A decade or so ago, when Róisín Lanigan first moved to London, she would go to events and parties with other writers. The topic of housing would inevitably come up in conversation – how hard people had it; how difficult it was for this generation to buy homes – but when she asked her fellow partygoers where they were living, the answer tended to be something like, “Oh, my dad has a flat.”
Lanigan herself was renting a room in Bethnal Green, having moved over from Belfast shortly after completing her degree in Queen’s University.
“I had no money,” she says. “I lived on ready-salted crisps, tins of soup and bacon from Tesco. People always say that stuff like it’s…