Why London's Renters Are Lonelier Than Ever - And How We Can Fix It

London's loneliness epidemic is getting worse. Here's what's driving it, and how we can turn things around.

Jun 10, 2025

You've just moved into your new flat. That flat that you were competing with twenty-five other people for. The one where you had to write a 1500 word essay to your prospective landlord, outlining why you should be given this opportunity to pay them £1860 for a two-bed basement flat. You don't know anyone on your street, you're not sure where the good coffee shops are or where to get your favourite pint, and the local community Facebook group is just full of people arguing about parking. Sound familiar?

You're not alone. In fact, you're one of 2.7 million Londoners (or over a million households) living in private rented accommodation, and if you're feeling disconnected from your community, there's a good reason for it.

London's Hidden Crisis

Soaring rental prices in the city are causing a number of challenges, but here are two big ones that we don’t feel get much air time:

Problem 1: We're all moving, all the time. The constant churn of London's rental market means neighbourhoods never get a chance to build real communities. I experienced this when I moved to Brixton - I moved down from Finsbury Park because, quite frankly, I couldn’t afford it anymore.

Problem 2: Nobody's giving us the information we actually need. Social media pages like Time Out and the Londonist offer generic, shallow content about London that doesn’t really appeal to anyone that I’ve spoken to. And it feels to me that social media, generally, pushes shallower, shorter form content that doesn’t really give communities the opportunity to learn, discover, and thrive.

Let's dig into why this matters – and what we can do about it.

The Great London Shuffle

Here's a sobering statistic: The average annual cost of renting in London has risen by £3,000 over just the last three years. That's not a typo. Three thousand pounds.

This financial pressure creates what many would call "London's transient population" - people constantly on the move, not by choice, but by necessity. When your landlord can hike the rent or refuse to renew your lease on a whim, how can you ever feel truly settled?

Between April 2021 and December 2023, a staggering 45,000 rental properties were sold without replacement. That's 4.3% of London's privately rented homes vanishing from the market. The result? Twenty-five renters are now competing for every available property.

What This Means for Communities

People living in communities with a high turnover rate tend to feel more isolated and experience lower levels of trust for their neighbours. That’s not surprising really - when you look at similar challenges, such as the “Airbnbisation” of communities such as Kensington, residents report that their block of flats feels more like a hotel than a home. Although it’s not completely the same, you can certainly see how transient communities turn areas into unfamiliar territory for both newcomers and long-term residents.

It’s not necessarily a London-specific problem either. An article from the West End Museum has described how the urban renewal project in Boston’s West End district "caused a large disruption to social ties, forcing families and neighbours to move away from one another." Residents reported that "compared to the past, there was no longer a close-knit community, no one looked out for anyone anymore, or felt pride in their neighbourhood." We know that this is a challenge that many local communities face across London, too.

The problem is so serious that the UK government appointed a Minister for Loneliness in 2018 and have published a strategy for tackling loneliness. That’s because loneliness isn’t just sad - it’s literally killing us. Research shows weak social connections carry the same health risk as smoking or obesity.

The Information Desert

These days, the level of information that is available to us is like nothing we’ve seen before. On social media, pages are bombarding followers (and the rest of us) with short-form content of the best things to do and the best places to go - leading us to wonder whether we’ve got all the information we need to feel more connected to the communities around us.

Not quite.

The Problem with Current Platforms

Let's be honest about pages like Time Out London. It's great if you want to ride a vintage double-decker bus through central London or go to a silent disco at the London Transport Museum (lol). But if you want to know:

Where to find the hidden spots in your local area that make it special
Which events in your community are worth knowing about (and going to)
Who’s making a positive impact on your area
Which local businesses are serving your community

Then most social media pages won’t cut it. Interestingly though, it seems to be the format that most media outlets are moving towards, with Time Out axing their print magazine three years ago as a clear example of this trend. This is to the detriment of people’s experience of local life, as we are fed content that is short-form, shallow, and impersonal.

Local Facebook groups aren't much better. They tend to devolve into complaints about bin collections and thinly-veiled surveillance of "suspicious" newcomers. Research on platforms like Nextdoor shows they can actually "exclude and marginalise minoritised populations, particularly in gentrifying neighbourhoods."

Why This Matters

Without proper local information, new residents can't find those crucial community touchpoints. The things that transform a random postcode into an actual home:

The café owner who remembers your order
The community centre that hosts weekly games nights
The local historian who can tell you why your street has such a weird name
The neighbour who organises the annual street party

The Vicious Cycle

Unfortunately, the two problems feed each other.

High turnover means local knowledge constantly disappears as long-term residents leave. New arrivals can't access the deep local knowledge they need to integrate. Without integration, they remain disconnected, so they turn to social media sites to access their information. These pages feed them generic, shallow information, and they leave their community without ever saying “hello” to their neighbour.

Rinse and repeat.

What Actually Works

But here's the good news: we know what works. We know that well-designed hyperlocal platforms can be transformative. When UK local governments use proper community engagement platforms, they see an average 12x increase in resident engagement.

The successful ones share key features:

They reduce barriers between neighbours of different backgrounds
They show not just what amenities exist, but how people actually use them
They facilitate two-way communication, not just broadcasting
They preserve and share local stories and knowledge

Enter LAGORA

This is where LAGORA comes in. We're building something different: a platform that provides the deep, meaningful local information Londoners actually need while facilitating genuine community connections.

Imagine:

Finding out about the monthly community lunch that's been running for 20 years
Learning the story behind that mural on your high street
Actually knowing what's happening in your area beyond "new brunch spot opens"

We're not trying to be another Time Out or Nextdoor. We're creating something that addresses both the information gap AND the connection crisis.

What Happens Next?

London's rental crisis isn't going away anytime soon. But that doesn't mean we have to accept disconnection and isolation as the price of city living.

The research is clear: when neighbourhoods have better connections, they have more social capital. They're safer, healthier, and have a positive influence on everything from children's education to mental health.

We can choose to keep shuffling from flat to flat, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, never quite knowing our neighbours or understanding our communities. Or we can build something better.

The question is: are you ready to actually get to know your neighbourhood?

LAGORA is currently in development. Want to be part of the solution? Subscribe to our newsletter and be the first to know when we launch in your area.