How many strangers would you live with? Perhaps a handful if you had to for a short while, but how about 10 or more others long-term? How about more than 50?

This is the reality for thousands of people in Kent. Reporter Dan Esson spoke to tenants, landlords and local politicians about whether HMOs really are modern-day “slums” and what powers councils have…

There are about 475,000 houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) in England, according to the Office for National Statistics. Just under 1,900 of them are in our county.

Technically, any property housing people from more than one household is a HMO, but when most people use the term, they mean properties with shared facilities where rooms are rented individually to tenants who do not necessarily know each other.

In Kent, the biggest is a property in Folkestone boasting 52 bedrooms, while another in Gravesend has 40. Sometimes based in former bed and breakfasts or other converted buildings, there are plenty around the county with 15 bedrooms or more.

What’s it like living in a HMO?

When plans are submitted for a new HMO, there is usually a swathe of objections from neighbours concerned about anything from increased anti-social behaviour to parking issues.

But we rarely hear from people who call these shared living spaces home.

John Moran is one of 10 tenants living in a Canterbury HMO.

The 60-year-old told KentOnline that while the occupants have their “spats”, everyone manages to get along.

“Living in a HMO requires a degree of taking a deep breath in from time to time,” he said.

“It’s also about respecting other people, and being prepared to accept difference.”

As a semi-retired human resources professional, Mr Moran does not fit the HMO-dweller stereotype.

“I could move into a retirement flat but I don’t want to be in the situation where I wake up and find out someone next door has died,” he said.

“I will move when I can find somewhere that’s right, but I’m not in a hurry to.”

Any HMO hosting five or more separate households - in effect, five or more occupants who aren’t a couple or otherwise related - requires a licence from the local council. These registers of five-person-plus HMOs are publicly available.

Usually, such house-shares are seen as the preserve of students, so it’s no surprise that Canterbury hosts the most of any Kent district, with 768.

“You’ve just got to have the right mindset when living in shared accommodation…”

Mr Moran is originally from Australia but has called Kent his home for about 40 years. After splitting up with his long-term partner, he has lived in several HMOs.

With so many strangers under one roof, one could assume a 10-person house share is a recipe for personality clashes and kitchen hygiene conflicts.

But Mr Moran said: “It’s not too bad actually. Everyone seems to get on - we have our spats.

“In the last two HMOs I’ve lived in we've had a really good WhatsApp group and if somebody gets annoyed about something you put it on there and sort it out. I think that’s a good, healthy thing to do.

“You’ve just got to have the right mindset when living in shared accommodation and just get on with it.”

Despite living around the area for decades, Mr Moran says Canterbury is “not the easiest place to find a reasonable place to live, which is surprising”.

He declined to reveal how much he pays in rent - but said for many people their only options are to live in a HMO or “buy a tent”.

Not everyone living in Canterbury’s HMOs was as amenable as Mr Moran to discussing their situation.

After posting a letter through one door looking to speak to residents, our reporter received a text which read: “Your use of the expression HMOs as if I am some kind of marginalised, drug-addicted group on the edge of society is insulting to me.

“To me this is normal reality. Go f*** yourself. Put that in your report if you want.”

Modern-day ‘slums’? Or an unfair reputation?

The living arrangement seems increasingly widespread among professionals and non-students. They may be particularly attractive to commuters who have to fork out a significant slice of their salary on train fares. Medway and Ashford - with their easy rail links to London - have the second- and third-highest numbers of HMOs respectively.

But there is no denying they have a bad reputation and frequently face opposition when plans are submitted.

In May 2023, proposals to convert the former Sevington Mill home for the elderly in Willesborough, Ashford, into a 47-bedroom HMO were shelved after sparking almost 800 letters of objection from residents fearing it would become a “slum”.

The man behind the plans, Mark Goldberg, says the need for HMOs to be licensed means any antisocial behaviour can be addressed by contacting the local council, which has the power to “enforce proper standards”.

“There's no need for anyone to suffer long-term from a poorly managed HMO nearby,” he said.

He added that higher interest rates are part of the reason why more properties are being converted into houses in multiple occupation by landlords as “the return on standard property simply doesn't cover costs”.

Paula Higgins, the chief executive of the HomeOwners Alliance, says the residential arrangement is “popular in more student areas and more transient populations, so particularly people who are on benefits, coming out of sheltered housing or prison”.

“From a landlord’s perspective they can be very profitable, which is why they sometimes get a bad name,” she added.

In parts of London, there is increasing regulation of HMOs through local council inspections, which Ms Higgins says is in response to the fact “they’ve been exploited with overcrowding, not very good with things like fire safety”.

She also argues the seeming nationwide rise in HMOs - though currently it is slightly down from it is mid-2010s peak - is “most definitely” related to prices rising.

“Rents are quite high so renting on your own is quite tricky,” she said. “The cost of housing is just so high.”

Despite its proximity to London, the Sevenoaks district has the lowest number of HMOs in Kent, at only 18.

According to Kent County Council statistics, in 2022/23 the leafy locale had the second-highest average monthly rent of any district in the south east, not including London, at £1,579 per month, surpassed only by Elmbridge in Surrey.

Can the rise of HMOs be stopped?

Cllr Paul Harper, an Independent on Maidstone Borough Council, has been vocal about HMOs in his Fant ward.

“What we’re finding in Fant and other parts of Maidstone is that developers just buy up in any part of town which comes up on the market - typically three-bedroom terraced houses,” he said.

“They then reconfigure them to make them up to six bedrooms, which you don’t need planning permission for, and then they just run it as an HMO.”

In many council areas, room conversions and running a property as an HMO are covered by permitted development rights, so no planning permission is needed unless more than six people are set to occupy the property. However, they do still need to secure a licence for the HMO from the council.

For larger proposals, planning permission is needed in addition to a licence. There was a recent example in Folkestone where a 24-bed HMO was granted a licence by the district council but planning permission was then refused by the same authority.

Cllr Harper said: “They’re often in what were quiet residential areas, and when you get a proliferation of these, like in the area I represent, it erodes the residential and family nature of an area.

“I’ve got large parts of my ward where families have just had enough and are moving out. They said they can't cope with the problems – too many HMOs in inappropriate properties.”

In 2021, Cllr Harper brought a motion to MBC calling for the authority to remove permitted development rights for HMO conversions in his ward, citing residents’ concerns over pressure on parking and loss of privacy.

The council voted for it in principle, but Cllr Harper says there has been no movement on implementing the policy.

In February this year, MBC’s decision to refuse the conversion of a Charles Street home into an eight-bedroom HMO was overturned by the government’s Planning Inspectorate, at the cost of £3,000 to the taxpayer.

At a planning meeting in March, the council unanimously voted to ask the cabinet member for planning and housing to commission the work needed to put in place a firm policy to prevent the subdivision and extension of urban properties in areas with inadequate parking.

However, in June another application went in to convert yet another Charles Street property into an eight-bedroom HMO, with council officers recommending the planning committee back it. Yet councillors snubbed the scheme last week.

According to the planning officer’s report on the application, about 10% of properties on Charles Street are HMOs.

The Maidstone borough hosts 165 registered HMOs, largely in the county town itself, but Cllr Harper thinks this understates it, in part because the public register only covers those with five or more occupants.

“There's two categories - there’s registered HMOs and then there’s shared houses that would be recognised as an HMO but because of the way it’s done they don’t actually become classified as a HMO,” he said.

“When you get local information they understate the number of HMOs by anything up to 50%.”

Cllr Harper says their proliferation is “a symptom of our failed housing market”.

“It’s definitely increased as Britain over the last 15 years has moved into being a low-wage economy,” he said.

“There's a large amount of people being paid the national minimum wage - they haven’t got a hope of trying to rent the usual way.

“So the HMO or shared property route is the only option available for them.”

The Labour government elected in July promised to “get Britain building again” and has proposed new housing targets for every local authority in the country.

They hope to get 1.5 million homes built in the next five years - but what remains to be seen is how many of those will be owner-occupied, how many privately rented, or how many may one day become HMOs themselves.