Home Sharing in London
There is perhaps no city in the UK that is more suited to the concept of home sharing than London. Extremely high rent throughout London has left young people searching for work in the capital struggling to save, struggling to achieve a good work-life balance, or simply struggling to afford a place to live.
Share my Home aims to solve this issue, and the challenge of loneliness in older London residents, by bringing together young people who need affordable accommodation with elderly people who have space in their homes and may be experiencing loneliness.
Because like extortionate property prices, loneliness is rife in London. In fact, more than half of Londoners admit to feeling lonely, which in a city of almost 9 million, makes London one of the loneliest cities in the world.
Loneliness can lead to stress, anxiety, and depression, and amongst older people, it can leave them vulnerable if they have an accident at home. With the Covid-19 pandemic forcing another lockdown this winter, the future could look a particularly bleak prospect for those living alone.
So how can home sharing, particularly in London, combat these two distinct issues faced by the capitals population?
Solving Loneliness in London with Home Sharing
According to Age UK, there are more than 2 million people over the age of 75 experiencing loneliness in the UK. These are people who have benefited from an economy that allowed them to buy their own homes fairly easily, but have since become isolated for reasons ranging from their partners dying, to simply losing to touch with friends and family.
By inviting younger people into their homes, elderly home owners with space to spare, our householders, can enjoy all the benefits that come with having company – from simply having someone to talk to and spend time with, getting help around the house, to the security of having someone they trust sleeping in the next room.
At Share my Home, we carefully match our householders with our homesharers, those individuals looking for a place to live, to ensure that the pair will genuinely enjoy spending time with each other, and have the best chance of establishing a meaningful, mutually beneficial relationship.
Whilst this clearly helps to alleviate the problem of loneliness amongst the elderly, in London, it also helps to solve the issue of loneliness amongst younger people.
London is a world city, and attracts young people from all over the world to live and work there. And with this influx of young people moving to the city comes an increase in loneliness.
A City Index survey showed that just 7% of new Londoners found the city an easy place to make friends, and two thirds of them admit to feeling lonely on a regular basis. With another national lockdown in place, many young people in London will find themselves living alone or with strangers, paying extremely high rent.
Living with an older person, who we have paired specifically with a home sharer, can mean a young person can enjoy simple benefits like having a warm, lit home to return to, someone whose company they enjoy in the evening, all the way to feeling as though they are really contributing positively to their local community in London.
How Home Sharing Can Provide Affordable Living in London
London, in terms of rent, is the most expensive city in Europe. Thanks to a huge supply of jobs attracting people to the city and increasing demand for accommodation, as well as property owners buying up vast swathes of property as mere investment, London can prove an impossible place to live for young working people trying to save.
When up to two thirds of a wage is spent immediately on rent, it can become extremely difficult for a young person to have ambitions of becoming a homeowner themselves.
The other choice for those individuals is to find a place to live further outside the city, where they might find cheaper rent but end up commuting obscene distances every day to get to work, disrupting the vital work-life balance.
Home sharing offers these people a chance to live somewhere comfortable, conveniently located and with a person they will genuinely enjoy living with, for a fraction of the price.
In return for completing simple tasks for the householder – helping to shop, cook, clean, or complete basic admin – they can enjoy a place to call their own at a low cost to Share my Home.
In helping with these tasks, they can provide peace of mind for relatives of the householder, who potentially can’t visit or check up on their elderly relative as often as they would like.
This is particularly true of lockdown, where relatives can’t visit their parent or grandparents at all, and where concepts like online shopping, for example, are more important than ever.
Lockdown in the winter is also going to be a tough time on London when it comes to mental health. Particularly for those living alone. It’s a time where some company, an evening playing cards, cooking or simply relaxing and reading in the company of another, can make a world of difference, and at Share my Home we feel that home sharing can make a real difference to those who really need it at the end of 2020, and beyond into 2021.