The majority of residents were self-employed in the informal sector with some study participants also generating income through letting accommodation or agricultural work outside the study area.
Get to know your neighborhood - ask questions of the person who sold or let your accommodation to you - and don't put yourself at risk.
We both had it — the vermiculation of our short-let accommodation had bored through the plaster and into our flesh".
Easily available short-let accommodation, payable online, is one factor.
Agaztak, modelled on Airbnb, a website that lets private home-owners rent accommodation to travellers, launched last year and now offers 2,000 properties.
Letting the accommodation shows visitors first hand that going green is comfortable, says Tim, who is now growing vegetables and keeping pigs and chickens to share with guests.
She was in a similarly conciliatory mood, stressing that landlords have a "reputational interest" for the government to target "that minority of the sector that is letting substandard accommodation" – which is presumably why the legislation is backed by the RLA.
In east London, a young man in temporary accommodation let me into his home to interview him not long ago.
"They have let privatisation of accommodation happen, which has resulted in the higher prices," says Shelly Asquith, who has just taken over from McGuire at the NUS.
"These amounts barely cover the cost of accommodation let alone the cost of living on top of that, this means that a vast number of students are struggling to get by," it added.
