Single earner with 2 kids living in London on top-1 percentile income here. 60% of that monthly income is going towards rent, taxes and utilities for a terrace in Zone 4, plus nursery charges for our toddler. My wife can't find a job here, as she's an ex-journalist, and not a native speaker. No tax allowances (due to £100k+/y income) and no recurse to public funds (I'm on Visa, and not an EU citizen) doesn't help either. Apparently, I supposed to be rich enough for London to be taxable on 50% of my income (effective tax rate: 41%).
Thought of buying a 2bd flat recently, but it'll take us two years of struggling for every extra penny to just get a mortgage for a very moderate £250k place.
Income means nothing in this city. Either you got your housing issue settled 15 years ago using 'right to buy' or some other form of government housing subsidies, or you somehow generate wealth on a side (obviously, not through the salary, as even £200k/y doesn't seems to be close enough), or you are going to rent until you loose your source of income (i.e. due to old age) - and then you'd probably die on a street.
An economy of landlords drawing the money from their own kids. In a few decades all that accumulated wealth will be probably burned away on anti-cancer treatments, and then heavily taxed and rented younger generation will just quit on trying to build a welfare state, throwing their lives away only to provide a comfort living for older people. Hope our grand-kids will be at least able to start from blank.
I'm on the same boat. When people know my salary they think I'm rich, but the truth is that I can't save much more than I did when I was living in Holland making ~40% less.
Now I have a baby and the wife can't really have a career because a nursery would cost more than she can reasonably expect to make as a designer at this stage.
The 200k/year requirement feeds into the incomes discussion in other ways. Take today's scandal of Malcolm Rifkind, complaining that £67k is "not enough to live on".
Rifkind earns £67,000 as an MP, a further £14,876 as chair of the ISC and received £270,868 in directorships and consultancies between January 2014 and January 2015. (Guardian)
Rifkind's party instituted the "bedroom tax", taking ~£25/week off many people who were living on benefits and who have now been pushed below the breadline, resulting in a number of suicides and deaths of disabled people due to malnutrition.
One one level, MPs are perhaps not paid enough to not need outside payment. On another, we're constantly told that "austerity" is so necessary that we must withdraw the tiny amount of money that is keeping many people alive.
I understand that is a possible option, but isn't the whole point of this that it's not feasible to live in the city? Being forced further out to commute is kind of the point.
It is feasible to live in the city, there are rents from £70 to £50,000 per week. It is an expensive city, there is a shortage of housing and the options may not suit your aspirations or expectations, but they do exist.
Sure. I used to commute from Zone 2 to Zone 2, and it took over an hour. Had I instead moved out of the city, and commuted in from Reading, it would have been 45 minutes. Don't assume that commuting in from outside of London will take longer than commuting across London.
I'm next to straight underground line going right to my office.
'Just go to Reading' was exactly my point. In order to save enough for a basic housing in London, my quality of life have to drop significantly for years to come. Yet I'm considered to be 'rich' by HMRC. (Practically, this'd mean switching schools for one of my children, and waiting forever for free timeslots in nearby nurseries for another - while saving maybe extra £5-6k/y in rent, which is peanuts when counting towards possible mortgage).
Avg. house prices in my current ward are ~$750-900k for a 3bd terrace. That's ten years of my net income - and you don't have to work for that! Just sell a house you bought 15 years ago for a fraction of this cost - and here you go. Sure, you'd have to rent - just as I do. Yet, all those people are not considered to be wealthy (and they aren't, with many of them struggling with today's job market), and not taxed on the wealth they hold.
So, for me - it's all about taxation and government imposed incentives. If they want to put a leash on a younger britons generation and then pass it to Chinese landlords - they're on the right track.
Changing taxation alone can drastically shift the power balance between landlords and tenants to ease underlying supply-demand issue.
It's maddening that property owners can vote against new construction, when they have a deep conflict of interest. The community may require housing, but the homeowner has an interest in seeing housing prices go up forever.
It's similar to this ridiculous notion that expensive housing is a good thing. We give absurd tax breaks to homeowners (why can't I deduct the lost interest on my rent?), and people lament falling house prices, as though homelessness were desirable.
Couple all that with building codes that make it illegal to build modest (small with no parking) housing, and you have a situation where it's impossible for most people to live in a city.
The above issues don't apply everywhere. London, thankfully, isn't dumb enough to go for parking minimums, and doesn't offer a tax deduction on mortgage interest. The general forces at play (landed incumbents voting to screw over the young) are much the same, though.
What? London is full of new housing under construction. Many of the flats will be tiny as well. The problem (for those trying to live in the city) is that the houses will be hugely expensive.
For London in particular, the problem is that there are too many people who want to own a house there. That's why the prices are high. You can't call the place underdeveloped, it's not a lack of supply due to regulations.
If you want the prices to be lower, you need to reduce the demand.
It's a matter of perspective. On the one hand you're right that it's sheer demand that is a big part of the problem in London. On the other hand it is obvious that everywhere in the UK has serious restriction of supply, because house building has been less than half of what's necessary for many decades, house prices are spiralling, and median house price to income ratios are double now what they were 15 years ago (again, that applies to all parts of the country, even unfashionable places far away from the capital [1]).
Obviously there's the issue with green belts, but even beyond that there's massive potential for increasing the housing density of outer London. Both because of its current low density, and because a lot of the existing housing stock is made up of grey suburban estates which would be more or less unmourned if redeveloped. Look up 'densification' for more information.
Also, of course, it is important to try to reduce demand by making the Northern cities an alternative centre of gravity (HS2, HS3, new local powers for unified city mayors in Manchester and Birmingham, and so on).
As I understand it, the problem is that new construction is outstripped by increasing demand. Hence the increasing prices. I read an article in The Economist's recent suburbs/cities issue where they said a lot of the problem lies in how people are prevented from developing the green belt.
I don't know. I know a few people who live in green belt areas and commute every day to work in central London. Clearly, in some sense, London doesn't end there; and it drives up costs for them and many others. At the same time, I agree that it would be terrible to lose all the countryside vaguely near London.
Perhaps your top-level comment was right: London has just reached capacity. But I'm not convinced of that, either; there are plenty of bigger megacities.
Nobody claims democracy is perfect, but on the other hand, deciding that democracy is broken because it doesn't return the result you like is a special kind of arrogant.
When you require a large number of people to adjust their behaviour to suit your interest, significant measures of patience and modesty are admirable traits.
Whoa, whoa - that's not quite what they were saying, I think - and they were opposing me! I was referring to areas which are composed primarily of homeowners voting in ways that prevent other people from living there. There's also the fact that homeowners are more likely to be able to vote due to the greater likelihood of being citizens.
Something like 40% of London residents are foreign-born. Interestingly, I'm a foreigner in Dublin, but I'm allowed to vote in local elections after living here for a year.
Most of the planning policy that affects the current housing shortage (along with most things in the UK, really) is decided nationally, so I'm going to have to go with "yes".
But ask yourself this: Given where you live now, how do you feel about people who don't live where you do deciding what should happen where you live, because it would suit them (not you) better?
Most of the planning policy that affects the current housing shortage (along with most things in the UK, really) is decided nationally, so I'm going to have to go with "yes".
Fair enough, could be a local ordinance (I'm not from the UK).
But ask yourself this: Given where you live now, how do you feel about people who don't live where you do deciding what should happen where you live, because it would suit them (not you) better?
I think "how would you feel" arguments are generally poor - biased people make selfish choices, and I'm not immune to it.
That said, I'm not saying that outsiders should be able to choose; you made a comment about it being democratic, and I was curious if it was true. I don't consider a system where only the incumbents would be allowed to vote as "democratic" - even if I could consider it better than a democratic system.
The lack of reasonable property tax is a big part of pushing valuations into the stratosphere. Look at the outrage over the "mansion tax", for example, which would only apply to million-pound homes.
Apparently socialist New York has a 1.8% property tax? Edit: Austin, Texas has 3% property tax! If you tried that in the UK you'd be denounced as a Communist.
I also left London recently, although I moved due to the weather.
For every 29-year-old graphic designer who moves to Cambridge to buy a family home, there's a 22-year-old who's just started their career who's willing to live in a bedsit in Wood Green (as, coincidentally, I did at 17, trying to break in to the big city).
You're meant to get older, and move out of the city. Circle of (urban) life. Give it 50 years, and Reading will be a suburb of London, rather than just a commuter town, CrossRail will have priced out current residents near the stations, and the city will keep trundling on.
That you see yourself as being one of the "original" residents doesn't give you some inherent right to below-market-prices in property. That the same graphic designers and digital media folk who priced families out of Brick Lane are now feeling the same effects of the gentrification cycle they were part of is not meant to be a surprise.
I hear Peckham is the up-and-coming part of town at the moment, but there's no damn way I'd live there, just like I wouldn't have lived in Brixton or Isle of Dogs 15 years ago. But give it 15 years, and you won't be able to afford in Peckham, either...
I agree with the idea of the 'urban cycle'. New, young professionals are happy to share a small bedsit in a bad area if it means a high salary, but at some point in life you have to rebalance your quality of living.
That's a problem I have with London- the constant churn. Everyone is transient. Friends you make are leaving in a year or two, maybe to go abroad or to buy a house in the suburbs. Many, many of the people living here do not consider it a 'home' but a stepping stone towards their goals, and I think this contributes to a lack of community spirit and feeling of belonging. I never felt like a 'Londoner' because there never seemed to be such a thing. On the other hand, this vast diversity and anonymity is of course one of London's great strengths.
>You're meant to get older, and move out of the city.
This is the perspective of someone who moves into the city from their suburban and small town homes and families. They plan to make a lot of money, meet a partner and drink a lot, get married, get a dog, have a child, then move back to the suburbs in a senior position at a remote BigCo to a house that looks just like the one they grew up in.
Most people in the city were born there, live there all of their lives (or maybe switch cities), then die there. Those people are being displaced by what are ultimately temporary residents who can always go back home.
Are you surprised when you see older people who live in the city?
You can't get figures for how many were born outside of London very easily, but glancing at my Facebook feed for the first ten people I know who live in London, only one was born there (and he's from Enfield, which might as well be Scotland). This percentage feels about what I'd expect.
>That you see yourself as being one of the "original" residents doesn't give you some inherent right to below-market-prices in property.
It speaks volumes that you implicitly put the rights of Russian oligarchs and Arab oil barons to buy property (which they often leave empty) above those of the working and middle classes of London.
I'll come back to London when they start taxing the wealthy again. Until then I'll watch from afar as every last drip of culture and life is squeezed out of every community by rising property prices.
> It speaks volumes that you implicitly put the rights of
> Russian oligarchs and Arab oil barons to buy property
> (which they often leave empty) above those of the
> working and middle classes of London.
Sure. But if we'd been having this conversation 20 years ago, it'd have been the rights of the Yuppies above the East End families, and then 200 years ago, it would have been those wealthy landed gentry pushing out the good hard working Hugenots, and so on and so forth and you still don't seem to see the irony of bearded new media workers being priced out of the same market they were busy pricing others out of a decade ago.
I'm also curious about just how many Arab Oil Barons and Russian Oligarchs you think there are, as a percentage of an 8m person city? Because right now, blaming a handful of immigrants who are buying multimillion pound properties that almost no-one else can afford smacks of racism.
>you still don't seem to see the irony of bearded new media workers being priced out of the same market they were busy pricing others out of a decade ago.
Because there is no irony. I bitched about that too. I don't want ANYBODY priced out.
>I'm also curious about just how many Arab Oil Barons and Russian Oligarchs you think there are, as a percentage of an 8m person city?
One unoccupied oil baron's mansion in Central London could be demolished and replaced by affordable housing for hundreds of people.
Rich people occupy more valuable space.
>Because right now, blaming a handful of immigrants who are buying multimillion pound properties that almost no-one else can afford smacks of racism.
I think you're confusing an understanding basic physics with racism.
> One unoccupied oil baron's mansion in Central London could be demolished and replaced by affordable housing for hundreds of people.
LOL. No.
The politics of building on the greenbelt might be thorny, but it's nothing compared for what it'd be like to suggest demolishing listed regency buildings anywhere, much less central London.
The best you can hope for is to replace the extremely wealthy absent foreigner with an extremely wealthy resident (foreigner or not).
* I've stayed in youth hostels in regency houses in London that housed maybe a hundred people. You do realize that they could all fit more than one family?
* Not every house in London is one of those, and there are PLENTY of eyesores that could be demolished and replaced by desperately needed social housing if the politics of London weren't driven by servicing the whims of the ultra-wealthy.
Nobody's going to cry about replacing these eyesores with something affordable:
> It speaks volumes that you implicitly put the rights of Russian oligarchs and Arab oil barons to buy property (which they often leave empty) above those of the working and middle classes of London.
It's not about putting anyone's rights "above" anyone else's -- whoever is willing to pay the most gets the property, that's all there is to it.
So you are putting the rights of people with more money above those with less money. It's not a natural law that this is the case, it's still a political decision.
There certainly exists properties (even, anecdotally, entire streets) in London that serve as wealth-deposit-assets for rich foreigners of questionable repute. Many of these are left empty as the owners aren't in the "landlord business" and merely want to hold a liquid asset (an occupied house isn't as liquid as an unoccupied one).
There is also a story about the saudi royal family buying up a strip of houses on Bishop's Avenue (the most expensive street in London, despite being somewhat suburban) sometime in the 80s or 90s as a bolt hole, but IIRC recently disposed of.
It's clear that this produces some pressure on the housing supply in London, but nowhere near enough to account for the sheer numerical pressure (some ~800k housing units required by 2021 and the rate of new builds is way, way off that target).
I'm leaving London with my girlfriend in a week, to move to Edinburgh. Been here seven years, both on a good salary, yet we live in an impoverished area and would never be able to afford to buy a decent place to live even where we are now. Edinburgh offers us an objectively better standard of living in every measurable aspect except proximity to Europe. I won't miss London.
Moved to Edinburgh from Cambridge. It's brilliant; all the advantages of a large city - working public transport, lots of culture - in the space of a small compact city with a walkable core.
I lived in Edinburgh for eight years, it's a beautiful place and you'll love it there. If you're into beer, check out the Blue Blazer - it was my favourite bar.
I spent my childhood in London, moving overseas after graduation - not financially motivated. With two kids now I often entertain ideas of moving back, primarily because it really is an amazing city and because of the opportunities my children would have.
Unfortunately, even with the handsome salaries senior devs earn I cannot see how I could possibly pay rent and support children.
So I often wonder where all this money is coming from? If a salary many multiples the average would not cover living costs, who is pushing up prices? Who is buying these houses?
"even with the handsome salaries senior devs earn"
People working at Google etc think they're paid handsomely, but in reality in London they are paid a fraction compared to what you can get in the financial sector.
This article and the comments here talk about software developers and graphic designers, and the reality is there's a whole community above you earning much more. That's who's able to buy the houses.
Another factor is generational wealth. Most of my friends who own houses in London earn less than me but were given large amounts of money by their parents. When you have a 20-40% deposit the monthly mortgage payments become much more affordable.
That's what I suspect, but it's crazy. The average salary in London is £27k, a senior dev will earn 3x that (I'm guessing). And that's still barely enough to live comfortably.
I guess that's the point of the campaign in the linked article, but I can't see how that will change, unless the financial bubble bursts.
No, and to be fair it is the top salary I could find publicly. But I have a couple of friends who are compensated not far off that. Another twist - they're both humanities students, that HN loves to claim will never get a job with their classics and literature.
Even with rent prices? If I was single it wouldn't matter, I could live in a shoe-box, but a family needs a little extra room. And we're a very frugal family.
It's interesting that growing up in London my single-parent mother on an income between 40-50k managed to buy a house and raise two kids. We lived comfortably.
That house is now worth 6x more than the price she payed. Her salary today (she's retired) would be almost the same. That's why I can't imagine doing the same thing she did, even on a 2x salary.
Given wage inflation over 40 years her salary would not be the same. Given asset inflation I'd expect the house to go up say 4x. Prices in London have been frothy recently, but as someone in a similar situation it is possible to buy in a nice area if you compromise on some things first time - either garden house/flat, or area. If you are in the top 10-20% (as many posting here are) there are lots of options in London for a good quality of life. Personally I would rent right now, save and await a correction.
Is that the mean or the median average? From what I know, there are a large number of people earning more than £250K, but a massive group that earns around £20-25K - supermarket workers, nurses, primary school teachers, etc. It's that latter group that simply can't afford to live in London in safe, comfortable environment.
Interestingly I discovered that a former colleague of mine actually does this. He'd considered buying a property in London and managed to find a number of of houses in Murcia (Spain) which cost the same as his deposit in London would have been.
There is a slight twist which enables this international "commute" however. His job has involved being on-site in with a client (in Scotland) for the last while, so even if he lived in London he would've been put up in accomodation anyway. So in reality his Spain->UK\UK->Spain round trip only happens once a week, but technically he's still doing an international commute :)
The cost of living in London is insane and it is a really interesting thought experiment. A lot of my friends are moving out of the city and I can't see myself staying here more than another year or two.
But for some context, West Hampstead is a fairly nice suburb on three different train and tube lines.
The rent for a one-bed flat is high as they are bid up by couples who are both earning. You are at a big disadvantage looking on your own. In my experience there is not much difference between prices for a one or two bed flat.
I think a big problem is the price of national rail transport into London from the commuter belt. It can easily cost £4,000 a year for a season ticket, wiping out most of the saving on rent or mortgage payments compared to living in the city.
I commuted between London and Berlin for a decent amount of time, and I certainly remember having more money then compared to now when I live in London fulltime.
How did you manage this? Was this daily? If not, where were you sleeping when you were in London? Where were you flying to, and how were you getting into central London? I'm really interested in commuting to London from other countries but it seems impractical and expensive. There seem to be a lot of people talking about how in theory it's cheaper, but no one is doing it other than weekly commutes, which requires a place to stay in the first place.
You'd be even more incredulous if you had to ride on a London bound commuter train every morning. If you're lucky you'll get to stand in a space large enough that you don't have to stick your head in someone's armpit. If you're incredibly lucky, or get on at one of the first stops on the line, you might even get a seat.
Because the rail tracks were laid down a loooong time ago, and are surrounded on all sides by expensive property. This means limited capacity, ageing infrastructure, and unceasingly increasing demand.
I'm in the ~£4k* a year bracket. The train takes about ~40 minutes to get to London, which is pretty good. You won't get a seat though, so that's 40 minute standing packed in like cattle on a train service that's often
late.
Of course, network rail, the line operator, kicks back money for lateness but the strange rules of your franchise like paying out only on overall lateness and not considering a train that's too full for you to get on as late means they keep 90% of that back for themselves.
For most folks that's only part one of your commute, because few of us actually work where we get into the city. Typically this means getting on the underground for another 30 minutes, this time cattle is being a bit polite.
* Actually, the £4000 is what I would pay if I paid for a yearly ticket. Since I don't always work in London, I get month tickets. These cost £400 a month.
Because UK uses a stupid system of surge pricing for their trains. Rather than a flat rate for a journey, you will pay more the closer it is to the departure and the busier the route is. So even if you buy a ticket 6 months in advance, a Monday morning ticket to London is going to cost you 100 pounds+, depending where you are travelling from.
Because the market will bear it. People have jobs in London, but can't afford to live there. Driving usually isn't an option either because parking prices and London traffic are prohibitive. Ergo the train companies can charge basically whatever they like and people have to put up with it.
I have sort of a different experience. I just moved to London, from Dublin, a few months ago. I make a good, but not outrageous, salary: pretty close to a reported average for software developers in London.
I live in a somewhat rundown area, just outside zone 1. The rent is expensive, but not unmanageable. I have flatmates; the area feels safe; its close enough to bus and tube lines that getting around is simple. I live fairly frugally otherwise. I don't at all feel like I can't afford to live in the city, and I can't imagine having the access to the range and depth of culture and social events anywhere else.
Maybe it's that I don't have any interest in buying a home, but I feel like so much of this doesn't apply to me. Maybe it's also that I moved here from Dublin, another very expensive city, that I don't feel like it's so bad.
How old are you? You mention that you have flatmates, but not everybody wants to live in a shared apartment far into their thirties, especially if you would like to find a place for you and your partner. The problem is that housing in London looks like a commodity that big sharks trade like many other long-term investment commodities. Problem is, that's the places where people would actually like to live that you're trading like it was crude oil barrels. How is that even barely sustainable for a city in the long term? Not limiting that by rules of law is a big mistake, but no politicians would be ever called into account for that.
I'm late-twenties/early-thirties. I'm probably just on the old side to still be perfectly happy to rent a room in a shared apartment. If I find myself in a long-term relationship then I imagine my priorities will change, but part of the reason I moved to London was because I thought it would be easier to meet romantic prospects.
I completely agree that property prices in London are insane, and that the political system is doing nothing to reign it in (quite the opposite, from my point of view).
But, from what I've experienced, if you don't want to buy your own property, then it's perfectly possible to live in London without earning crazy hedge fund money.
It's completely possible to live in London. But imagine trying to stay here, like, for life. Starting family, raising kids, buying your own place. Not possible, on any income. You need wealth, and in London there's no way to build it for salaried professional.
My former coworker from across the pond talks about his fellow college grads who either had the foresight or luck to buy flats in London after graduating in the late 90's. At the time, I think they were in the $200k range. I shudder to think of the valuations now.
Well, all bubbles burst and things always change. Give it another financial crisis, housing crash or big change in UK housing policy (unlikely to happen before a crash) and London might calm down again.
During the 80s, people couldn't leave the place quick enough.
I can empathise with these messages. We left London after two years when I moved to start a PhD. I was sad to leave the city but life is so much easier away from London. We could afford to buy a house when I was studying, and once I graduated we could afford for me to earn very little while I started a business. I love the energy of London but, now we have 2 kids, I can't imagine we could ever afford to move back.
I just exchanged contracts on a 2 bed flat in zone 4 that will leave me and my gf with a 300k debt.
If it wasn't for her stable job in town I would think about going somewhere else.
And we know that we will probably never be able to upgrade to a bigger place if prices keep rising at this rate since our income will not increase at the same speed.
I wonder if London will become a boring rich people playground.
Well, both of us are in our late thirties, earn above average and used up almost all of our combined savings of the last 10 years to finance the deposit, taxes and fees to be able to get this mortgage.
I just bought a 2 bed terrace in zone 4 for 280k, its not cheap but there are some places that are a lot more affordable (especially if you don't mind going south of the river)
Sorry, I don't know London, but I'm trying to understand your situation.
You have a mortgage for around 1.5k for the next 25 years, shared between you and your gf for a flat with a spare bedroom close to the centre of London ?
£1500 for the mortgage, plus bills, council tax, land rent, home insurance, repairs, etc... that is around £2000 per month not counting food, travel, clothes and entertainment.
So realistically you need to earn £3000 after tax to be able to afford it, which translates to a pre-tax salary of £50k.
We are lucky to earn more than that but the vast majority of people I know would not be able to do it.
We barely feel middle class here, I don't even own a car.
That is correct, however when you apply for a mortgage the bank doesn't really add both incomes equally and the only reason we were able to borrow £300k is because I earn more than £50k.
Also, interest rates are extremely low at the moment and we will be paying only around 4%.
I prefer not to think what will happen if the BOE needs to raise interest rates.
Additionally if we want to have kids, that's another £12k per year per kid for a nursery if my gf wants to keep her job.
I never earned this much in my life and I never felt to financially insecure at the same time.
I'm 32 and I recently moved out of London when my wife and I had our first child. Although London has the best of everything, if you can't afford the best, you often get the worst. At least where we are now (Southend on Sea, in the Thames estuary) the public services are excellent, it's safe and there's a strong community.
I'm curious: what is considered "London" in this context? Wikipedia breaks down the demographics into Inner, Outer and Greater London. In each case the population has been growing rapidly, so who exactly is moving in and who is moving away?
Few ordinary people live in 'inner London'. That's like the West End, the City. I imagine most people are moaning about Greater London - Shoreditch (where the "Silicon Roundabout" is based), Stratford (where the Olympics were, is part of the wider Tech City initiative), and other trendy neighbourhoods like Kensington, Camden, Fulham, etc. However, even Outer London (typically anywhere that's Zone 3-6 on the tube) is starting to become ridiculously expensive.
Similar situation in Munich! The only one who can afford to live here - with average salary - is the lucky one whose parents are ready to help with a donation of 200,000€. For the rest they will take a loan at the bank...
The billboard's impact is weakened by the fact that almost half of the messages are about people 'planning' to relocate outside of London.
So the situation is bad yet they still haven't left? That kind of implies that there are still advantages to living there and they haven't outweighed the disadvantages. Why didn't the billboard creators just stick to people who have moved away? Their actions would speak louder than the words of those who may just like to moan!
"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons..."
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
This isn't JUST about privileged young would-be urbanites having to live a few stops further from Shoreditch. It's about having a city that isn't just a playground for the rich but that has a healthy mix of professions and lifestyles.
I understand your point but I think that they can go to cheaper localities and start life there. New places will develop consequently. Many times that's how new cities form.
Stoke-on-Trent was giving away houses recently. Of course, the reason they're so cheap is there's no jobs there, little culture and poor transport links.
Thought of buying a 2bd flat recently, but it'll take us two years of struggling for every extra penny to just get a mortgage for a very moderate £250k place.
Income means nothing in this city. Either you got your housing issue settled 15 years ago using 'right to buy' or some other form of government housing subsidies, or you somehow generate wealth on a side (obviously, not through the salary, as even £200k/y doesn't seems to be close enough), or you are going to rent until you loose your source of income (i.e. due to old age) - and then you'd probably die on a street.
An economy of landlords drawing the money from their own kids. In a few decades all that accumulated wealth will be probably burned away on anti-cancer treatments, and then heavily taxed and rented younger generation will just quit on trying to build a welfare state, throwing their lives away only to provide a comfort living for older people. Hope our grand-kids will be at least able to start from blank.