Inside the gender housing gap

Why is it still so much harder for women to afford to buy or rent a London home than their male peers? Charlotte Duck investigates the issues and asks what we can do about it

- Charlotte Duck

The shame I feel over not having a house is immense,” says Kiranjot Kaur. The 48-year-old Kundalini yoga teacher currently rents a house in Peckham from her 16-year-old son’s father. But her future in that home hangs in the balance. “It is unwritten between us that when my son turns 18 I will move out.” Kaur, a born-and-bred Londoner, tried to buy a house when her parents downsized and gave her some money. “I had £15,000 but I went to the bank and they laughed at me and said I didn’t earn enough to get a mortgage.” This is despite her always earning the average London salary. “My business is doing okay, but I can’t keep up with the price of houses. My sister made a £120,000 profit on a house she bought and sold after three years, that’s £40,000 a year, which is more than I earn annually.”

Julia Herman, 34, is a journalist who was on the cusp of buying an ex-local-authority, two-bedroom flat in Oval in the summer of 2021. “At that time, I could just about afford it. I had a good job and savings, but it fell through because it was leasehold and there was a big repair bill. It was cheap for a reason. I’d spent six months going back and forth with solicitors and I couldn’t face another six months of that, so I took a pause.”

During this time, she met and moved in with her boyfriend, who owns a house in Hackney. “He’s said I’m welcome to go on his mortgage and the house is as much mine as it is his but it’s not. I want my own space and I want to be able to say it’s mine. It’s a level of independence and self-sufficiency that feels quite important to me.”