Actor Jessica Regan moved 16 times in 20 years. Now her renting nightmare is a stage show

Moving 16 times in 20 years has made me prone to minimalism. A vanload or two and I can be gone from or installed in an address, depending on my luck that year. I detail a sliver of life in each postcode where I have lived in the script of my show, 16 Postcodes. I perform the postcodes selected by the audience each night as 16 is too many to perform and really, too many to live in but here we are. Here I am. In London, still. 

Why have you moved so often, I get asked by people curious about the show. Well, it has not been out of design or choice. I did not know when I moved here in 2004 that house prices would rise as exponentially as they did while wages barely moved, pricing me out of purchasing a place of my own despite near continuous employment.

I didn’t realise the price of proximity to that employment would keep me a renter, subject to the whims of landlords and market forces. I did not foresee being an embodiment of Generation Rent.  

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My first landlord inActon, West London, was a baptism of fire. He withheld an enormous deposit until I informed him my father was a solicitor and couldn’t wait to meet him. My father is not a solicitor. But I came to London to be an actor and my training certainly came in handy for that negotiation. 

In Camberwell I rented from a lovely couple at a reasonable rate. What a shame the flat was infested with mice despite the best efforts of exterminators. When they penetrated our fridge we knew the battle was lost and it was time to move on. We gave our notice and stayed with friends and partners. When I went to do the ‘Big Clean’ before our final departure I saw no more evidence of the mice… no droppings or grease marks as previously observed. But that was only because an enormous rat had taken residence in the sitting room, I realised as it lolloped past me, bold as you like while I froze armed with nothing more than a scourer and a bottle of Cif. 

Changes in circumstances can lead to living out of a suitcase and on your wits, for better as well as worse. I had to give up an apartmentinBrixton that was a very good deal back in 2008 as a job which took me to Liverpool for a few months meant I couldn’t afford to keep it on. The same thing happened some years later when I lived in a wonderful house in Greenwich. The work was in Birmingham this time and while I was on a good salary, it still did not support two full-price rentals in two major UK cities.  

Read more:

• Generation Rent: Tackle rent debt now or homelessness is going to triple
• Renters’ Rights Act: Labour’s landmark rental reforms receive royal assent and finally become law
• Young people quitting London over housing crisis: ‘Owning a home is a distant dream’

A breakdown in a relationship can lead to all sorts of earthquakes, emotional and financial. When a former partner and I could no longer live together after a wrenching break-up we were penalised for breaking the lease which wiped out our deposit. We noted how the apartment was let out almost immediately after our departure but this time with a sizeable hike in rent. Heartbreak can be profitable for some.

We left a bottle of wine for the incoming tenants, hoping their luck would be better than ours and a throw that covered how worn the couch was when we moved in. The estate agents promptly issued us with a fine for those two “left items”. Yes, you read that correctly. An excoriating email followed, the last moment of unity shared between myself and my ex and they backed down. 

I did find some stability perhaps when it mattered most. Two years into my last and longest stretch of tenancy in Walthamstow, the pandemic hit. But I was happily in an affordable place with a legend of a housemate. It really felt like home for the first time in a long time in London until the landlord decided to sell. Six years of stability swiped left by a text message. It sold quickly and our moving out date was brought forward. In October 2024 after two decades in London, I found myself without a postcode. But crucially I did have somewhere to go.  

Like I said I’ve never been without a roof. But for all my determination and resourcefulness this last destabilisation proved a bridge too far for my nervous system. I was staying in a B&B so that I could keep working and noticed clumps of my hair on the pillow each morning. My chronic psoriasis went confluent, a serious stage of the condition. I was burning out, but praying I could outrun it in my search for my next postcode. I did, just about. 

I am in a safe, comfortable place now, rented to me by a friend who is abroad but could return anytime, should she so wish. The Renters Rights Act protects me from penalties should I want to move out and give reasonable notice, but not if she wants to resume residency or more likely, sell on.   

I am extremely lucky though, as I may not own a house, but I have built my network brick by brick and that continues to put a roof over my head. I know that is priceless and I feel my privilege every time I pass someone clearly without one the streets of this city. 

16 Postcodes by Jessica Regan runs from 26 February-8 March at King’s Head Theatre, Islington, North London

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