The

The A few years ago

A few years ago now, my wife and I welcomed our first child into the world.

We were living in a one-bedroom apartment at the time, and while that was certainly okay for a young,

childless couple, we knew that we'd need more room to start a family.

We started looking online and eventually found a suitable property in a pretty prominent part

of our home city.

But for reasons of our own personal security, that place will remain nameless for the rest of

this story.

The homes in this particular bit of the city were built by Celtic migrant workers almost

100 years ago now and are known as being

sturdy, reliable, and affordable places to live. As you can imagine, they were incredibly popular

with just about every other wannabe renter. So when me and my wife saw one of the houses there

was available, we jumped at the chance to book a viewing and put a deposit

down. About six weeks later, we were moved in, and it felt every bit the milestone that we thought

it would. Our neighbors were warm and welcoming, and apart from the occasional busload of

tourists, the area itself was actually nice and quiet. But then, the landlords

proposed a rent hike. We were still very fresh when we got the news, so at first we had no idea

how to really approach it. But then, right as we were approaching fall-on panic, we got the news

that a renter's union was undertaking a little investigation on our behalf,

and we had to wait a few weeks to get the news, but when we did, we were over the moon. The landlords

were backing down on the rent hike, and we were only going to be looking at a 3% annual raise

...