Festus Akinbusoye is a former Police and Crime Commissioner, entrepreneur and Westminster Councillor, and is standing to be the Conservative candidate for London Mayor.
There is a concerning feature of life in London today which must be a top priority for the next Mayor of London.
You have a job. You pay your taxes. You probably receive little help from the state and yet – after rent or a mortgage, childcare, travel, food and energy bills, there may not be much left. Buying a home seems remote. Saving takes years. One unwelcome financial shock can undo months of careful budgeting.
I think of these Londoners as the Crushed Middle, and their experience goes to the heart of why I am running to be Mayor of London: I know firsthand what this is like.
For a family with plenty of financial headroom, higher energy bills are irritating. For one already spending most of its income each month, they matter rather more.
Housing is where London’s predicament becomes most obvious – and where the risk of London becoming a city people can work in but cannot make a home in becomes most acute. In 2024, the average private rent was equivalent to 41.6 per cent of the median income of private-renting households in the capital. Every London local authority was above the ONS’s 30 per cent affordability threshold. London was easily the least affordable English region in which to rent.
Buying remains harder. The average London home sold for 10.6 times average earnings in 2025. Even after allowing five times average earnings towards a purchase, another £279,000 would be required to reach the price of the average London home. In 1997, more than half of homes sold in London were priced below five times average earnings; by 2024, that number had collapsed to just three percent. There has been some improvement since the pandemic, which is welcome – but London remains England’s least affordable region.
This has changed what it means to be comfortably off. Income still matters enormously. But in London, assets increasingly matter too.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that among 25 to 39-year-olds, the children of homeowners were more than twice as likely to own a home as the children of renters. More recent IFS research found that Britain’s earlier house-price boom increased disparities in housing wealth between generations and made the children of wealthier parents more likely to own homes in London.
For a city which prides itself on social mobility, this deserves attention.
This is why fixing the fractured housing crisis in London is front and centre of my Mayoral pitch. A London so divided cannot remain prosperous.
Increasing housing supply for a growing population is only part of the solution. We must also widen the path to owning those homes.
This provides stability, predictability, and security. In some cases, the monthly cost of renting is about the same – if not higher – than the cost of a mortgage. So if a renter can comfortably pay rent for five years without fail, why can this not be evidence of their ability to afford a home, all else being equal?
I want to see a pathway to homeownership for “Generation Rent”, a key group that makes up the crushed middle. Under a market-tested and modified Rent to Save programme, renters would be able to build up savings through discounted rent. A 20 per cent discount below market rent would be saved into a regulated pot rather than handed to the renter. This is where current schemes have struggled.
After five years, the savings could then be used towards the purchase of another property or as an advance payment on a new-build home – bringing liquidity to London’s stalled housing market and supporting jobs. If not used for a purchase, the savings could instead be invested in subsidised social housing.
For those earning an income but unable to save, this could be a lifeline towards the stability that homeownership provides. I will be sharing more details on this policy idea in due course.
Fixing this real problem is personal to me. I came to London from Nigeria at 13 and grew up in a council flat in Canning Town. London gave me an education, opportunity and, eventually, the chance, with a £2,000 Prince’s Trust loan, to start a business from that same council flat. It is the city that made me. Yet by my early twenties, I could no longer afford to remain in the city I regarded as home and had to leave.
That experience has never left me. There is a profound difference between choosing to leave London and feeling that London has chosen for you to leave. I am running for Mayor because I do not want another generation of Londoners to feel that the price of getting on is eventually having to get out.
People who believe they can build a future somewhere behave differently. They put down roots. They get to know neighbours. They invest in their homes and communities. They start businesses, raise families and build institutions. A city needs that permanence as much as it needs the constant arrival of new talent.
London has become exceptionally good at generating economic activity. The harder question is whether enough of the people generating it can build a life here. That is the test I believe the next Mayor should set for our city.
Festus Akinbusoye is a former Police and Crime Commissioner, entrepreneur and Westminster Councillor, and is standing to be the Conservative candidate for London Mayor.
There is a concerning feature of life in London today which must be a top priority for the next Mayor of London.
You have a job. You pay your taxes. You probably receive little help from the state and yet – after rent or a mortgage, childcare, travel, food and energy bills, there may not be much left. Buying a home seems remote. Saving takes years. One unwelcome financial shock can undo months of careful budgeting.
I think of these Londoners as the Crushed Middle, and their experience goes to the heart of why I am running to be Mayor of London: I know firsthand what this is like.
For a family with plenty of financial headroom, higher energy bills are irritating. For one already spending most of its income each month, they matter rather more.
Housing is where London’s predicament becomes most obvious – and where the risk of London becoming a city people can work in but cannot make a home in becomes most acute. In 2024, the average private rent was equivalent to 41.6 per cent of the median income of private-renting households in the capital. Every London local authority was above the ONS’s 30 per cent affordability threshold. London was easily the least affordable English region in which to rent.
Buying remains harder. The average London home sold for 10.6 times average earnings in 2025. Even after allowing five times average earnings towards a purchase, another £279,000 would be required to reach the price of the average London home. In 1997, more than half of homes sold in London were priced below five times average earnings; by 2024, that number had collapsed to just three percent. There has been some improvement since the pandemic, which is welcome – but London remains England’s least affordable region.
This has changed what it means to be comfortably off. Income still matters enormously. But in London, assets increasingly matter too.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that among 25 to 39-year-olds, the children of homeowners were more than twice as likely to own a home as the children of renters. More recent IFS research found that Britain’s earlier house-price boom increased disparities in housing wealth between generations and made the children of wealthier parents more likely to own homes in London.
For a city which prides itself on social mobility, this deserves attention.
This is why fixing the fractured housing crisis in London is front and centre of my Mayoral pitch. A London so divided cannot remain prosperous.
Increasing housing supply for a growing population is only part of the solution. We must also widen the path to owning those homes.
This provides stability, predictability, and security. In some cases, the monthly cost of renting is about the same – if not higher – than the cost of a mortgage. So if a renter can comfortably pay rent for five years without fail, why can this not be evidence of their ability to afford a home, all else being equal?
I want to see a pathway to homeownership for “Generation Rent”, a key group that makes up the crushed middle. Under a market-tested and modified Rent to Save programme, renters would be able to build up savings through discounted rent. A 20 per cent discount below market rent would be saved into a regulated pot rather than handed to the renter. This is where current schemes have struggled.
After five years, the savings could then be used towards the purchase of another property or as an advance payment on a new-build home – bringing liquidity to London’s stalled housing market and supporting jobs. If not used for a purchase, the savings could instead be invested in subsidised social housing.
For those earning an income but unable to save, this could be a lifeline towards the stability that homeownership provides. I will be sharing more details on this policy idea in due course.
Fixing this real problem is personal to me. I came to London from Nigeria at 13 and grew up in a council flat in Canning Town. London gave me an education, opportunity and, eventually, the chance, with a £2,000 Prince’s Trust loan, to start a business from that same council flat. It is the city that made me. Yet by my early twenties, I could no longer afford to remain in the city I regarded as home and had to leave.
That experience has never left me. There is a profound difference between choosing to leave London and feeling that London has chosen for you to leave. I am running for Mayor because I do not want another generation of Londoners to feel that the price of getting on is eventually having to get out.
People who believe they can build a future somewhere behave differently. They put down roots. They get to know neighbours. They invest in their homes and communities. They start businesses, raise families and build institutions. A city needs that permanence as much as it needs the constant arrival of new talent.
London has become exceptionally good at generating economic activity. The harder question is whether enough of the people generating it can build a life here. That is the test I believe the next Mayor should set for our city.