It is often assumed that people of retirement age will no longer have housing costs to cover. But for a significant and growing group, this is far from the case
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ow that she is retired, Deborah Herring’s days are hers to fill – usually with leisurely walks, museums and trips to the theatre. But she still manages to spare a thought for her ex-colleagues at the private boarding school where she taught religious studies for 14 years. “In their nice, expensive Oxfordshire village, I think they’d be frankly horrified about my situation,” she says with a laugh.
Horrified that a few weeks ago she came home to find two strangers asleep on her sofa; horrified that she has to put up with an overflowing litter tray belonging to a cat that isn’t hers; above all, horrified that at the age of 65, she is about to leave a two-bedroom flatshare to move into a four-bedroom one where she will “probably be living with people whose combined age is less than my own”.
Herring initially made the move to flatsharing two years ago, when, fed up with living alone in a rented house near Banbury, she moved to London and into her current place, which she shares with a thirtysomething couple. “I would rather do anything than live out the rest of my life in the country, where there’s barely one bus an hour,” she says. Now, after a period of feeling “slightly like a third wheel”, she is moving into a mixed-use block of flats in Bermondsey, south London.
