Renters are now spending nearly four times as much of their income on housing as homeowners – in the latest sign of Britain’s worsening housing crisis.
Millions of people are now spending at least half their monthly salary on rent, with the average private renter giving more than a third of their wages to a landlord.
The revelation is the latest to expose the scale of the growing emergency gripping the UK.
Last month, an Independent investigation found that the majority of local councils had failed to build a single home in the past five years despite 1.2 million people on waiting lists.
And this newspaper branded the government’s homes plan “too little, too late” after housing secretary Michael Gove said a target to build 300,000 a year was never mandatory.
Labour said the figures showed renters were being hit by a double whammy of rising rental costs and the ever-increasing cost of buying a house, making home ownership an increasingly distant prospect.
The government says it is bringing forward reforms to renting, and already spends billions on housing support – but charities say a mass housebuilding programme is needed, along with limits on rent rises and more support for those hit hardest.
A new expert analysis by the respected Resolution Foundation shows that renters spent 34 per cent of their incomes on housing costs in 2021-22, compared to 9 per cent for mortgage holders.
Cara Pacitti, senior economist at the think tank, said private renting remained the most expensive type of housing despite rises in costs for homeowners.
“Private renting remains the most expensive of all tenure types, despite continuing issues of quality and security. Average floor space per renter has fallen by a fifth over the past 20 years, while almost a quarter of private rental homes failed to meet the Decent Homes Standard in 2021-22, posing significant challenges to renters’ living standards.”
Worryingly, evidence from charities working on the front line of the crisis shows the situation for renters is worsening faster than official statistics can keep track of.
Call handlers working for the housing charity Shelter told The Independent they were now dealing with people facing “crazy” rent rises as high as 50 per cent of what they were previously paying – while new tenants are forced by letting agents to take part in a bidding war for a roof over their head.
Citizens Advice, meanwhile, provided shocking figures showing a 200 per cent spike in the number of people seeking assistance to help battle evictions for non-payment of rent, rising from 300 cases in 2019 to 900 cases in 2023.
At the beginning of 2019, private renters who approached the charity were paying an average of £498 in housing costs, but that had risen to £631 by the start of this year.
Shelter’s most recent quarterly surveys of private renters found that 33 per cent (2.7 million people) are spending at least half their income on rent.
Some renters are being pushed out of communities they have spent their whole lives in
The figures, from the start of the year, also show that 48 per cent of renters have seen their housing costs increase in the past year and 22 per cent now struggle to pay it.
“We’ve been inundated with distressing calls from families that have been grappling with steep rent rises,” said Nadeem Khan, an adviser at Shelter’s helpline – adding that he was regularly seeing people cutting back on essentials to pay rent.
“I spoke to someone last week, a single mother with two young kids, who told us that the landlord has raised their rent by about 30 per cent. She’s in tears when she’s telling me that her tight budget can’t keep up. She told the landlord – and he served her a no-fault eviction notice.”
The helpline also regularly hears from people who are being forced to leave their local areas because they can no longer afford the rents there, he said.
Private renters already pay the highest housing costs out of anyone, and they are the last group of people who can afford to absorb financial shocks. The government’s focus needs to be on helping tenants to weather this storm.
Lisa Nandy, shadow secretary of state for housing, said renters were hit by a ‘double whammy’
