‘Made for languishing, not living’: Lifting the curtain on Britain’s modern housing misery

While calling London’s housing situation a crisis may have become a truism, after years on the private rental circuit, Maria Albano can confidently claim the reality is much worse

Most flats in the city cater more to a modern life of transit (Getty)

Upon my permanent move to London in 2016, I was instantly swept away by the infernal carousel of British housing. Five years on, I am yet to be freed from its dizzying spin: my student and early adult years have been spent in overcrowded, yet prohibitively expensive, hubs of decay, none of them exempt from some kind of maintenance issue.

One political upheaval after another could do nothing to deflect my attention from more prosaic problems, whether these be an overflowing toilet, in-house thieves or a petty quarrel turned bloody. Today I can confidently claim that, while to call London’s housing situation a crisis may have become a truism, the actual situation is even more grim.

Most London flats are there less to be dwelled in than to cater for a modern life of transit; in fact, by being as inhospitable as they are, they reject all pursuits of permanence or personalisation. This owes to their primary function being not to provide a home to those who live inside, but to act as profit-making machines for landlords, or fronts for tax evasion and money laundering by foreign investors.