Home shouldn't ask you to hide.

Every flatshare interview is the same test, whatever the questions turn out to be. Can you hold eye contact while a stranger shows you a kettle? Can you do small talk on demand, in a hallway, about nothing at all? Can you read the unwritten rules quickly enough to pretend you always knew them? Can you perform "easygoing" convincingly enough that they'll want to share a kitchen with you?

Nobody calls it a test. They call it a vibe check. And if you're autistic, ADHD, dyslexic, OCD, or simply wired to notice everything — the hum of the fridge, the flicker of a cheap bulb, the smell of last night's cooking still in the curtains — you already know the test is fixed. It rewards the people who find it easiest, and quietly fails everybody else.

Then the listings add one more layer: "good vibes only." It sounds kind, and it's usually meant kindly. But translate it honestly and it says: bring no needs. No overwhelm, no routines, no questions about the fridge. Perform "normal" at all times, or live somewhere else.

Here is the part almost nobody talks about. Being neurodivergent is one facet of a whole human. The renter who needs to know the kitchen falls quiet at sunset for prayer, or that a household will be safe about their gender, or that halal, kosher or vegetarian boundaries will actually be respected, faces two interviews at once: the vibe check, and the safety check. On mainstream platforms they run both alone, by message, hoping the answers come back kind.

I know because I lived it, and then I built the alternative. The worst rooms I've had weren't cruel. They were vague. Nobody meant any harm, and nobody wrote anything down either. The notice before a visit. The quiet hours. What a closed door means. The things that make a home survivable for a brain like mine were treated as too awkward to mention, and too much to ask.

So we rebuilt the interview as a document. At Diverse Digs, a household says its sensory thresholds out loud before you ever knock: the light, the sound, the smells, the street outside. The agreement covers communication styles, notice before visits, quiet hours, and what happens when someone's capacity drops. Matches happen in plain words, never scores or percentages, because people are not rated; they're understood. Names stay hidden until both people choose to reveal them, so nobody has to be brave before they can be safe.

None of this is niche accommodation. Predictability is accessibility. Written agreements are accessibility. In the UK, the Equality Act already expects reasonable adjustments, and written notice, predictable arrangements and clear communication are among them. Knowing the sensory profile of a home before you view it, rather than discovering it after the deposit clears, isn't a quirk. It's housing doing its job.

The flatmate interview isn't going to fix itself. So we fixed it.