This is pensions awareness week and we are asking savers young and old to grow their pension by saving more. Those who blindly believe that more is better may not be thinking about “renters” but “renters” are having it bad.

New forecasts predict average rents for new tenancies will rise by 4 or 5% by the end of the year.

Eye-watering rents are denying renters the stability they need for a good life, as the latest MIS research shows 👇

We need rent controls without delay.
https://t.co/RKctvhpgWz

— Joseph Rowntree Foundation (@jrf_uk) September 14, 2026

Here’s what the JRF is saying in the Independent today

Hundreds of thousands of parents in the UK are more than £20,000 below the annual income needed for a decent living standard, new research has warned.

High housing costs and restricted benefit allowances are causing the gap between household finances and living costs to widen, according to new findings from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The charity’s Minimum Income Standard report, published with Loughborough University, calculates the lowest budget required for households to “live with dignity in the UK”.

Let’s put aside saving for retirement, if people cannot afford their rent then we must ask ourselves what is going on. This blog has pointed to some fundamental issues facing landlords of buy to let. They can’t afford to let out flats at existing rates and are pushing up the cost of renting to maintain their margins.

Let’s push on and look at the impact of these increases in already high rents

For a lone parent with two children working full-time on the national living wage, this income covers just 67 per cent of the required minimum on average – a shortfall of more than £22,000.

Around 340,000 single parents in the UK are on an income equivalent to or below this level.

Should this parent be putting more money into their pension, should they even be in a workplace pension?

The problem’s the same whether the household has workers or adults out of work

Meanwhile, a couple with two children with both parents working full-time on the same minimum wage rate reaches 80 per cent of the threshold, for a shortfall of around £15,000.

The picture becomes more stark for those on out-of-work benefits, providing less than a quarter (24 per cent) of the income required for households without children. This rises to 28 per cent for couple parents and 36 per cent for lone parents.

The JRF says that it has revised its figures in light of the UK’s housing situation. For the first time in the study’s 18-year history, focus group participants told researchers that it is no longer reasonable to assume low-income households can access social housing due to long-term shortages and waiting lists.

This has pushed up the minimum income levels, the report adds, owing to the much higher rental costs seen in the private sector.

The situations is no better for those renting and in retirement , relying on pensions

Meanwhile, a single pensioner with the state pension as their only income would need £21,300 as a private renter, £5,000 more than the £15,900 in social housing. The full state pension is worth £12,547 a year.

In a month we have the Pensions UK Conference in Liverpool. I hope that up there , consideration is given for the state of rents in the UK and what it means for pension saving

Darren Baxter, housing lead at the JRF, said: “We are no longer living in a world where privately rented homes are a temporary pit stop for young, single professionals. They’re now the homes where families are bringing up their children, from babies to teenagers, as well as where people are growing old. But the eye-watering rents that people are paying are denying them the stable foundation they need for a good life.

“Families can’t wait the decades it will take for the new homes currently being built to have an impact on their rents – their children will be adults by then.”

The charity argues that the issue of expensive private rentals evidences the need for a rent cap in the UK, a policy that the government has indicated it will not pursue.

Perhaps this will be discussed in the hallowed hall, but I doubt it. I am seeing the new Chair of Pensions UK this afternoon and ask Jamie, who is a decent chap, to bring this up when he and his colleagues next discuss “paying your pension some attention“.