adventures in housing, part three

[Previously in the saga: unhinged landlord explains things, more Monologuing Through Doors, and finally moving out]

So then I was homeless.

After that one moment of doubt in the hotel on the first night, I never for a moment questioned whether I was right to move out of the House of Diluted Wine (there is a house in Pimlico, they caaaalll Diluted Wine, and it's been the ruin of many a young life, but God, it won't be mine...) (stupid rewritten song lyrics for every occasion, thank you very much). I didn't have a home, but I'd take that over a home with That Guy in it.

For the first few weeks, things weren't so bad. I stayed in some dancer friends' spare room for a week, then on another dancer friend's floor for two. It wasn't even close to ideal, but I knew where I'd be sleeping every night. I mostly coasted through on a sense of sheer amazement that I had people who'd take me in. Six months ago I'd had almost no support system in London at all, and now I was being offered spare beds and sofas and floors, sent likely-looking roommate ads that people had seen, and contacted by friends of friends who had been told that I would be an excellent person to fill their spare room. I'm not sure I'd have exchanged all that for secure housing.

There was still unfinished business with my newly ex-landlord. I'd sent him a message asking him to get in touch if there were any issues with the return of my deposit, and he had told me (in possibly the world's longest ever text message) that yes, there were issues with the return of my deposit, the issue being that he thought he should get to keep it. He gave me three reasons:
One, that I had given my month's notice at a time he found extremely inconvenient;
Two, that I hadn't bought enough loo roll and cleaning supplies;
Three, that I hadn't been cleaning to his satisfaction whilst I'd been living there.

These hardships, he thought, entitled him to keep nearly a thousand pounds of my money. I rather disagreed. I told him that none of those things were things you get compensation for, especially when you haven't at any point said, "hey, housemate, you're not buying enough loo roll", and that if these were his only issues then I expected all of my money back. We had a tedious and stressful back-and-forth where we fought, then he would say something nasty, then I would stop responding, then he would apologise. Eventually he suggested we "work something out that's fair to both of us", and I asked him to break down exactly what material losses he felt he had suffered and how much of my deposit he was proposing to keep for each of said losses, thinking that maybe it would be easier to negotiate with him if I could just get him to write the words "compensation for inconvenient timing of notice: £500" and read it back to himself a couple of times.

He didn't. A few days later, via email that radiated martyrdom, he told me that he'd returned my deposit in full, because it just seemed like the easiest thing to do. I gave him a forwarding address (my parents') for any mail, and never heard from him again.

It felt like one of my greatest triumphs. I'd got my money back, without having to involve any professionals, and I didn't have to deal with That Guy anymore. But I still had nowhere to live. I was running out of options that would give me a place to sleep for more than two nights and dancer goodwill was drying up rapidly.

I redoubled my efforts to find somewhere and went to a speed flatmating event. Everyone with a room going wanted over £1000 a month for it, but I found a couple of potential flatmates to team up with. We viewed one place, which was in Clapham but also somehow in the middle of a wood, had a pitch-dark stairwell, contained only severely water-damaged furnishings, but was, we were assured, completely safe because "anybody looking to start trouble usually goes to one of the other flats."

I checked into a hotel.

[in part four: exhaustion and the exploding guest house]