Millions see third of their pay swallowed up by rent as the average rent per month for one ROOM in London house soars to £607
Research from the BBC sheds new light on the housing crisis, with some Londoners spending half their salary on rent
MILLIONS in one-bed flats are paying more than a third of their wages in rent, a study reveals.
The proportion taken by landlords busts recommended limits and leaves tenants skint, says campaign group Shelter.
It soars in London, where a poky studio pad in Kensington and Chelsea typically costs £2,134 a month.
The average take-home pay there is £2,512. But even in the cheapest areas of the capital rent on a one-bed flat can swallow up more than half of wages.
The research by the BBC looked at 324 areas nationwide, and found than in 142 of them renters are spending more than 30 per cent of their pay on rent.
Worryingly, this is the limit at which Shelter and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, another housing charity, say causes renters to struggle.
The South East is the priciest place for tenants, while the North is most affordable - with only rents in Manchester, Salford and York costing more than 30 per cent of take-home wage.
Meanwhile, in London, only rents on studio flats in the borough of Bexley came in under 30 per cent of pay.
The study found that across the capital, the average cost of renting just one room in a shared house is £607, and that doing so in 15 of London's 32 boroughs would break the recommended limit.
It is impossible to rent a one, two or three bed property within the recommended limits anywhere in the whole of the capital.
In 24 London boroughs a one-bedroom property would consume more than half of the average disposable income.
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Dan Wilson Craw, a policy manager at campaign group Generation Rent, said: “Across London and the South East, the only option for average earners is to squeeze themselves into ever more crowded flat shares."
“This might work for some, but it’s a completely unsustainable situation for anyone who wants to settle down.
"Unless rents start coming down, the capital and its hinterland will start losing workers and that will weaken the national economy.”