Anybody who’s currently living in privately rented housing will be unsurprised by this news story. As you’ll know all too well, rents are historically high, sucking up a huge proportion of people’s monthly income.
Adding further weight to calls for a serious reassessment of private renting in this country today Shelter have today released figures which show that more than one in three families in England are just one monthly pay packet away from losing their home.
They have found that 37% of working families would fail to meet their housing costs for more than one month if one partner lost their job. People of all ages and backgrounds are now bearing the brunt of this country’s housing crisis, and yet the Government does nothing.
It’s no surprise that sky-high housing costs are causing so many people such anguish. Housing, regardless of whether you rent or own, is more expensive in England than it has ever been in comparison to earnings.
The government conducted their own study in June which found that there are 16.5 million working age adults in the UK with no savings.
What’s frustrating is that not a month seems to go by without a report such as this which exposes just how much of an issue housing is for many people across the country– both young and old. We hear constantly about the housing crisis and those of us caught on the hamster wheel of rising rents know all too well about the direct impact it has on our everyday lives. We know there is a serious problem but what we need are solutions.
According to the HomeLet Rental Index rents agreed on new tenancies across the UK, excluding London, over the three months to the end of July were up by 2.3 per cent, compared to the same period in 2015. It was bad then when The Debrief reported that rents were higher than everafter they reached a historic high in London last year, but as predicted the situation has worsened. In the London, rents have now risen by 4 per cent.
This means that average rents now stand at £779 per month nationally, while in London, it's £1,599. This compares to a national average salary of £26,500, which works out at £1,697 a month for someone who also has student loan repayments to consider.Even if your rent is at the lower end of the scale this doesn’t leave much scope saving once you take bills and transport costs into consideration.
These reports do not discuss the issue in any depth – the reason that households are just one month away from failing to meet their housing costs is that rents/mortgage payments are too high, while wages remain comparatively low. Something has to give. If your housing situation is unstable because of short tenancies or rising rents it's impossible to plan properly for anything else in your life.
What will it take for the government to step in and call the housing crisis what it is: a disaster.
All is not lost. If you'd like to do something about this rather depressing situation you can find out about The Debrief’s campaign to Make Renting Fair and sign our petition here.
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Report Confirms What We Already Know: The Housing Crisis Is Really Bad
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.