\n<\/p>\n
N<\/span>ow that she is retired, Deborah Herring\u2019s days are hers to fill \u2013 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. \u201cIn their nice, expensive Oxfordshire village, I think they\u2019d be frankly horrified about my situation,\u201d she says with a laugh.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t 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 \u201cprobably be living with people whose combined age is less than my own\u201d.<\/p>\n 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. \u201cI would rather do anything than live out the rest of my life in the country, where there\u2019s barely one bus an hour,\u201d she says. Now, after a period of feeling \u201cslightly like a third wheel\u201d, she is moving into a mixed-use block of flats in Bermondsey, south London.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not going to have an elegant garden, and drink cocktails and have barbecues on my patio,\u201d says Herring. Rather, she will share a kitchen with strangers, wait for twentysomethings to empty the washing machine, and try to find common ground with people who don\u2019t remember a time before the internet. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t actually bother me. I\u2019ve got five children, so I don\u2019t have a problem with young people,\u201d says Herring, who has twice been married. Her teacher\u2019s pension, coupled with a small income as a part-time A-level examiner, is enough to cover \u00a31,000 a month in rent, plus the odd theatre ticket. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to think about it as the chance to do something new and different \u2013 not as a comedown in the world,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n If it sounds like a less-than-ideal setup for a pensioner, many more of us will soon have to adopt Herring\u2019s attitude. According to the English Housing Survey, just 6% of households headed by someone over 65 are privately renting. But the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) forecasts that this will almost treble to 17% by 2040. Online rental platform SpareRoom says that the era of flatsharing in later life may already be upon us: just 2.7% of its users were aged over 55 a decade ago, compared to 7.1% in 2024.<\/p>\n <\/span>Deborah Herring, 65, in the accommodation she shares with a thirtysomething couple.<\/span> Photograph: Graeme Robertson\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The proportion of over-65s in the private rental sector has remained relatively unchanged in the past two decades \u2013 largely, says Anna Brain, a senior policy researcher for the PPI, due to the introduction of Margaret Thatcher\u2019s right-to-buy policy in 1980. Among the over-65s, \u201cwe\u2019re not seeing a huge increase in private renting yet, because a lot of those people had the opportunity to buy their home in the 80s and 90s,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Many of these homes were not replaced with fresh council housing stock, leading to a lack in provision of socially rented properties. And yet today, more than 40% of the homes sold under the scheme are privately rented.<\/p>\n \u201cThe challenges that younger people face getting on the housing ladder have really significant long-term implications,\u201d says Brain. \u201cBehind that [right-to-buy] group, you have a whole cohort of people coming through who couldn\u2019t get social housing, didn\u2019t have the right to buy, and then were faced with rising house prices.\u201d In short, many more of us will have to make peace with renting into our twilight years. It\u2019s unclear, though, how many of us could afford it.<\/p>\n Andreas Savva, 68, pays \u00a3800 a month for a mould-ridden house in east London, which belonged to a friend\u2019s mother. Savva\u2019s ankylosing spondylitis \u2013 an inflammatory condition affecting the spine \u2013 makes his job in patient transport for a cancer charity increasingly difficult. \u201cI can\u2019t do the patients, so at the minute, I just move the vehicles around,\u201d he says. The mould at home is exacerbating things: \u201cIt\u2019s too toxic \u2013 it\u2019s beginning to affect my lungs. I have to leave,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Savva used to live rent-free in a house belonging to his brother, but he had to move out when his brother died without a life insurance policy. He was forced into a series of precarious living situations \u2013 first in a hotel, where he paid through the nose for a room, and then in his current place, where the smell of mould soaks into his laundry and garlands the kitchen walls.<\/p>\n Now, the problem is that with a budget of \u00a3800 in a city where the monthly price of a one-bed routinely tops \u00a31,300, he is unsure of where exactly he can go. \u201cI hate the idea of sharing,\u201d says Savva. \u201cI hate the idea of a place where there are so many people using the toilet and the kitchen. But I\u2019ve got no choice.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI should be retired, but I\u2019m paying rent,\u201d he says. \u201cI need to keep working.\u201d Though he has a small state pension and some money put aside, Cyprus-born Savva doubts he can stay in the UK. \u201cI can\u2019t just keep going on like this for ever,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Even dedicated savers are unlikely to be putting aside enough money to allow for rent or mortgage payments in retirement. \u201cThe UK pension system is based on the assumption that people reach retirement without housing costs,\u201d says Brain. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge concern that people aren\u2019t saving enough.\u201d The PPI conservatively estimates that you would need about \u00a3180,000 more in your pension pot to cover the cost of renting a one-bedroom flat through later life. \u201cGenerally, the people who we find in rented homes over 40 are not high-income households. So to be able to pay their rent today and set aside enough to pay their rent in retirement is going to be incredibly difficult,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n That\u2019s assuming they find somewhere to rent in the first place. These days, 63-year-old Tamara Kocsubej spends an inordinate amount of time checking her SpareRoom account to see if anyone has responded to her pleas for a decent room in shared accommodation. \u201cI\u2019m checking it all day, every day,\u201d says the Ukraine-born charity worker, who has rented in Nottingham and London since moving to the UK from Hungary.<\/p>\n Her recent stint as a lodger came to an end after just under a month of renting from a live-in landlord, where she felt \u201cunwelcome all the time\u201d. So she took a room in a three-person Airbnb for \u00a3950 a month. Before that, she rented a room in a six-bedroom house in north London, which soured when her twentysomething flatmates began to make comments about her age. \u201cAt the end of every day, I didn\u2019t want to go back,\u201d she says. \u201cI never used to live with a closed door. Now, I close my door all the time.<\/p>\n \u201cI actually like living with someone,\u201d says Kocsubej. \u201cI don\u2019t want to live alone. But everywhere I look, people are in their 20s.\u201d Many of them, she says, won\u2019t even consider sharing with a 63-year-old. \u201cI want to stay <\/em>somewhere. I want to be part of the community. It\u2019s making me wonder whether I should go back to Hungary. But all of my life is here.\u201d Last she checked, she was number 146 on one non-profit\u2019s waiting list for affordable housing. \u201cEvery day I check and I wait. That\u2019s all I can do,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018Every day I check and wait\u2019 \u2026 Tamara Kocsubej.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Tamara Kocsubej<\/p>\n The UK housing sector could hardly be less prepared for an influx of older renters. Just 12% of households in England headed by someone over the age of 75 have step-free access to their home. A report published earlier this week by Age UK reported a huge shortage of housing suitable for an ageing population, finding that 44% of over-50s are worried about accessibility.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen people talk about older people\u2019s housing, they very often think of supported living,\u201d says Age UK\u2019s Lisabel Miles. \u201cActually, the vast majority of older people will be living in mainstream homes \u2013 not in some kind of specialist unit. And the vast majority of people will move when they\u2019re younger and then age in that home.\u201d The problem is that many existing properties are difficult to adapt \u2013 whether they contain plumbing that makes it hard for a bath to be replaced with a shower, or stairs that can\u2019t accommodate a stairlift. Applying for a disabled facilities grant to cover the cost of adaptations is slow: on average, it takes 247 working days to get such a grant approved and the work completed. Then there\u2019s the time that private renters may well have to expend on convincing their landlord to make the changes in the first place. \u201cI\u2019m desperate to find somewhere, but I\u2019ve had to turn down rooms where the stairs just weren\u2019t doable,\u201d says Savva.<\/p>\n Of course, there are social advantages to housesharing in later life. Digital marketer Nick Henley founded Cohabitas, an accommodation-sharing site for over-40s, when his father died and his mother was left alone in a three-bedroom house. \u201cShe was lonely,\u201d says Henley. \u201cShe would ride the buses just to talk to people.\u201d Though his mother quickly dismissed the idea of living with other people in her mid-70s (and never did actually end up sharing), he launched the site anyway, and says that today business has never been better, as a result of rent hikes, rising utility bills and a desire for connection. \u201cThe oldest person I\u2019ve ever helped find a flatmate was probably 88,\u201d he says. He admits that if given the choice, most people wouldn\u2019t choose to share a house with strangers, but adds: \u201cMany people would love to live in a flat with a friend, a partner or a family. They would not like to live in a flat on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n Herring supports this hypothesis: \u201cIt\u2019s just nice knowing there are bodies around,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve been surrounded by people all my life. It would be weird to now suddenly be living alone.\u201d<\/p>\n A flat of her own is all that Sarah (not her real name), a 55-year-old paralegal, has ever wanted. Despite being employed for the past 21 years, the self-described \u201cveteran renter\u201d from Surrey could never afford to buy. \u201cThere\u2019s an assumption made that when you are a certain age, you are mortgaged, you\u2019re married, you\u2019ve got kids,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of ageism when you go to view places. It\u2019s like a job interview or dating. I don\u2019t want to be doing this at my age.\u201d<\/p>\n After 12 years in a beloved bedsit \u2013 \u201cit wasn\u2019t much,\u201d she says, \u201cbut it was mine, <\/em>where I could do whatever I want, whenever I want\u201d \u2013 she was tossed into the SpareRoom arena a few months ago when her landlord wanted the house back for her own family. After years of paying \u00a3500 a month for a flat with no central heating or washing machine, she realised she could probably never again afford to live alone.<\/p>\n The flat hunt was brutal: months of messages, interviews and bruising disappointments. Each time she thought she\u2019d found somewhere she might like to live, an email along the lines of \u201cwe just don\u2019t think you\u2019re suitable\u201d would land in her inbox. \u201cThey may as well have said, \u2018You\u2019re too old.\u2019 But what do they think a 55-year-old is going to do? Suddenly keel over and have a heart attack? It was upsetting, quite frankly,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n With a decade still to go until she reaches state pension age, she\u2019s uncertain about whether she could stop working. A few weeks ago she found a room via a care-and-share scheme, offering companionship and light help to a woman in her 80s in exchange for affordable rent. \u201cIt\u2019s fine,\u201d she says. \u201cI get to live with some dignity here. But then I remember that, again, I\u2019ll eventually have to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Now that she is retired, Deborah Herring\u2019s days are hers to fill \u2013 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. \u201cIn their nice, expensive Oxfordshire village, I think<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[9069,11177,1738,19058,1264,2669,1683,3440,313],"class_list":{"0":"post-33221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-60s","9":"tag-choice","10":"tag-hate","11":"tag-housesharing","12":"tag-housing","13":"tag-idea","14":"tag-rapid","15":"tag-renters","16":"tag-rise"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}