Mark Piggott

Renter’s paradise

Getting on the social housing list is the best thing that ever happened to me

On turning 50, I realised I’d never own my own home. What bank would agree to give a mortgage to someone with no regular source of income? Even if I did somehow hold down a job, I would have just 15 years until retirement age.

For a while, I was depressed. Owning your own home is the British dream. Why else would all those property shows I drool over be so popular? I won’t have anything to hand down to my kids. What sort of loser am I?

Then I remembered: I live in a five-bedroom Victorian terrace in Islington, which is owned by the council. At £650 per month, our rent is far less than what private tenants might pay for a flea-infested bedsit in the same area. When the toilet gets blocked, the central heating breaks or the roof blows off, we make a call and the problem is fixed for ‘free’. And while I can’t pass on my home to my kids, I can pass on my tenancy.

Best of all, not having a hefty mortgage has meant my wife and I have been able to be there for our children throughout their lives. Some of our home-owning friends have had to work long hours, miss school assemblies and trust their children’s care to family members or au pairs. While many home-owners can barely afford a holiday, we have several a year. Last Christmas we were in Australia; the year before we spent five weeks in America. We can’t pass on much in the way of capital, but we can provide our children with plenty of memories.

In case you’re thinking I sound impossibly smug, I should point out that my life hasn’t always been like this. Having been booted out of home in 1983, aged 16, I spent the next eight years sleeping in basements, squats and on sofas.

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