A ‘cost of renting crisis’ is making life increasingly precarious for young people, and those from poorer backgrounds – here’s how we got here
By now, you’ve heard the horror stories. Landlords raising the rent by hundreds of pounds per month, pricing tenants out of their own homes, only to relist them for double the price online. Dozens of young people queuing up to view dingy flats, as others pay 12 months upfront just to secure a damp-riddled roof over their heads. Homeowners trotting out the old “avocados and Netflix” argument, as the young and poor lose an increasing percentage of their monthly income to the owners of their tiny one-bed flats (as if the cost-of-living crisis wasn’t bad enough in itself).
Basically, things are looking bleak. Admittedly, the UK rental market has been looking bleak for some time (a 2019 report revealed that there’s not a single region in England where private-rented housing is affordable for a median-earning woman, and things haven’t shown signs of improvement since then). But now, in 2022, experts are in agreement that the cost of renting is reaching a new crisis point, both inside and outside of UK cities.
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