The bus pulled away, and Sophie Lane burst into tears. As the last chugs of exhaust fumes faded into the darkness, and the tail lights grew dimmer, she wearily pulled out her phone and called the only person who might listen at 11 o’clock at night.
“Mum..?”
“Sophie, are you OK? What’s wrong?” her mother asked anxiously, 190 miles away in Shropshire.
“I missed the last bus,” she said, wearily.
She then spent the next 15 minutes listing the frustrations of her day: working late to impress her boss at the music-industry internship in central London she’d fought so hard to get; train delays to Crawley because of ongoing strikes; getting off at the wrong stop in a fog of exhaustion; missing the last bus back to her grandparents’ house three miles away (the closest people she knew near London); and knowing the only option was a £20 taxi journey – taking her daily cost for commuting to £50, which was nearly half of what she had earned that day.
“I can’t do this any more. It’s been months,” sighed Sophie, calmer after a quick cry. “There has to be another way.”
Not far away in Surrey, Stephanie Dale was sitting down to dinner with her parents. She knew she was lucky to have a supportive family, who put her up and allowed her to come and go as she pleased while she set about starting and growing her own video-editing business – making the two-hour round-trip commute to a part-time job in London three days a week to pay the bills. Still, as she went to bed in her old childhood room, unwanted thoughts plagued her. Mainly: would she ever be able to afford to move out and move on with her life? Her friends, now 30, like her, had started considering their exodus from the city – just as she was trying to get in. Had she left it too late to hit the big time in the capital?
Meanwhile, 200 miles away in Cheshire, Charlotte Hampson sat cross-legged in front of her laptop, doing the maths. The elation of being offered her first permanent job after university, as a mental-health support worker for adolescents in east London, had faded. As she scoured the internet, armed with a calculator, pen and paper, she just couldn’t make the sums work. Even a shoebox-sized room in a dilapidated shared house would set her back 60% of her salary. With commuting and food, well… it just couldn’t work. Her parents said she was lucky – she’d been offered another job, much closer to home, too. She could take that. Save up. She knew they were right, but London had been her dream since before university. It was where attitudes to mental-health treatment were changing quickest, and where she could learn and progress faster.
This is the state of affairs in 2017. The housing market is broken, by our own government’s admission. Rental costs are spiralling, not just in London but in Bristol, Manchester and across the South East. There’s a mammoth shortage of social housing, and the number of affordable homes built fell to a 24-year low in 2016. The median rent in London is now a whopping £1,452 a month*. No wonder we’re struggling.
Which is why, nine months ago, we launched Cosmopolitan Home, Made: a campaign aimed at helping you – our readers – navigate the problems caused by the housing crisis. Teaming up with property guardianship company Dot Dot Dot, it took a long time to find the right buildings, but today, at their new home in south London, we’re shooting the 10 women who made it through to become Cosmopolitan property guardians. Sophie, Steph and Charlotte are just three of the women who saw Home, Made and wanted in.
If you’ve never heard of property guardianship, don’t worry. Before Channel 4 made sitcom Crashing out of it, neither had most people. It basically means utilising disused and vacant buildings, and filling them with people who pay a cheaper monthly fee, in return for keeping that building safe and secure. As an added bonus, guardians with Dot Dot Dot also do 16 hours of volunteering a month in the local area. The Cosmopolitan housemates will do this, too, but specifically for female-focused causes, ploughing their skills and a hell of a lot of girl power back into the community they now live in.
For Kayleigh Marshall, 24, that’s going to be art classes for local mums. Originally from Staffordshire, she’s been living back at home with Mum and Dad for four months, after she quit her post-university marketing job to pursue her dream of being an artist. “The minute I decided to be a creative full-time, I was priced out of the city,” Kayleigh explains. “I was paying £800, plus bills, for a six-person house share. In my previous place, my landlord screwed us over – he wasn’t paying the bills – and, in the end, the house was deemed unsafe. I had to move, but I didn’t get my deposit back. I just felt continually ripped off.”
Moving home was the only option, but it was always only temporary. Her job meant being a part of the London art scene was crucial to success. “Unfortunately it’s where all the work is,” Kayleigh says. “But here, time is money. I couldn’t build my brand, hustle for the right work, and make time to create the contacts I needed with the continual pressure and anxiety of paying ever-mounting bills. But the minute I left, I started saving to come back.”
It’s a similar story for everyone in this house. Those in the creative industries – Sophie (who has been trying to break into the cut-throat world of music management for a year, and on the day of our photoshoot accepted her first permanent role at Warner Music), Steph and her videography business, artist Kayleigh, alongside print-maker Victoria and Simone, who are both trying to cut it as models – are stuck in the catch-22 of needing the opportunities the capital affords, but not being able to afford the capital. Even those climbing the corporate ladder – like 26-year-old project manager Mitali Gohel – are struggling.
“I’ve been living at home in the East Midlands with my mum for the past year, and commuting to London three days a week. It was exhausting and expensive. But if I wanted to have money to actually live my life, rather than just exist and pay rent, it was the only way,” she says. “This is the hub of the decision-making. I want to progress in my career, and to do that quickly, I have to be here full-time.”
But it’s not just the financial and professional cost. Every one of the Cosmopolitan property guardians mentions the emotional and social toll the housing crisis is taking on them, and their generation. From the anxiety over mounting living costs, to the strain that living with parents or grandparents (and commuting for two to three hours a day) can put on your mental health, the scope of the problem faced by millennial renters is insidious. “There was a huge disconnect between what I did during the day in the music industry – meeting bands, helping to organise the Brits after-party – and then returning to my grandparents’ house,” says Sophie. “They struggled to understand that I had to be out late because of my job, and they worried about me. They couldn’t sleep properly till I was home. I was so grateful to them, but it just adds extra pressure, when you’re already pushing yourself to your max.”
As Dot Dot Dot property guardians, the Cosmopolitan housemates will pay £480 a month, inclusive of bills. There will be 12 women, split across two buildings, but the main one is a former Army Reserve Centre owned by the Greater London Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Association (GL RFCA). The GL RFCA got involved in this scheme because it is keen that the building creates affordable housing and contributes to local communities, even while it is between long-term uses. Similar rental properties in the same area top £900 a month. The lower cost, of course, is part of the appeal. But so is the community side of knowing you share a common goal with the stranger on the other side of your bedroom wall; especially when you realise that none of the 10 women you see here are from London originally. As Charlotte says, “Before I moved in, I only knew two people here. Moving to a new city is scary at times. But living here means I’ve got a ready-made group of friends, all trying to make it in our own way.”
As the photoshoot draws to a close and we start packing away the lights, make-up and clothes rails, the 10 women drift off into a corner. Someone turns up the Drake Spotify playlist. Two others come back from the shop with cheap prosecco and red wine. A few start dancing, taking selfies and plotting their team name for the pub quiz they’re all doing that night. History has shown us that great things can happen when clusters of women come together for a common cause. First stop: pub quiz. Next? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.
* For more information on becoming a property guardian, go to Dotdotdotproperty.com. If you’re interested in becoming a Cosmopolitan property guardian in the future, email a small biography of yourself to Housing@cosmopolitan.co.uk
FIND IT ON EBAY
Want to make your property look as good as our incredible guardian home? Well, get yourself on Ebay. All of the furniture you see on these pages was kindly donated by (and sourced entirely from) Ebay. What’s more, most of it is brand new and supplied from UK sellers. For more interiors inspiration, home and DIY essentials, and everything else you need to move house, go to Ebay.co.uk/homemove
* Data from Mayor of London at Gov.uk and the Valuation Office Agency. Hair Selen Hurer at BTW Talent, using ghd. Make-up Emily-Jane Williams and Emily Dhanjal, using bareminerals. Styling Lily Austin. Photographer’s assistant Roy Baron. Hair assistant Anja Joy Bont. Make-up assistant Louisa Fleming. Styling assistant Florence Armstrong. Interiors styling assistant Sam Cunningham. Hollyisabella.com.
