Housing plays a critical role in Londoners’ quality of life, health and their financial position. The affordability, condition and security of housing shape how people experience the city and contribute to wider patterns of inequality. Housing supply in London has not kept up with demand, which (in conjunction with other factors) has contributed to the city’s very high housing costs and high rates of housing need. This chapter examines housing affordability, housing quality, homelessness and neighbourhood design across London.
Housing affordability
This section provides a selection of indicators on housing affordability in London, including: Londoners’ ability to keep up with their rent or mortgage payments, an affordability index comparing changes in private rents with earnings, and the number of households in temporary accommodation.
According to GLA polling on the cost of living, 34% of people in London had either fallen behind, or struggled to keep up with, rent or mortgage payments in April 2026.
30% of people reported that they struggled to keep up with rent or mortgage payments. 21% said they had kept up with payments but had found it a struggle at least once, while 9% struggled every time.
3% reported they had fallen behind on one or more payments, while 1% had fallen behind on all payments. These figures have remained relatively stable over the past year, though both categories had higher percentages in 2022 and early 2023.
Over the same period, most people reported being able to keep up with their rent or mortgage payments, though many continued to face financial strain. Whilst 51% of respondents said they kept up with payments without any difficulty in April 2026, this proportion appears to be trending down from a peak of 54% in April 2025, although it is still higher than the low of 43% in October 2023.
The ‘affordability index’ is calculated as the cumulative change in earnings divided by the cumulative change in private rents (on both new and existing tenancies). A higher index value means earnings are increasing by more than private rents, thereby improving affordability (other things equal).
Between 2015 and 2020, rents were relatively stable in nominal terms while earnings increased at a marginally higher rate, leading to a modest improvement in affordability. Rents then fell in 2020 and 2021 while earnings rose strongly. Rents increased sharply from 2022 onwards and are currently outpacing earnings growth, leading to a deterioration in affordability. The rate of growth in rents has been slower since late 2024 by comparison with the growth in earnings, lessening the impact on the affordability index.
The ONS rental data shown here reflects rents paid on all tenancies and therefore reacts more slowly to changes in the market for new tenancies. Another caveat to note is that earnings data only reflects payrolled employees and does not reflect changes in income from benefits and non-employment sources of income.
Data from the English Housing Survey shows private renters in London have been more likely to struggle paying rent than those in the social sector since the pandemic. In 2018, social sector tenants in London were more likely to struggle, with 39% finding it difficult compared to 35% of private renters. By 2023/24, 44% of private renters found it difficult to pay rent, compared to 38% of social sector tenants.
The trend outside London has been more stable. The share of private renters finding it difficult to pay rent increased from 26% in 2018 to 28% in 2023/24, while the figure for social sector tenants has remained broadly similar.
With the exception of London's social rented sector, which at 38% sits just one percentage point below its 2018 peak, the remaining three measures have now reached their highest levels since 2018. While the sharper increase in London likely reflects the city's acute rental affordability pressures, difficulty paying rent has also increased across the rest of England.
The number of homeless households in temporary accommodation arranged by London boroughs provides a measure of unmet housing need among Londoners, reflecting the degree to which neither the private nor social rented sector is able to meet demand. This indicator examines the number of households placed in temporary accommodation, including those still undergoing a homelessness assessment as well as those already assessed as homeless, while a suitable housing solution is found.
London has more households in temporary accommodation than the rest of England’s regions combined. According to MHCLG statistics, there were 75,800 homeless households in temporary accommodation arranged by London boroughs at the end of September 2025, up from 68,480 a year before and the highest value since the data series began in 1988. In the rest of England, there were 58,960 homeless households in temporary accommodation at the end of September 2025.
50,010 of the homeless London households in temporary accommodation in September 2025 had children, a 6% increase in the last year, affecting a total of 99,190 children.
The number of London households in bed-and-breakfast accommodation fell from 6,190 in September 2024 to 4,480 in September 2025, a 28% decrease. 72% of households in temporary accommodation (54,580) were in some form of private-sector accommodation, which has increased significantly in recent years – rising by 65% compared to end of March 2020.
Housing safety and quality
This section examines housing quality and safety in London, looking first at the proportion of homes meeting the Decent Homes Standard, and second at progress remediating residential buildings with unsafe cladding.
The Decent Homes Standard is a long-established and widely used composite indicator of housing conditions, reported through the official English Housing Survey. For a home to meet the Standard it must satisfy four criteria: it must not contain any serious ‘Category 1’ health hazards1 , it must be in a reasonable state of repair, it must have reasonably modern facilities or services and it must provide a reasonable degree of thermal comfort, meaning effective insulation and efficient heating.
The proportion of homes in London across all tenures estimated to meet the official Decent Homes Standard rose from 63% in 2006 to 89% in 2023.
The highest recorded share of decent homes was in 2021, at 91%. The fall in subsequent years was driven by a decrease in the share of decent homes in the social housing and owner-occupied sectors. However, note that data from 2020 and 2021 (and part of 2022) was modelled by MHCLG as surveyors were unable to carry out internal inspections due to the pandemic. This means that comparisons over time should be made with caution.
The share of homes not meeting the Decent Homes Standard in the private rented sector stayed at 12% between 2022 and 2023. Historically, the private rented sector had the largest share of non-decent homes; but it is now on par with the social rented sector – both at 12%.
Fire safety concerns remain a priority, particularly in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy.
The GLA administers three government funding programmes to remediate buildings with unsafe cladding: the Social Sector and Private Sector ACM Cladding Remediation Funds, and the Building Safety Fund (BSF) for unsafe non-ACM cladding systems. The Cladding Safety Scheme (CSS), administered by the government, meets the cost of addressing life safety fire risks.
As at the end of February 2026, 4,310 residential buildings of 11 metres or over have been identified with unsafe cladding in England and are being monitored by the government. Of these, 2,511 (55%) are in London. 48% of London buildings have been identified but no remediation has started, compared to 45% in the rest of England, 16% are actively undergoing remediation (20% in the rest of England), and 36% have had remediation completed (35% in the rest of England).
Homelessness
According to MHCLG data, rough sleeping in London remained relatively low throughout the pandemic years before rising sharply in 2023 and continuing to grow in subsequent years. In December 2025, 22.9 people in every 100,000 were sleeping rough in London, equivalent to 2,290 people. This is 7% higher than a year prior and 21% above 2022 levels.
London's rough sleeping rate is nearly double that of the rest of England, where 12 in every 100,000 people were sleeping rough at the end of 2025. This gap widened substantially in 2023.
In Q4 2025, outreach teams recorded 2,250 people sleeping rough in London for the first time, an 8% increase on the same quarter the previous year. Of these, 1,649 were seen for only one night, while 516 were recorded for a second night but were not considered to be living on the streets, a 12% increase from the previous year. The remaining 85 individuals were assessed as having joined the population living on the streets, an 8% increase from last year and triple the number in 2020.
Under the Homelessness Reduction Act, a prevention duty is owed to households threatened with homelessness within 56 days and a relief duty is owed to households that are already homeless and require help to secure accommodation. The relief duty lasts 56 days, after which a household can be accepted as statutorily homeless and owed a main homelessness duty.
In Q3 2025, there were 16,590 households assessed as owed a new prevention or relief duty in London, including 6,620 prevention and 9,970 relief duties, accounting for 20% of the national total. This is down 4% from 17,270 in Q3 2024. Additionally, 4,400 households had a main duty accepted, representing 26% of England's total and a 5% fall from 4,650 a year prior. Both figures, in line with national trends, rose sharply towards the end of 2023 and into early 2024 following several quarters of steady growth since mid-2022, but have since begun to decline gradually.
Neighbourhood planning and design
Well-planned and well-designed neighbourhoods are important because they shape people’s daily lives, health, opportunities, and sense of community. In the absence of metrics to assess the quality of neighbourhood planning and design across London, indicators on Londoners’ satisfaction and sense of belonging to their local area are used as proxies. It is important to note that these measures are also influenced by factors other than planning and design.
As of 2024, 70% of adult Londoners reported being satisfied with their local area as a place to live, unchanged from the previous year. This indicator has trended downwards slightly since 2014 and is the lowest level recorded in the series following three years of decline. By comparison, satisfaction levels across England fell to 73% in the last year.
In 2024/25, 59% of Londoners said they felt they belonged ‘very’ or ‘fairly strongly’ to their immediate neighbourhood, one of the highest proportions recorded in this series, but slightly below the England figure of 62%. This marks an increase from 2014/15, when 49% of people in London gave this response to the survey. Sense of belonging in London fell in 2021, as it did in England, but has since been trending upwards.