{"id":85168,"date":"2025-08-19T07:46:40","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T06:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=85168"},"modified":"2025-08-19T11:15:44","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T10:15:44","slug":"the-housing-rental-market-is-getting-worse-and-labour-is-doing-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/08\/19\/the-housing-rental-market-is-getting-worse-and-labour-is-doing-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"The housing rental market is getting worse, and Labour is doing nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the FT notes today<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The affordability of private rented homes in England worsened last year as tenants\u2019 incomes fell while paying sharply higher rents, according to official data.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They added:<\/p>\n

The average household renting privately spent 36.3 per cent of its gross income on housing in the year ending in March 2024, the Office for National Statistics said on Monday, compared with 33.1 per cent a year earlier and well above the threshold of 30 per cent that the agency defines as affordable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the Office for National Statistics based data:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Note three things.<\/p>\n

Firstly, these ratios are to gross income, i.e. this is not even a comparison with after-tax income.<\/p>\n

Secondly, note that this burden falls most heavily on poor and younger households, often simultaneously, of course. The lifeblood is literally being sucked out of their lives by these rental payments. How can anyone have hope when all they do is work for a landlord?<\/p>\n

Thirdly, this situation is getting worse, and Labour is doing nothing about it. The case for rent caps is overwhelming. The case for bringing more property into state ownership to increase supply and to control prices is overwhelming. And there is no action. No wonder people are looking to Reform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the FT notes today: The affordability of private rented homes in England worsened last year as tenants\u2019 incomes fell while paying sharply higher rents,
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,35,147,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-justice","category-economics","category-inequality","category-labour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85168"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85171,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85168\/revisions\/85171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}