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?

This.

It’s absolutely outrageous and the fact is people should be able to afford to live on one income for a variety of reasons.

I am single, no kids and found it difficult working in London when I worked in the education sector due to excessive rents . People shouldn’t be expected to either flatshare, take in lodgers or have a partner when they’re working full time in a professional job they are still paying student loans on.

I remember a landlord I had for a flat in Brixton telling me they hadn’t changed the rent for a while and had noticed the rents on the street had risen so they’d have to put them up to. They didn’t have any extra costs they just wanted to take advantage of rising rents.

I looked at the history of that flat and it was initially a council flat sold for a small amount in the 1990s. It’s disgusting they sold off all the social housing stock in prime areas and people are making their fortune off it.

There are huge safety implications about taking in lodgers when you have kids and even as I as a single person no kids had some concerns living in certain flatshares and I had to move out sharpish in some situations . I’m very fortunate to be able to live in a two bed flat myself now.

There are far too many people with or without kids who are in bad relationships because they can’t afford to live alone and it’s often women who are putting up with a lot as they know they’d struggle without a partner.

Why only for public sector workers? What about the necessary workers - we saw them during covid - supermarket assistants etc? I am not trying to be goady. I think public sector workers can stick together/strike and result in better outcomes for themselves. Whereas shop assistants etc can't?

It could be argued that their employers should pay more but on the other hand public sector workers could work in the private sector too. Of course this all results in privatisation and the issues this brings.

The SE of England is massively overcrowded already - how much more building do you think it could support? Wouldn't it be better to try to reduce the overconcentration of wealth and economic activity in an already overcrowded tiny part of the country?

Not really. Not everyone who lives in other areas wants to live in London and you will always get more for your money elsewhere. Some would but there would still be a price differential as there always has been.

london and se housing has become very scarce and very expensive. There needs to be at least some lower cost options (which won’t necessarily please everyone as they will be more basic).

the same is the case in many places outside the se - it’s not the only hotspot and we simply need more housing. But property will remain more expensive for the same square footage in the se due to supply of land and high population.

It’s not really possible to reduce wealth in London without just making us all poorer. people live there because there are good opportunities there - refusing to build houses just makes life harder for people like the op.

London is actually quite a low rise city which is spread out and a lot of land which is currently unable to be built on due to regulations. There is an awful lot of building that could be done.

Ultimately we won’t solve the housing crisis unless (usually well housed older people) stop opposing home building.

Funny, is it? Your lack of empathy is at sociopathic levels here.

We can do better than this race to the bottom.

Do you vote Tory?

If we are going to have regional public payscales, then we'd better have regional taxation also. Otherwise we'd just have a system where the rest of the UK just subsidises London house prices. That's not on.

Exactly, even if incomes go up the landlords are just waiting for the opportunity to hike rents up accordingly.

As someone who used to work in a role supporting low income families I was shocked even back in 2010, at just how much housing benefit went on huge private rent bills and often the accommodation was substandard. Damp, cramped and repairs not carried out.

The governments NEED to get a grip on house prices and rent and social housing.

It is relevant that you are a single parent with four children, hence the need for a three bed house - not a two bed flat. Sadly it is difficult for any parent (single or otherwise) if they have children prior to owning a property in London and large parts of the south. Living in private rental properties is always going to be problematic in thes areas, council or housing association properties are much easier on the wallet and provide security. It is a horrible fact of life in this part of UK. I say that as someone who bought a 2 bed flat in London in 2011. If I didn't buy it then, somehow managed to save £1000 a month and added that to my 2011 deposit, I still couldn't afford the flat in 2023. And rent on that property is now over 2.5 what it was in 2011. If I had an NHS job I'd consider moving to a different/cheaper location, but I can imagine it's a more difficult decision if your children are happy, settled in school, and have had to deal with the trauma of a parent dying.

And can we do something about all the foreign property investors buying up all the new build flats in London that often just sit empty! I suspect it’s money laundering in a lot of cases but whatever it is, it doesn’t help the locals.

Well we already subsidise London Health Education and Transport spending so it's not new.

There's no actual reason for a lot of concentration in London - and much of it is self-fufilling. Thinking you can high-rise build your way to provision of affordable housing doesn't sound like a long term sustainable plan to me.
There is no reason why spreading the London wealth and massive subsidies would make us all poorer.

I guess you could do.... Two-bed flat/terrace, no garden, sofabed for Mum in living room?

I mean... that would be a shit situation with four kids, alright. But I honestly don't know what else I'd do or suggest in these circumstances, if moving is not possible. :( It's a hard one, no doubt about it. The UK has a housing crisis, and posters like the OP suffer as a result.

Southeast and £1750 are the two factors here. You'd easily be paying £1k less on rent in the midlands.

Yes, but successive governments for past few decades have deliberately pursued "pro London/SE" policies which has caused the concentration and centralisation of things into that tiny part of the country. We need politicians who'll turn things around and develop the regions. That's exactly why Boris was so popular when he announced policies to regenerate the run down Northern towns etc., the policies which Rishi sadly seems to have forgotten, but then again, he's a "City" banker, so probably has no interest in the regions and I doubt Starmer is too bothered either, so whoever wins the next GE, we'll have another five years of the run down areas of the country being ignored whilst London and SE get even more crowded!

Why should people who've grown up in the south east, who have ties and family there, be priced out? It isn't right.

So what if the South East of England is nearer London and jobs? If those jobs don't pay decent standard of living wages, then rents really have no business being so bloody high.

For context:

Depends what source you're looking at. The first answer on Google puts it at £28.2K. And that's factoring in the fact that the vasy majority of the highest earners/millionaires live in the South East, pushing up the average/median salary by some way - in reality it'll be closer to £25K.

Actually, there is a lot of scope for building even in the SE: Golf courses, run-down shopping centers, a lot of parking (which would be less necessary if we had denser urban cores in more parts of the SE that are dense enough to support good public transit networks), adding extra floors to buildings, replacing bungalows with mid-rise flats and maisonette blocks....

Because the angry right wing Boomers who sit on Mumsnet furiously replying to these sort of posts say so.

Why would it make everyone poorer? We just need to spread things out again, how it always used to be. Big organisations/employers would still make the same profits if they moved all or some of their staff to regional offices. After all, their customers are spread all over the country, especially the likes of banks, insurance firms, professional firms, etc. They no longer need to be close to each other, like in the old days of banks and solicitors having "walkers" to hand deliver documents between themselves!

In my home town (Northern run down town now), we used to have regional offices for two huge insurance firms - both were closed down in the 90s upon centralisation to London with the loss of thousands of jobs. Likewise we had small/local offices of national chains of accountants, solicitors, banks, etc., - all now long gone, with the centralisation in London, again, hundreds of jobs lost.

No decent local jobs means graduates never return from Uni as there are no decent jobs for them, and often, no decent jobs in their Uni cities either, so they end up in London/SE because that's where the jobs are!

Basically, London and the SE has sucked the life out of regional economies, aided and abbeted by London Centric governments. It needs a reversal and that needs to start at the top, in Government. We desperately need to get business and enterprise back into the regions, we need "localism" policies to regenerate all the run down towns.

hi @Rentmakesmepoor . I get it.

I don't agree that moving area is the answer. But practically - is there a different part of town you could move to that is a bit cheaper?

Is there a part time (out of hours) job you could do? Are your children old enough to be left on their own if you got an evening job? (And I know that would be exhausting and untenable for a long term solution). There are also ways of earning money by working from home - have you explored these? Is there any possibility of taking your skills to the private sector and earning more?

And also, do double check you are getting all you are entitled to. Gingerbread could help with benefits but also other sources of support. Good luck x

Oh do bore off another one who cannot handle opposing views. Sadly this is now the new snowflake norm, moan and blame every one else and shout abuse rather than take control get of your arse and do something.

What does who I vote for got to do with anything? you really are coming across as a bit of a sociopath yourself. 😂

The OP earns the same as teachers, social workers, nurses and lots of skilled professional public service workers. Do we just say that those people don't need to be in certain areas of the UK? That only teachers married to wealthy people can work in the SE, London, parts of Cheshire and Manchester?

YANBU OP. It's dreadful.