And there are a lot of us. That’s what people forget.
We lived and worked in London. “Good” jobs, but one for a local authority and one in healthcare. So wages not great. Rents are so, so high. We had to have a small amount of top up benefits (it was housing benefit then, UC hadn’t been rolled out in our area yet when we left) or we couldn’t afford a place to live. And it’s not a case of renting a tiny place and cramming in.
Unless you find and unscrupulous slum landlord who will pack people in for mone, no one legitimate will over crowd a house, for insurance reasons among others. We can’t compare ourselves to other counties who have different laws.
People will tell you to move somewhere you can afford. Believe me, it’s not easy. We only managed it as PIL lent us the deposit and dh job went fully remote. We weren’t going to leave our jobs, move to a deprived area which were the only places we could afford where there were no jobs - that would have been ridiculous. But here we are, thanks to dh still having the same job, claiming no benefits and we even managed to buy a house. But this is a cheap area for a reason.
What I am trying to say is, people hear the word benefits and immediately jump to the wrong conclusions. We were treated like the scum of the earth by estate agents when we were renting, despite having professional, just not well paying jobs.
Now I am not saying those stereotypes don’t exist - where I live now was a complete culture shock from how I’d always lived. There are absolute scumbags around. I am surrounded by them and it’s not nice.
But their children can’t be punished for it.