My professional salary only just covers my rent. How can this be?

[Rentmakesmepoor]

I am an occupational therapist in the NHS. I am a single parent. After tax, student loan and pension I take home roughly £1900.
I live in the South East of England. My rent is £1750 a month for a 3 bed, SMALL semi detached house with a courtyard garden

How is it that we have got to the point in this country that my salary literally just pays for my rent and nothing else??

I am permanently skint. I am not looking for solutions as I do nd claim everything I can (which is not alot).

But how can this be?

Yes, OP, I hope the generational guilt burns. 🙄🙄🙄

She's not on a below average income. £1900 after tax, student loan etc is around £32K take home. That's more than the average income by some way.

But don't let facts spoil your bitching.

I agree.

And tbh the OP saying her partner is dead was only in response to those saying he was eligible to pay maintenance. They were already apart before he died. There are 2.9 lone million families in the UK and I'd hazard a guess many of them don't live in their preferred location.

And nobody will like me saying this but having four children before the age of twenty nine was always going to be very expensive.

What a load of lies. Around here (Tory MP and local authorities) they are building 1000s of 4 and 5 bedroom houses on formerly productive farmland, but since I am not in London, that won’t help OP a bit. It’s a lie that nimbys are stopping developments. Simply a simple lie.

The Tories have created a perfect storm by ensuring wages have been held down for more than a decade, but also continuing with right to buy and preventing new social housing.

So 'around here' doesn't have any emigrant workers then?

Developers will build anything that’s profitable. The more they build, the more profits they can make. But there is a tension between building more homes and nimby and environmental concerns (within the Conservative Party and elsewhere).

Ultimately we do need more homes though and we need to force local areas to adopt plans and targets to build them in the best and most sustainable manner. The tories did try to do that but then a few nimbies stopped it. That’s not a right/left issue though- it’s more generally about resolving competing interests.

It's how it is all over the country - either earn more or move to a cheaper area. I had to do the latter.

Sadly true - other options manage to get HA/Council housing or move in with family.

We've had to move and juggle getting work and housing costs.

I'd have loved to bring my DC up near where I grew up wasn't an option. Would have loved less of a commute in our lives as well - but living in cheaper area and traveling to where the jobs are is just how it is for us.

If private landlords didn't exist, there would be considerably fewer houses available to people who wish to rent.

Unfortunately, landlords don't rent out their property for the wellbeing of others. They do it to make money (admittedly some tear the arse out of it).

You may get your wish though as many private landlords are selling up as a result of government changes to the tax benefits meaning it is indeed less affordable for a landlord with a mortgage to rent their property in a commercially viable manner. The problem then is that there will be increased demand for rental property, lower supply, and this will push rental prices higher and not lower.

You're right, that is something only a prick would say.

In response to the smug posy you're commenting on - single parents too are they? Because I'm sure you're aware it's much easier uprooting your life when you're a couple with kids than a single woman.

Everything in this post is ill-informed nonsense.

London is actually cheaper than Paris, New York and Munich. The average man working in the City of London earns £100k. He can probably afford the average London home which costs £523k and even more esp if he is coupled up with a woman who earns the average City wage of £50k. The reason why he earns so much more than OP is because he is in a globalized industry with high margins- finance. OP's wages are paid by the government who can only afford to pay earnings that correspond to the gdp per capita of the rest of the country.

Its a tale of two cities on two very different journeys. It is not that London wages in tech and finance are high, it is that the rest of the country's wages are low.

The country voted Tory for 13 years. This is what it means

The tories did try to do that but then a few nimbies stopped it.
This is a lie the Tories keep telling and it needs to be called out.

In many places they are. just because one development of houses are being built does not mean it’s never true that local objections stop house building.

Were there no objections to these houses being built? You don’t describe them in a particularly positive manner. Yet if we are to resolve the housing crisis we need new housing including 4 bedrooms homes on “previously productive farmland”.

I grew up in a one parent family (also a parent died when I was very young).
I'm well aware of the difficult choices that had to be made and the consequences those choices had.

That's nonsense as the City of London is only one tiny part of London.

And women earn HALF?

Fuck the City.

well the argument is that the people who use to rent OP's 3 bed house would move to wherever you are to buy the 4/5 bed houses because its cheaper so rent would go down for OP as she no longer needs to compete with these people. The problem though is that the 4/5 bed houses usually have such a price premium that very few people can afford them esp not the ones who typically earn such salaries as these jobs often involve some sort of commuting to a major city.

But the whole picture is more complicated- also the gap between different industries and also bank of mum & dad.

I agree this is a direct result of 13 years of Tory rule, austerity, dogmatic pursuit of market forces for everything and massive transfer of wealth away from ordinary people to the very rich.

obv it isn’t. Also can you explain your comment that the tories “prevented” the building of new social housing?

I really feel for you. I couldn't afford to live off the salary I had working FT when ex-h left. I was told informally that it was never intended to be the main breadwinning salary of a family, it was assumed that people doing my job would be the second income earners (read: wife). I remember reading a very similar comment from a government minister about nurses as part of the ongoing pay dispute. It's ridiculous.

If the OP is claiming UC, she would be entitled to about 1300-1500 UC per month. Plus child benefit, plus her wages.

unless all her kids were born after 2017.

I always see these posts when there are strikes makes you wonder.

But why should people have to claim UC at all, particularly in the public sector?

It would be cheaper to just pay them properly rather than do all the UC admin.

Ultimately private companies don’t build houses they don’t think they can sell. They will build what sells best and makes them most profit. It’s just not true that there’s some conspiracy to just build houses no one can afford. That’s totally pointless for any company to produce something no one wants. They are building what the demand is for in a particular area.

It’s because of catastrophic failures of politicians of all parties over decades.

The near destruction of the social rented sector is the major factor, it pushed all that demand into the private rented sector which drove up prices to ridiculous levels. Failure to build enough new housing in any sectors.

It’s not that hard to grasp the reasons rents are high. It is hard to understand how all successive governments have created this appalling state.

The amount of families living miserably together as they can’t afford to separate now due to the cost of housing must be huge.

It’s demonstrably a lie - five minutes walk away from me are numerous housing estates being built on greenfield farmland with approval for 3000+ more within a five mile radius.

Tory rules about the use of the proceeds of council house sales, together with the extreme austerity imposed on Local Authorities has prevented them from being able to renew the homes sold under right to buy.