Renting artists and gamers strive to portray landlords in a bad light

The housing crisis has sparked a wave of ‘creative resistance’ from renters who are using music, video games and novels to vent their anger and frustration, the Guardian reports.

In Manchester, a record label has challenged musicians to create an alternative soundtrack for a promotional video of a luxury apartment block.

The original video showed a couple enjoying their lavish lifestyle in a high-rise flat, with upbeat music in the background.

Justin Watson, who runs the Front and Follow label – which among the rent-inspired songs it has released includes ‘A Guillotine for My Landlord’ – said he wanted to highlight the ‘inherent unfairness’ of the system, especially around landlords.

‘Stark contrast between these really shiny blocks going up’

Mr Watson told the newspaper: “There are social injustices in the stark contrast between these really shiny blocks going up in Manchester, and we see people who are massively struggling.

“People are absolutely furious, and having a creative response is cathartic personally and it really cuts through.”

His latest compilation, called Rental Yields, involved more than 100 musicians, who focused on the issues of landlords and their passive income.

One piece, by Yol vs Concrete, features bloodcurdling screams about ‘luxury flats promising high rental yields’, which Mr Watson describes as being ‘completely visceral’.

He adds: “Some people used it as an opportunity to stick two fingers up to landlords and channel their frustration and anger into something creative.”

Sims game introduced a new feature: invasive mould

Another form of creative protest came from the world of video games, where the popular Sims game has introduced a new feature: invasive mould.

The new ‘For Rent’ version of the game allows players to role play as tenants who have to deal with killer fungi that sprouts from damp bathrooms, carpets and even their heads, leading to a horror movie-style death.

The mouldy version of Sims may reflect the growing reality of more gamers living as renters, but it was too much for some, the Guardian says.

A trailer for the game shows a player retching from the mould in a shower and growing luminescent mushrooms that resisted anti-mould spray.

One player asked the game’s creators on social media: “Can we turn off the mould? Sorry, it just grosses me out.”

‘Engage with the more challenging aspects of life’

A spokesperson for the Sims creators said they were ‘always looking at how we can engage with the more challenging aspects of life’ and said they had included sewage leaks and electrical failures as other problems faced by virtual tenants.

Mould was an ‘entirely opt-in’ gameplay feature, they said.

The housing crisis also inspired a new genre of novels, which explore the precarious lives of renters and the relationships they formed.

Two academics, Dr Ushashi Dasgupta and Dr Matt Ingleby, from the universities of Oxford and Queen Mary’s London, established the Rent Cultures Network to study how renters were making art from their experiences, a century and half after Charles Dickens.

One of the novels they examined was The Lodgers, a comic novel by Holly Pester, a poet who has lived in rented properties her whole life.

Ms Pester said she was fascinated by the narrative possibilities of ‘the difficult relations between people [renting] but also the sympathies that might be drawn out [from] these awkward contracted relationships’.

She said she was not alone in being interested in the theme ‘Because of how the rent crisis is just so pervasive in the middle class and working class, creators are more likely going to be renters’.

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