One in 10 Londoners are living in overcrowded conditions, laying bare the severe shortfall of housing that has triggered a rental crisis in the UK’s capital.
(Bloomberg) — One in 10 Londoners are living in overcrowded conditions, laying bare the severe shortfall of housing that has triggered a rental crisis in the UK’s capital.
Renters, families with children and Muslim households were also far more likely to be in cramped conditions where the number of bedrooms needed outstripped those available, according to Census 2021 data released Friday by the Office for National Statistics.
Just over 4% of English households are overcrowded, but that figure reaches more than 11% for London, the worst of any region. The problem was most acute in the boroughs of Newham and Barking and Dagenham, affecting more than a fifth of households.
The figures shed light on the housing crisis engulfing the capital, where the supply of available housing is well short of demand. The issue has left landlords bidding up rents and tenants struggling to find accommodation — or paying swinging increases to secure a home.
London has suffered double-digit percentage increases in asking rents. The supply of places to rent has dried up as landlords sold up to avoid higher costs coming from environment regulations and soaring mortgage prices. Also, tenants are returning to the capital as employers row back on flexible work practices that allowed many people to work remotely during the pandemic.
“We’ve seen these long term supply issues in the rental market have just been building up since around 2015/2016, and it feels like we’re at the point where they’re really starting to play out,” said Aneisha Beveridge, head of research at Hamptons International.
“Fundamentally since 2016 we’ve seen more landlords sell than we have purchased new buy-to-lets, so the stock of private rental homes has been shrinking since then,” she said. “Rents have been rising in the capital now much, much faster than anywhere else in the country for probably the last 18 months.”
Some 8.5% of households in rented accommodation in England were overcrowded compared to just 1.9% of owner occupiers with cramped conditions seen more in households with dependent children.
The census data also showed that households where all the members identified as Muslim were more than five times more likely to be overcrowded households compared to English households.
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