for councils to build more if they can and keep those properties in their ownership. A healthy mix of private and publically owned rentals can help keep prices lower and avoids pricing out community diversity.
Newcastle especially benefits from housing co-ops which can fulfil similar roles. The 151 Housing Cooperative successfully mobilised against their landlord and rallied a huge protest, and that makes me feel so hopeful. The West End Housing Co-Op proves that even a dozen properties creates new structures of community support.
If I was to stay in Heaton, I’d be pushing to start something like this. But fuck paying £130k for a flat when Sunderland has semi-detached houses starting at £80k.
Escaping Hell
The United Kingdom as a whole needs to destroy nimby-ism and take back the worst areas of the green belt. There’s garbage land, nature-free, so ready to put entirely new cities… but no political will. Even if we took back 10% of all green belt land, we’d be able to create millions of new homes.
Britain is built on red tape, petty spats, and zero common sense. We can fix this, create community solutions like Orange Box and housing co-ops, and produce new outcomes for the next generation. England IS cool, it just needs fixing. You just fix a broken system by getting rid of it.
So just as I throw out my trash to the curb, I hope we can throw out the culture of landlordism and renting. Cleaning up is a group activity!
All the best,
Haley