"A broken system": Diary of a London tenant
7 min read
Professionally familiar with the levers of power, Zoë Crowther was nonetheless caught in an unfolding rental nightmare that she says reveals a deeply broken market. Illustrations by Tracy Worrall
My flatmates and I watched in despair as yellowish water seeped down our walls and dripped from the ceiling into buckets and pans spread across the entire floor. As heavy rain hammered the building outside, it was quite literally raining indoors. Half our flat was uninhabitable, and yet we felt powerless to do anything about it.
How did we get here?
2020
I moved to Tooting, south-west London, with two friends in the summer of 2020. We were excited to move to London together for the first time after graduating from university. It was lucky timing, we thought, to find a well-located flat for the relatively low rent of £600 each per month, due to fewer people moving into London during the height of the pandemic.
The flat was in a former 1940s council block, with Wandsworth council still owning the freehold of the building. The private landlord lived abroad, having inherited the flat from her mother and then renting it out via a letting agent to earn an easy income.
2021
For the first year, we had no issues other than the odd sighting of an increasingly bold mouse. But in the summer of 2021, the serious problems began.
During heavy rainfall, water started leaking through the ceiling of one bedroom. After asking the letting agent to organise a contractor visit, we received no update from anyone to address the problem. A few hours later, the water had dried out in the summer heat, and we crossed our fingers that it wouldn’t happen again.
2022
A year later, an intense rainstorm caused the leak to spread to our living room ceiling. We quickly removed items and furniture and put down multiple pots and pans to catch the water.
We contacted the agent again, but were told we would have to ask Wandsworth council to intervene as it was the freeholder. Multiple calls to the council’s repairs line went unanswered, and once the flat had dried out again within a few days we received no communication from the council about doing anything to prevent the leak occurring again.
2023
In May 2023, the leak reappeared – and got even worse. The water damage was so extensive that the plaster in the living room came away and the curtain rail detached from the wall.
After chasing the council, we were told to get in touch directly with the private contractors it had hired. Eventually, after multiple phone conversations with rude operators, a contractor came to assess the situation.
Scaffolding was erected around the building and we were informed that the entire issue had been caused by items blocking the gutters, which had now been cleared. Hurray! The issue was now apparently resolved – but the scaffolding remained on the building for a further six months.
2024
With the scaffolding finally taken down, we could breathe a sigh of relief to be able to properly see out of our windows again.
But the relief was short-lived. In May 2024, the leak came back in the first bedroom and the living room worse than ever before, as well as appearing for the first time in a second bedroom.
After waiting another two weeks for an assessment, we were told by a contractor that “the issue is most likely coming from the roof”. Mystery solved.
We received various visits from contractors, but after each assessment got no further update on what was being done to resolve the issue.
The leaks kept reappearing and covered the entire length of the living room. The dripping in the second bedroom was so severe that my flatmate had to sleep in another room, and we had to move all furniture out of the affected rooms and turn off all the sockets.
When the leak was at its worst, we were told by our agent that, while waiting to hear back from the council, in the meantime we should “try and control the leak as much as possible”.
One evening, we were up until past midnight hauling and emptying containers of multiple litres of water into the bath, before repeating the process as they were filling up at such a fast rate.
A few days later we were told we had to call a contractor ourselves to arrange another visit. We were then informed that the council’s property manager had not even approved the payment yet for further scaffolding, as there was a consultation period to get consent from the other leaseholders in the building.
This consultation period was due to last more than three weeks. Meanwhile, our living room’s walls and floors were soaked and stained, the plaster on the ceiling was starting to disintegrate, and some areas of the flat had humidity levels of more than 80 per cent (considered very high and likely to cause health issues). My pillows and mattress began to go mouldy in the humid conditions.
After getting our local councillor directly involved, an electrician was finally sent round to assess the safety of the flat. The electrics were safe, but he pointed to our disintegrating ceiling and said it was likely to contain asbestos: “So you definitely don’t want it falling down.” After searching for records online, we discovered our flat was indeed on a list of properties containing the dangerous fibres. Good to know.
So, there we were, three years after the leak was first reported, with half our flat uninhabitable and a risk of toxic material falling through the ceiling.
What next?
This was the final straw. We moved out in August 2024, leaving the flat with extensive water damage and staining in multiple rooms.
Many people have asked me: if it was so terrible, why didn’t you move out sooner?
If you move each year, the inflationary London housing market means you will likely have to bid for a new flat and pay hundreds of pounds more in rent each time you move, as well as spending hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds in the moving process – hiring vans, buying furniture, paying deposits – which frankly, we could not afford.
And if you do choose to move? Ask any London renter, and you will soon find out that similar issues follow you everywhere you go. In my new flat, we have been subjected to noisy and intrusive interior and exterior building works and repeated failures by the commercial landlord to give us notice for access. My flatmates and neighbours have been locked outside in the middle of the night for hours after the landlord changed the locks and failed to provide the correct new keys.
After seeing news coverage of our Tooting flat nightmare, a panicked student reached out to me to inform me she had just moved into our old flat and was horrified to see what had happened. The landlord had, of course, failed to mention what terrible conditions she would be moving into. A few months later, the student told me that she and her flatmates had ended their tenancy early due to severe damp and mould, which had made her physically ill.
And so the cycle continues: one group moves out of horrific rental accommodation, only to be quickly replaced by a new group doomed to face the same issues. With rent money still flowing, there is little to no incentive for landlords and letting agents to improve conditions for their tenants.
A broken system
We were a household of young, highly educated professionals, and I am extremely privileged to work at the heart of UK politics. As our situation worsened, we repeatedly chased up our agent, filed a formal complaint to the council, wrote to our MP, and complained via social media, tagging those involved. And yet, we still struggled to be heard.
There are thousands of others less fortunate than us, living in inadequate, poor-quality housing across London and the rest of the UK – in most cases with no-one taking proper accountability to ensure they are safe. This is a deeply broken system.
PoliticsHome Newsletters
Get the inside track on what MPs and Peers are talking about. Sign up to The House's morning email for the latest insight and reaction from Parliamentarians, policy-makers and organisations.
