AS A working professional renting in zone three of London, I can confirm that not every renter smokes weed or is in a gang. Though obviously I do both.
Housing minister Rachel Maclean was absolutely right to point out that there are renters who’ve never touched, much less dealt skunk, and who have no affiliations to postcode crews. Not me, but they are out there.
Yes, it’s come to seem normal for someone like myself, a trainee corporate lawyer, and my boyfriend Hugh who’s in B2B marketing, to be in a gang. To spend our evenings on the corner, listening to drill, watching for any f**ker who tries to take these streets off us.
In many cases it comes with the rental. Jocasta, my pal who works in publishing, was told when she signed the lease that cocaine wholesaling was a condition of the tenancy. Most adverts say ‘No pets, no universal credit, must smoke skunk’ upfront.
But for every ten of us who balance a career in finance with roaming the streets mashed out of our middle-class minds wielding machetes, there’s one renter who doesn’t. Statistically.
Why, some of us, like the housing minister’s children, are even Conservative voters. As my old housemate Hugh, a TV director and crack addict who killed a man and threw his body in the Thames, renting doesn’t make you a liberal!
So I think it’s marvellous that minister is willing to stand up for the minority of decent, hard-working tenants who don’t smash limbs with baseball bats to earn enough credit for their next quarter-ounce. They need representation too.
But renting? And not being in a gang, high on cannabis, coming out of a crack den to smash up the neighbourhood? You might as well get a mortgage.
