Being a pensioner and a private tenant almost certainly means poverty. Why is that?

The day before the budget and thoughts turn to making changes to the Winter Fuel Payment policy

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I try not to dwell on it but 2024 has become the year when joy was expelled from my life forever. No more holidays. No more pubs or cafés. No more records, books or blu-rays. No more home furnishings. No more birthday gifts – even small ones. The list goes on. My £420 a month disposable income, soon to reduce to £320 due to the greed of my well-off landlord, just about covers groceries, cleaning materials and a few ‘luxuries’ like eyecare and dentistry. Oh, and one monthly visit to the pub; I have managed to set aside £15 a month for that. I am, of course, not alone. It seems to me that the equation private tenant + pensioner = poverty holds for the great majority of private tenants. Why is that – and why should it always be so?

In Britain it is the day before The Budget so a time for me and many others to think about the sorry state we are in, something I generally blank out because I do not want to dwell on it and become depressed, partly because it is embarrassing and partly because I want to gain friends rather than lose them.

I always knew that retirement would be difficult, not because I would become bored and listless, far from it – there is so much that I want to do that was practically impossible during my working life. Writing at least one novel was just one of the ambitions that require not just time, but a special kind of time. When inspiration strikes I need to stick with it, for hours and even days until the melée of thoughts, ideas, snappy one-liners and plot development ideas wear thin or just fizzle out.

The reason I knew retirement would be difficult is money, the same thing that a lot of people face when they retire: how am I going to manage? And the biggest problem for me is being a private tenant, closely followed by being single since my partner passed away. The equation could almost be modified to private tenant + live alone + pensioner = more poverty.

Most people I know are homeowners or have a mortgage that is likely to be paid off by the time they retire. Others are council or housing association tenants. Envy is something I have never particularly liked, but if someone was to call me ‘envious’ right now I am sorry to say that I would have to agree with them. I am envious of homeowners and so-called ‘social’ tenants, a phrase I have always disliked. I was a ‘social tenant’ for most of my life and boy do I wish I was one now. I can only dream of how much better my life would be.

I am lucky in the sense that I have two pensions: the State pension and the pension I paid into whilst working. This gives me a good income. So why am I scratching a living on £420 (disposable income) a month? The answer is simple: I am a private tenant. 

The housing sector in Britain has always been a mess and there are a multitude of reasons for this, with greed being at the heart of it. Greedy landowners, greedy property developers, greedy landlords. Shoddy building standards equals shoddy homes that are expensive to run. I could go on.

I chose a home carefully, one that was in good condition and that would require little in the way of repairs or improvement. The reason? I could not afford rent increases. Nevertheless, rent has increased by £200 per month in the last two years. For what? I cannot fathom. With all my knowledge of housing I simply cannot come up with a reason for this particular rent increase.

If I was a homeowner and took £1,100 a month rent out of the equation I would be about £800 a month better off, assuming I would add about £300 to bills to pay for house insurance and heating and plumbing maintenance. I would be a homeowner with a disposable income of £1,120 a month. That would be like a dream come true.

I am not alone of course; many people fall under the equation private tenant + pensioner = poverty. It is something that policy makers should give more thought to. For example, when the Budget considers means-testing the Winter Fuel Payment – a policy with which I agree – pensioners who are private tenants should be eligible. But I know they will not be. I can kiss goodbye to that much-needed one-off payment of £200 to help with winter heating payments.

One answer of course would be to massively increase the supply of ‘social’ housing in order to meet demand. We know that the Tories are ideologically opposed to giving people choice; we can choose to be social tenants all we like but most of us are denied it – and even demonised for expressing such a choice in the first place. But Labour? Come on – where are your principles at?

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So there are many answers to the question posed at the start of this essay, but better policy that takes into account private tenants, dealing with landlord greed, more choice of housing tenure – especially council housing – and more (and better) homes are just a few.

29th October 2024, Newton Abbot, Devon
10:17, 14ºC, blue sky, mostly cloudy, negligible breeze, dry.