Hutching up: why Generation Rent are squashing in the housemates

Squashing six people into a four-bedroom house? You’ve just got to live with it when you’re part of Generation Rent, says Phoebe Luckhurst

Charlie, 23, is studying for a masters in public policy at UCL. He spent his first year in London living in a poky two-bedroom flat in Battersea with two friends; they converted the living room into a third bedroom. “It meant we could live somewhere far closer to the centre,” he explains, “but it was horribly cramped. The flat was small anyway but it meant that when we had people around, we didn’t have anywhere to host them. There was always a queue for the shower and it was particularly busy when all our girlfriends stayed on the same evening.”

Charlie is part of Generation Rent —twentysomethings who bounce from lease to lease, squishing extra housemates into box rooms and sacrificing communal space for a Zone 2 postcode. It’s called “hutching up” and it’s exploding in the capital as young graduates flock to London to work but find starting salaries stretched to cover astronomical rents.

While executives are packing their 2.4 children into a Volvo and heading for the ’burbs, youngsters are leaning in to the capital. A recent study conducted by Birkbeck and Demos into population movement found that during the 2000s, there was an influx of 24 per cent into London of white British people in their twenties, versus a net outflow of 20 per cent of those with children. Younger households are most affected by the soaring house prices — a recent study by estate agents Savills reveals the biggest group of private tenants is aged 25 to 34.

“Help to Buy will assist some people but I expect that for a lot of buyers in London the costs are too high to make a substantial difference,” says Neal Hudson, Savills’ residential market analyst.

The result is a generation of young professionals stalling in pseudo-student houses. For some, it’s a convenient opportunity to continue living with friends; others spend years in protracted passive-aggressive wars with housemates who move boyfriends in without asking and throw parties on random Mondays. One colleague — who shares with six others in north-west London — has more everyday concerns: “There are seven of us: we each have our own rooms but it is quite crowded. We only have two showers and they don’t work simultaenously so we have to stick to a schedule during the week, otherwise people end up being late or getting grouchy.”

Jessica, a copywriter, lives in Hoxton with “between two and five people — none of them speak English very well and one of the bedrooms has a lot of people in it, so I’m not really sure and can’t communicate with them.” The house has an itinerant feel: “A few months ago I lived here with a couple. They would scream at each other all day and night — and I mean scream. They’d slam doors, punch walls, the girl would just stand in the kitchen and cry. When they weren’t trying to kill each other they constantly had on really loud, repetitive dance music. They were eventually kicked out because they never paid rent.” Her current flatmates smoke a lot of weed and leave “awful, nonsensical notes on the floor for no reason”.

“I’d say the worst thing about living with lots of people is that, in my experience, they’ve all been really inconsiderate and generally just lower my expectations of the human race.” Ouch.

Others tell stories of sleeping on shelves or in cupboards, turning a five-bed into a 10-bed by filling it with couples, or subletting rooms that aren’t on the lease for lower rent — a small price to pay (literally) for having no security — in order to keep costs down. Some favour suburban areas, where houses are bigger than in hipster hotspots such as Dalston or Peckham.

Hudson explains that hutching up is happening on the fringes of the most expensive areas, “where the housing stock is a bit more flexible and allows people to cram in”.

Indeed, hutching up is creating new twentysomething communities. Can’t afford Peckham? Move to Tooting — it’s rooting. Most youngsters have been priced out of Clapham by PR girls and boorish bankers — try Balham, it’s nearby and on the Northern line.

Brixton’s gentrification was finalised by the opening of Champagne & Fromage, and rents have skyrocketed accordingly; young Londoners are catching the 59 down to Streatham.

Forest Hill, Finsbury Park and Deptford are also popular. What they lack in pop-ups and chic eateries they make up for in transport links: Forest Hill is on the Overground, Finsbury Park has the Victoria and Piccadilly lines, and Deptford is a hop to the City on the DLR.

“Our surveys of tenants found that affordability is a key consideration but second to that is proximity to place of work or education,” explains Hudson. “So they’ll move down the line or bus route.”

All they want is a room somewhere — though they might have to share it.

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