Tenants Are Brilliantly Shaming The Landlords Who Ripped Them Off
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If you've ever felt ripped off by your landlord, you're not alone.
On Tuesday, an onslaught of London tenants shared their outrageous rents and housing nightmares with the viral hashtags #ventyourrent and #rantyourrent on Twitter and Tumblr.
The campaign, which is affiliated with the group Generation Rent — which works to obtain decent, affordable housing for renters — was coordinated around London's May 5 mayoral election.
“The candidates for Mayor describe London as the greatest city on Earth, but as long as growing numbers of people are paying huge sums to live in squalor, they'll have a lot of work to do to make that a reality,” Generation Rent’s Dan Wilson Craw told Dazed. “The hashtag #ventyourrent is unearthing the scale of common problems like damp and mice, all the way up to the most shocking experiences like poisoning, ceilings falling in and bullying landlords and letting agents.”
Americans quickly followed suit, and posted rants of their own.
Some posts address particularly corrupt landlords, while others describe the awful conditions of buildings and apartments.
Twitter user Zack Polanski shared a photograph of his apartment's horrifically unsanitary shower and exposed pipe.
Many posts describe conditions that were not only unpleasant, but threatening to renters' health.
Other Twitter users voiced their unpleasant roommate matches — highlighting the high costs of housing in many cities in the U.S. and abroad, where people often are forced to live with strangers and seek roommates on craigslist because studios and one bedroom apartments are virtually unaffordable.
The cost of housing is astronomical.
As ATTN: has previously reported, America has a widespread affordable housing crisis.
A report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition revealed how many hours you would have to work a minimum wage job in order to afford a one-bedroom apartment in 2015, and mapped out the data.
National Low Income Housing Coalition - nlihc.org
Note: Florida's minimum wage is $8.05 per hour, which is not noted on the map.
Even in the states with the highest minimum wages, housing was not affordable.
As ATTN: reporter Kyle Jaeger pointed out, while the demand for affordable housing is only growing, data from the HUD, U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Department of Labor reveals that there aren't enough low-income jobs to go around.
Things are even worse for low-income families.
Yet another recent report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition revealed that conditions were even worse for families who fell into the "extreme low income" bracket. For every 100 of these families, there were only an average of 31 affordable units. Twenty states had even less affordable housing — Nevada had only 17 affordable units per 100 low income families, while California, Alaska, and Arizona had a mere 21.
As Twitter's rent "venters" and "ranters" pointed out, finding housing is only half the battle. Often, the scarcity of options, steep rents, and dishonest landlords mean that people end up living in extremely unpleasant and unsafe conditions and/or shacking up with strangers.
You can read more renters' experiences on the Vent Your Rent Tumblr page and even share your own using the #ventyourrent or #rantyourrent hashtag on social media.
