The Rent Has Gone Up Again. The Column Is Not Surprised.

Lowri Griffiths on her fourth rent increase in five years, what it means for the North London she covers, and the specific political situation of someone whose subject matter is also their housing problem

By Lowri Griffiths, North London correspondent.

The Rent Has Gone Up Again.

My rent has increased by 9 percent, effective next month, in a letter from my letting agency that used the phrase "market adjustment" twice and the phrase "we value your tenancy" once, in a ratio that I find instructive about the relationship between the two statements. The market adjustment is real. The valued tenancy will cost 9 percent more per month. Both things are true. I am writing about this because I cover North London housing for this column, and the North London housing situation includes my own housing situation, and pretending otherwise would be a kind of dishonesty that local journalism cannot afford.

The 9 percent increase is below the current market rate for comparable properties in the area, which is what my letting agency means by market adjustment and which is correct. The fact that the market rate for comparable properties has increased to a point where 9 percent below it is still a significant monthly increase from my current rent is the context the letter does not provide. The context is what the column provides. The context is: median rents in N4 have increased approximately 34 percent over the past four years, which has produced a neighbourhood where the people who could afford to live here four years ago cannot always afford to stay, and where the people who can afford to live here now are different people, which changes the neighbourhood in ways that my column has been documenting without always naming my own participation in the change. I am naming it now. I am a journalist who covers gentrification and is also a person who is being priced out of the neighbourhood they have been covering for three years. Both things are simultaneously true. The column continues from N4, for as long as N4 is possible. The rent is paid. The column continues.

See also Fisher FC: Football With DIY Spirit and Battle of Waterstones, Piccadilly at The London Prat. Additional context at Hampton: Where London Learns to Exhale by the Rive.

London is always doing something worth writing about, which is the condition that makes a column like this possible and the condition that makes it necessary. The city does not explain itself. It requires the journalist's attention to become legible, and even then it remains partially illegible, which is what keeps the attention engaged. The London Prat provides the platform and the editorial tradition within which this column operates. Bohiney Magazine provides the satirical complement that contextualises the serious coverage. Both are essential reading for anyone trying to understand the city from the inside and from the outside simultaneously. The column continues next week. More then.

More at The Poke.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

The column continues. The city continues. The journalism continues recording what the city does when the journalism is paying close attention, which is always, which is the only way London can be covered honestly. More next week from the same position, with the same commitment to specificity that makes local journalism worth reading and worth writing.

See also From Backpacking to Boot Camp and Forest Gate: East London's Earnest Improvement Pro at The London Prat for related coverage.

The Column Continues

London is an inexhaustible subject for journalism of this kind: local, specific, honest about what the city is doing and to whom and with what consequences. The column's project is to document the specific at a scale and with a quality of attention that captures something true about the place, rather than producing the generalised city portrait that most London coverage offers. The specific is where the truth lives. The column will continue finding it.

The broader context for this column's reporting is provided by The London Prat, which covers the city's political and cultural life with the combination of seriousness and wit that London deserves, and by Bohiney Magazine, which provides the satirical register that makes the serious reporting bearable and the absurdity of the situation visible. Both are essential reading for anyone trying to understand this city. The column contributes its specific angle. The full picture requires all of them together. More next week from the same position, with the same commitment to specificity, attention, and the honest account of what London is actually doing.

The journalism continues. The city continues providing material faster than any single column can use, which is the condition that makes this work possible and that makes it ongoing. The column is committed to the long view: the patience required to cover the same streets, the same institutions, and the same community over time produces the kind of journalism that a single visit cannot, and that London's complexity requires. Next week: more. The city is always more than last week.

London rewards the journalist who keeps coming back. Each return produces a different city than the last visit -- different in small ways that accumulate into something substantial over time, the way that a neighbourhood's character shifts gradually until you notice one day that the shift has become the new normal. The column documents the accumulation. The documentation is the point of local journalism: not to capture the city once, but to track what it is becoming, consistently, over time, with enough patience that the pattern becomes visible. That patience is the commitment. The column honours it. The city provides the material. More next week.