High rents and benefit cuts push poorer renters out of UK's cities, report finds

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The social fabric of the UK's biggest cities is being transformed by sky-high rents and cuts to housing benefits as thousands of low-income private renters are pushed out of central areas, accelerating the 'suburbanisation' of poverty, according to a study.

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23 Oct 2023

The trend – driven also by the gentrification of once largely working-class neighbourhoods and the selloff of social homes – is excluding poorer people from inner cities and deepening divisions between rich and poor, the study found.

Low-income private renters, who a decade ago might have lived in city centres, are increasingly being displaced to a shrinking pool of affordable homes on the urban periphery and beyond, often with poorer access to public transport, jobs and public services, it says.

One in nine private renters in the UK’s 10 biggest cities were displaced from central locations to cheaper housing areas on the suburban fringes during an eight-year period to 2020, the study by University of Glasgow academics found.

In Bristol, for example, the number of low-income households