When I bumped into my former landlord it changed my perspective. After years of renting, it gave me the confidence to stand up for myself in an objectively unfair game
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fter 12 years of renting, I’ve known my fair share of landlords – although “known” is probably the wrong term. I don’t usually meet them in person and rarely speak to them directly, only communicating through a managing estate agent or, if I’m lucky, email. They often exist in my mind as frightening spectres of exploitation: mere initials on a contract, but with the unsettling power to displace me at short notice.
But that all changed one freezing night in March 2023, at a friend’s house party in Dalston, east London. On arrival, I stuffed cans of White Claw in to the small fridge and scanned the room. I ended up chatting to a man I had never met before, who introduced himself as a friend of the host’s new boyfriend. He was a little older than me, with a mop of unremarkable brown hair and a slightly awkward demeanour.
We made the usual small talk about where we were from and whom we knew at the party. He was based in France, but used to live in the UK and still had a house here. Whereabouts, I asked? His house was in south-east London – near to where I had previously lived, as it turned out. I laughed when he mentioned the road I used to live on and asked which number. As he mouthed the exact number of my former home, a horrifying thought dawned on me: I was speaking to my former landlord.
