Working tenants are paying more than a quarter of their monthly earnings on rent in England, figures from the GMB union show.
Research by the union found median rents in England for a two-bedroom property were £650, up from £550 in 2011.
At the same time, median monthly earnings in England based on ONS data are £2,375, meaning tenants are paying 27.4% of their income on rent. This is up from 24.9% in 2011.
It is worst in London and the south-east as the figures show renters are spending 53.3% and 34.1% of their income respectively.
The proportion drops slightly to 30% in east England.
The union said: “Pay has to rise to allow workers to afford these ever-rising rents so the public sector pay cap and the below inflation pay rises in both the public and private sectors has to end to avoid a drop in consumer spending, which, if not checked, will lead to a further recession.
“We have been talking about this problem for far too long, and there can be no excuses for not providing housing to people that they can afford to live in on average wages.”
Comments (3)
The GMB members should be taking to the streets as rents will be rising by 20-30% over the next 4 years just to pay Osborne’s #TenantTax aka s.24 – a stealth tax imposed on Landlords that’ll be paid by Tenants.
That’s in addition to added costs of the loss of Wear & Tear Allowance, 3% SDLT surcharge, and in the pipeline the banning of Letting Agent Fees (mentioned above), all of which will feed through as higher rents.
Rising rents – tenants fees ban? You ain’t seen nothing yet!
My tenants have already seen rent rises and more to come later this year, just to enable me to stay solvent.