The worst thing about being in Generation Rent

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A neighbour can be many things: a friend, a lover (not advisable), a voyeur, or even a handsome 26-year-old Italian man called Riccardo who openly flirts with your girlfriend but you can’t say anything because it will make you look insecure.
I don’t mean to sound melodramatic here — but neighbours have the potential to turn your living situation into a nightmare. Every time we move home, we run the risk of acquiring “bad neighbours” — and Generation Z, aka Generation Rent, are constantly moving.
I’m 24 and I’ve relocated eight times in the past six years; that’s a lot of convincing Uber XL drivers not to cancel my trip because they “don’t take furniture”.
Most of the times that I have moved were for financial reasons. The problem is that because rent has been on the rise for years, young people are consistently priced out and forced to move on.
Once you do find a place that doesn’t leave you in financial ruin, the landlord will invariably increase the rent. Prices go up, tenants move out, richer tenants move in and the vicious cycle of being outpriced continues until the rest of us — the less wealthy — end up finding ourselves queueing up outside some dilapidated warehouse in Haringey for a room with no windows and flatmates who pick new tenants based on their music taste. Or living in a mouldy bedroom in Slough with three blokes called Mikey 1, Mikey 2 and Pete, who punches holes in the drywall.
Affordable flats are usually in Zone 6 and come with damp walls — and dodgy neighbours. So finding an affordable property that doesn’t smell like rotting meat is hard enough, but finding one that also comes with unassuming neighbours can feel like a Sisyphean task. You might find a one-bedroom flat within the M25 for under £2,000 pcm, but the neighbour to your right sells crack and the one to your left listens to Crazy Frog at 2am like it’s still 2005.
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Although I do admit that I’ve had some good neighbours. There was Gary the squatter who lived next door to me at university and was my only source of non-virtual human contact in the early months of Covid. We’d pass each other on the street, Gary clutching an assortment of stolen items, and we’d nod and smile.
Gary was far nicer than my other university neighbours who — though we never met in person — accused me and my flatmates of burning their fence down and calling the university’s enforcement officer. The case was cleared up within minutes of the officer arriving, walking to the back garden and seeing their fence intact and devoid of scorch marks.
Now that I’m older and work for my rent money, I can see why five loud, eccentric and flamboyant students would be less than ideal neighbours. I wouldn’t like to live next to my university self either, but I wouldn’t falsely accuse him of arson.
Since then I’ve had dozens of neighbours. There was the cranky couple who insisted that we turn our TV off at 9pm and speak in hushed voices after the sun had set. The small-time drug dealer who would get high off his supply and forget that he ordered Deliveroo three times in a row.
A few couples with babies that never seemed to get any older and spent their whole lives screaming into oblivion. A mean old man who kept a rifle by his door and shouted at me every time I went for a cigarette. A strange guy who never left his flat but cooked what smelt like leftovers wrapped in used nappies at 4am.
And, while technically a flatmate, there was the time I moved into what I thought was a one-bedroom apartment only to discover that I’d be living with a 35-year-old accountant who occupied the room I’d been told was a storage cupboard.
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The fact is, unless you’re willing to pay £1,700 pcm to live in a shared house in Hackney with three “out of work” artists whose parents are supporting them financially, you can wave goodbye to having salubrious neighbours.
I’ve now learnt that you should never take “good neighbours” for granted. With the property ladder’s bottom step becoming increasingly hard to climb onto, a significant number of us might be renting for the rest of our lives. If that’s the case, we really ought to start vetting our neighbours before moving in.