For years, I’ve lived in Hackney, sharing a 6-bedroom house with five other people.

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We’ve been living together for nearly a decade and have built something that goes far beyond a tenancy agreement.

On the day I found out I was being made redundant from my academic position, I received a message from my estate agent saying he could get £1,200 per room. I’d been paying £495 at the time, and hearing this, my heart sank.

That price gap tells you everything about what has happened to housing in London: the value of a home is no longer what it means to the people living in it, but what it can extract for profit.

The house isn’t perfect. There’s been a leak in the bedroom ceiling for the entire time I’ve lived here. But because the rent is (was) relatively affordable, we’ve all tolerated the disrepair. It’s not ideal, but it’s been........

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