By: JurmoloyaRava
MORE than one in four Londoners, many of them in work, live in poverty due to stagnant wages and rapidly rising rents, according to a report released on Monday (9).
London’s Poverty Profile showed that 2.3 million people in the city live in poverty with a record 1.3 million of them in jobs.
Using official data to measure poverty, the report said a single adult in poverty earns less than £144 a week after taxes and housing costs are deducted and the average family of four has less than £347 to spend on all other costs of living.
“Despite its glaring prosperity and privilege, London remains the capital of English poverty, due mainly to the high rents paid by the half of all households who rent their homes,” said Adam Tinson from New Policy Institute, a British research organisation that produced the report.
London housing costs are among the highest in the world, with average rents now more than £1,800 a month, according to property lender Landbay.
While families who rent from private landlords have long endured high costs, families living in social housing are now seeing the fastest rent increases.
Rents for local government housing have increased by around 30 per cent in the last five years, even faster than private rents, which have risen a fifth, the report found.
The proportion of Londoners living in poverty – defined as earning less than 60 per cent of the median income – has fallen to 27 per cent from 29 per cent over the last six years.
As the population has grown, the overall number of people in poverty remains unchanged, according to the report, but of those the number in work is now at a record level at 58 per cent.
Housing costs that are more than double the average outside the capital are the main reason poverty in London is higher than in the rest of the country, where the average is 21 per cent, it added. (Thomson Reuters Foundation)
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