The i paper (5 February) ran a story about a 70-year-old man who is living in a house with five others, the only way he can survive on his pension. Far more people over 65 now share homes than a decade ago.
Also many properties advertised on flat-sharing sites have no living room, as turning a lounge into a bedroom means more income for the landlord, so the tenants each live and sleep in just one room. Yet there are many ‘ghost homes’ in Britain, expensive new flats that remain empty because few people can afford to buy them.
This is the reality when housing is for profit, not to meet human need.
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This report captures something essential about the logic of housing under capitalism.
A 70-year-old man forced to flat-share just to survive on his pension is not an isolated tragedy; it is a social pattern. The rise in over-65s sharing accommodation reflects not lifestyle choice but economic compulsion. When pensions are insufficient and rents are high, people adapt in whatever way they must. That adaptation is then normalized as “flexible living” or “community housing,” masking what is fundamentally insecurity.
The detail about living rooms being converted into bedrooms is especially revealing. Space that could serve as shared social life is sacrificed to maximize rental yield. The home ceases to be primarily a place to live and becomes instead a unit of income extraction. Each square metre must justify itself financially. The result is individuals confined to single rooms, isolated within properties that were once designed for collective domestic life.
At the same time, the existence of “ghost homes” — empty luxury flats held as investments — exposes the irrationality of the system. There is no absolute shortage of buildings; there is a shortage of purchasing power. Homes stand empty not because they are not needed, but because they are not profitable at prices ordinary people can afford. Housing functions simultaneously as shelter and as asset, but the asset function dominates.
This is not a moral failure of individual landlords alone; it is the structural outcome of treating housing as a commodity. When homes are produced and allocated through the market, access depends on money, not need. Elderly people sharing crowded houses and empty high-end apartments are two sides of the same social relation.
The problem is not simply “high rents” but a system in which shelter is subordinate to profit.
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