It is an incredibly difficult time to be a private renter. Rents are sky-high across the board and are only increasing, and there is simply no further room in tenants’ pay packets to weather these hikes.
While many mortgage holders have yet to see their monthly payments increase, most private renters have already faced a rent hike this past year. Generation Rent’s latest survey found that 3 in 5 have faced a rent increase in the last year, and that a third of those for asked for an extra £100 or more per month.
There is a cost of renting crisis added on to the cost of living crisis and it is driving down living standards for private tenants. With these rising costs there is no scope to save for a deposit for a home of their own, if that was their intention, and many are struggling to keep their heads above water.
With the market so brutal at the moment, many tenants are forced to swallow these unaffordable rent increases to avoid having to find a new home. We are seeing prospective tenants forced to pay multiple months’ rent up front to secure new homes, as well as being encouraged to enter bidding wars with competitors to drive the price of their rent up.
Even if you secure the home, you still live under constant threat of eviction and the prospect of running the gauntlet all over again. This is the reality at the sharp end of the housing crisis.
While interest rates are in the news, our survey found they have affected just 12% of tenants. The rising cost of rent is a much wider problem caused by the failure to build enough homes where people want to live, and the ability of landlords to raise rents regardless of what their tenant can afford.
The government’s response to this needs to stop Londoners being forced out of their communities: by preventing unaffordable rent increases, relinking benefits to market rents and ramping up investment in social housing.
* Conor O’Shea, is Policy and Public Affairs Manager at Generation Rent
