Can You Afford to Live Here?
Can You Afford to Live Here? Britain has become very good at measuring the cost of a home. We are less good at asking what is left of a person's life after they have paid for it. There is a question hidden inside almost every conversation about housing. Not Where can you live? Not even What can you afford? But: What will you have left? It is an important distinction. Because someone can pay their rent and still be struggling. They can keep up with the mortgage and still be unable to save. They can have somewhere to sleep and still have no sense that they are building a life there. Housing is supposed to provide security. Increasingly, for many people, it can feel like a monthly test of whether everything else can be kept going. The numbers are difficult to ignore In England, 1.34 million households were on local-authority housing registers at the end of March 2025. That was the highest figure since 2014. The government cautions that waiting-list figures are not a perfect measure of housing need: councils use different criteria, registers are reviewed at different frequencies, and some households may appear on more than one register. Even with those limitations, the scale is difficult to dismiss. More than a million households were registered with their local authority for social housing. For those who cannot access it, the private rented sector is often the alternative. In England in 2024, a private renter on median household income could expect to spend 36.3% of their income on an average-priced rented home. The ONS uses 30% as a broad affordability threshold. The figure was based on an average monthly rent of £1,232 against a median monthly household income of £3,396. That does not describe every renter. It does not describe every rent. But it makes the problem easier to see. At that level, more than a third of a household's income can disappear into rent before the electricity has been paid, the food has been bought or the train to work has been caught. And buying does not necessarily provide an easy escape. In 2024, the median home in England cost £290,000 — 7.7 times the median full-time annual earnings of £37,600. The ONS uses five years of earnings as a broad indicator of affordability; only 9% of local authorities in England and Wales had an average house price below that threshold. Renting can consume a large share of an income. Buying can require years of earnings. Social housing is not simply waiting underneath the private market for everyone who needs it. So what, exactly, are people supposed to afford? The cost is not just the rent We often talk about housing as though the price of the home is the whole story. It isn't. A household paying £1,000 a month in rent is not simply spending £1,000. It is spending £1,000 that cannot be spent somewhere else. That might mean putting off replacing a broken appliance. It might mean saying no to a holiday, delaying a purchase or never quite managing to build an emergency fund. A broken washing machine is inconvenient if there are savings in the bank. Without them, it can become a crisis. That is the difference between being able to pay for something and being able to afford it. Affordability is not simply whether the payment can be made. It is whether the payment leaves enough room for the rest of life. And that room matters. The people who are almost coping Homelessness is often imagined as a dramatic event. Someone loses their home. Someone sleeps on the street. Someone arrives at a council office with nowhere else to go. Those things happen. But housing insecurity can be much quieter. It is the household that can pay the rent this month but cannot save for the next. The couple who can afford their flat but cannot afford to move somewhere larger. The young person who could technically rent alone, provided almost everything they earn goes towards doing so. The parent who stays in an unsuitable home because moving would cost too much. The household that gets through every month by hoping nothing goes wrong. There is no obvious crisis in those situations. There is simply no room. And a life is difficult to build when every pound already has a job. Then there is the waiting At 31 March 2025, 131,140 households in England were living in temporary accommodation. Of those, 83,150 households included children, with 169,050 dependent children living in temporary accommodation. The total number of households in temporary accommodation was at a record level. Temporary accommodation can be many things: a hotel, hostel, refuge or accommodation arranged by a local authority. It provides somewhere to live. But somewhere to live and somewhere to build a life are not always the same thing. For a family in temporary accommodation, the uncertainty itself can become part of everyday life. Where will we be next month? Will the children still be at the same school? Can we make plans for the summer? Can we settle into this place if we do not know how long we will be here? The statistics cannot answer those questions. They can tell us how many households are in temporary accommodation. They cannot tell us what it feels like to plan a life when the address might change. A family can be housed and still not have a home. That distinction matters. When renting stops being temporary There is another assumption built into British housing culture: that renting is temporary. You rent while you are young. You save. You buy. You settle down. Except that path is not available to everyone. A median-priced home in England cost 7.7 times median full-time earnings in 2024. Although that ratio had improved from 2023, it remained above the ONS's broad five-year affordability benchmark. For some people, buying remains achievable. For others, the deposit is the barrier. For others, it is the mortgage. For others, it is the price of homes in the place where their work, family or life already exists. The important question is not simply whether someone could buy a house somewhere. It is whether they can buy a home that allows them to keep the rest of their life intact. A cheaper house may mean a longer commute. A cheaper area may mean moving away from family. A larger home may mean giving up the ability to save. A mortgage that technically works on paper may leave very little room for anything that goes wrong. The problem is not simply that houses cost too much. It is that housing costs can begin to dictate the shape of everything around them. What gets lost? This is the part of the housing debate that interests me most. Because the consequences of expensive housing do not always appear as housing problems. They appear somewhere else. A person cannot afford to move closer to a better job. A family cannot move closer to relatives who could help with childcare. A young adult stays at home longer than they wanted to. Someone postpones a plan because there is no money left after the essentials. A household cannot build enough savings to withstand an emergency. None of these things is, on its own, a housing statistic. But housing can determine whether any of them is possible. The price of a home does not just decide where we sleep. It can influence where we work, who we live near, what risks we can take and how much freedom we have to change our minds. That is a much bigger question than whether the rent is technically manageable. So, can you afford to live here? Perhaps that is the question we should have been asking all along. Not: Can you pay the rent? Not: Can you get a mortgage? Not: Is this house below the local average? But: After you have paid for your home, can you still afford to live? Can you replace something when it breaks? Can you save? Can you visit family? Can you make plans? Can you say yes to an unexpected opportunity? Can you absorb one bad month without everything else collapsing with it? A home should be more than somewhere your money disappears into every month. It should give you somewhere to begin. A place from which you can work, rest, make friends, raise children, make plans and imagine a future. We have become very comfortable with calling housing affordable when what we sometimes mean is payable. Those are not the same thing. A tenancy can be maintained. A mortgage can be met. The direct debit can leave the account every month. And there can still be nothing left. Affordable for whom?
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