"Eunice Osei is a proud, reserved woman, but give her time and she will say: I've not been treated fairly. Then she'll cry. The crime is her room, a tiny hutch crammed with a kitchenette, toilet, bed and flimsy chipboard furniture. Clothes, kitchen utensils and suitcases are stacked so high against the grimy windows that light struggles to enter. We are swathed in murk, with nowhere to sit and hardly anywhere to stand."
"By a combination of ingenuity and greed, a family home has been broken down into 11 such cells. It's become a house in multiple occupation, or HMO. In a property-obsessed country, the HMO is one of modern Britain's primary fixations. Two decades ago, newspapers told stories about couples snapping up buy to lets; today, YouTubers effuse about how renting out HMOs brings passive income easy money, no sweat."
A redbrick townhouse in Bowes Park was converted into 11 separate rooms, creating a house in multiple occupation (HMO). Eunice Osei, from Accra and living in London for 20 years, has occupied a tiny room there for three years. The room contains a kitchenette, toilet, bed and flimsy furniture, with belongings stacked against grimy windows that block light. The house's front door stands open and luggage fills the pavement. HMOs have become a prominent element of Britain's property market, celebrated by buy-to-let culture and online influencers, and depicted by the racist right as homes for recent migrants.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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