The Working Poor: Britain's families living on the breadline

Work is the best route out of poverty - it's a slogan popular with politicians both left and right for the past two decades. But as the country surges towards record numbers of people in work - the number of those in work and in poverty too is also rising.

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According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, 57 per cent of people in poverty live in households where at least one person has a job - up more than twenty per cent since 1995.

[zeedee]

The worst feeling is when u work full time and have nothing to show for it, it can be really depressing....

[antman]

it all boils down to overpriced accommodation. turning human habitation into money making schemes is just plain wrong.

[stefanking]

Some of us don't have any family or friends to help out

[BoracayADMIRER]

The MAIN PROBLEM is the way too high RENTS for housing. If they were down, people could live from their income!

[vincentdeguard]

if you work hard-enough you may just end-up in a grave before reaching state-pension age ...thus saving the state more money.

[sbegum]

Childcare fees is a joke. I've worked in the benefits sections in a college and saw so many people on benefits not working being entitled to free childcare, whereas those who are working and on the borderline have to fork out a lot to pay. It's ridiculous. She's absolutely right, sometimes it pays off not to work.

[benking]

I grew up in care and was chucked out at 18 years old, went to the council to ask for a council flat so I could continue going to work and have somewhere to live, and was told to go get somebody pregnant because if I had a baby they would give me accommodation, even tho I was working at a supermarket I couldn't afford a deposit or private rental so ended up on the streets and lost my job! Took me 10 years to get my life back!

And I'm still childless because I was born into the would to parents that didn't want me and raised in care and I didn't want to bring another life into the world to suffer as I have just to tick a box at the council office's!

[thatwill]

£1600 a month? For part-time work?! Pretty decent wage really! Ah wait... London.

[riturao]

London is rediculously expensive, why the government is not putting Rent control??!!! Like Berlin did. The landlords impose insane prices for poor condition rooms

[WorkingClassBrit]

The cost of living is an absolute disgrace. I remember when I was 15 earning my £30 a week for working 8 hours over Saturday and Sunday in a cafe' washing the dishes, spending my earnings on whatever I wanted. Now I work 20 hours in a shop and I can't afford to rent anywhere. "Why don't you get a full-time job in a shop, " said the man from the job center. I told him if he could find me a full-time job in the area I would be absolutely over the moon, he could not find anything. The government do not understand the fact that people wan't to work and pay our own way but the jobs have to be there and the income has to be there.

[hearmeoutbro]

House prices and rent are way too high and people wonder why so many people are still living with their parents in their 20s and 30s.

[emmamacdonald]

My husband worked in London for 8 months and had to pay £800 for one bedroom in a five bedroom crappy home with thin walls, located in a poor, shitty neighbourhood. The kind of neighbourhood where he left his bike out on his porch for 5 minutes and returned to have it been stolen, then 3 hours later when taking out the trash, saw the thief sitting on my husband’s bike only meters from where it was stolen, and when my husband yelled at him and ran after him in his slippers, the thief fell of the bike and then ran away instead of using the bike to escape.

He regrets now not spending more, but he wanted to save part of his income. It ended up being the worse few months of his life and the experience made him swear he would never visit the city ever again. We now live in Germany in a beautiful one bedroom flat in a great neighbourhood only a 20 walk from the downtown, and we pay only €400 (about £350) a month. Of course, we are in a small city of only about 300, 000 people, but even Berlin’s rents never get to those outrageous prices.

Even in Toronto, Canada, where I’m from, £800 can get you decent bachelor’s apartment in a location near a subway station. And Toronto’s rents are also overpriced, in my opinion, requiring about half of the inhabitants to spend half their income or more on housing, which is one of the ways in which poverty is measured. In London, it must be a high majority of inhabitants who need to spend more than half their income on housing, which is insane.

High levels of working poverty are common in all places where people’s basic needs, like housing and food, are not available at affordable prices. People should only have to spend, at most, 30% of their income on housing. As soon as a majority of people are unavailable to do so the government has got to step in and start creating rent controls. Everyone deserves a home to live in, whether employed or not, but imagine struggling to afford one while working? It’s just a disaster.

[msoda]

Sadly millions are the working poor and it’s leading to a lot of the anger we see today.
Sadly it’s easier to believe the lie that all poor people are lazy when the truth of the matter is most poor people work very hard.

[woodlandbiker]

When an employer is paying low he is using the system to make up your wages in benefits. No one should work full time and still have to claim benefits to get by. You should be paid a living wage. That includes enough for your rent/mortgage, bills, food, clothing and transport and even enough to put some aside for unforseen things.
If your working full-time and still can't make ends meet it just sucks the life out of you.

[blueotter]

There also needs to be action against payday loan companies charging obscene interest rates which push desperate people into further poverty and fuel homelessness.

[paulhoskin]

I work 50 hours a week and at the end of the month I have about £300 left after paying essentials.you manage to get some money and then bham.something happens.ie car.boiler. drains etc and then your broke again
LIFES A NIGHTMARE

[mickpeacher]

There used to be a time when a man could work and support his family!

[equalitypeace]

£2000 a month and people are still struggling. That is so shocking

[israelphoenix]

My Mom left a violently abusive husband. She worked three and four jobs to raise six kids by herself. She had Social Security from her deceased first husband which paid the mortgage. The older kids helped with the younger.
We are all college educated.
However, homes are not as expensive here in the U.S.

No need to be rude but let's be realistic. Why would you rent in London if you are poor? There was a time I wanted to live in London but I realised I simply could not afford it.