Is London becoming more affordable to rent in?

Dear Londoners — a new week, and at last, some sunshine. We’re feeling pretty sunny too — having just sailed past 2,000 people on our email list. In fact, we’re on the brink of 2,500 which feels like a worthy milestone — why not forward this on to the great and good (or just bang average) in your life and get them on the list? We promise the glow of early-adopter smugness you’ll feel when everyone who’s anyone is reading us will be worth it.

We hope last week showed you the breadth of what we’re trying to do here at The Londoner. Our piece on scrapping the tube zones got a big reaction, with the Map Man himself Jay Foreman being persuaded, then unpersuaded, then re-persuaded that it was a good idea.

Then at the weekend we had Miles’ first foray, with a deep dive into just what’s going on at Goldsmiths. One person in our rapidly hotting-up comments section — the enigmatically named “J” — wrote: “When I've returned to Goldsmiths in recent years, it is not bubbling with an alternative spirit. It just feels like any other campus.”

Well if you want alternative spirit, we have it by the bucketload. Today’s briefing includes news about London rent you never expected, food influencers being taken down a peg or two, and stunts.

Your Londoner briefing

Top line: Here’s a completely unbelievable statistic for you: London rent is more affordable now than it has been for the last ten years. That’s according to the Office of National Statistics, which have released figures showing that “private renting households across the country actually spent a smaller proportion of their gross income on rent in 2022-23 than in any year since records began in 2014-15.”

Think of the landlords: According to the ONS, the average private renting household in London spent 39.8 percent of its gross income on rent in 2022-23. That’s down from 41.8 per cent the year before, and 57.2% seven years ago. In fact, if the graph below is to be believed, rents have been getting cheaper — as a % of income — for some time now.

Still not affordable: That doesn’t mean rents aren’t still rising at ear-popping rates; it just means that wage increases have outstripped rent increases. It doesn’t mean rents can be classed as ‘affordable’ either; it would need to be less than 30 percent of a household income for that. And of course, this doesn’t account for other rising cost pressures facing Londoners.

Rent restrictions: Last week Zoë Garbett, Green London Assembly member, organised a meeting of renters, campaigners and academics at City Hall last week to talk about bringing back rent controls to London. Sadiq Khan has said in the past that he’s supportive of rent controls, though he doesn’t have the power to introduce them. Angela Rayner made it pretty clear a few months ago that the government wasn’t about to hand him that power any time soon.

Do you think London should introduce rent controls? Let us know in the comments below.

🍻 London is wracked by a wave of moral decline. Our city’s fabled tradition of drinking pints outside pubs stock still in absolute silence is beginning to wane as people have started developing the temerity to talk while drinking outside a pub. Luckily one man — nay, one hero — has stood against this ugly tide. According to The Standard, The Globe, the 18th century pub near Baker Street station, will no longer be able to annoy a local who was kept awake by “faint giggles and murmuring’’ now that his complaint has forced it to produce new restrictions on outside drinking at the pub.

🛩 In last week’s Telegraph, Robert Jackman called Stansted “London’s best airport” and claimed that “this Essex outlier is quietly perfecting the art of air travel”. The Londoner, however, is not as charmed by the idea of travelling hours and hours at great expense very early in the morning surrounded by people nervous about their upcoming hair transplant. While the piece argued the pub’s busy Wetherspoons “tends to lift the mood”, that’s honestly quite a low bar when the mood is Stansted ambiance.

🚧 Sure, London isn’t as archaeologically miraculous as Rome or Athens, but we have our moments. And occasionally a fragment of our ancient past springs into modernity, usually revealed via incredibly boring infrastructure programs, such as Southwark’s recent low carbon heat network expansion, which stuck a 2000 year-old Roman road. Now known as Roman Watling Street, the archaic thoroughfare connected Dover to the West Midlands. 

🚇 The Standard has revealed the details of the deal that led to the end of this month’s planned Tube strikes. The “ground breaking” deal will include a 4-day work week, paid meal breaks, pay increases and an extra week’s paid paternity leave. 

Our favourite reads

Chef Bites Back: TopJaw - The Fence

If you don’t know the viral London foodstagraming duo, TopJaw, congratulations. If you’re morbidly curious, a two minute scroll on Reels or TikTok is all you’ll need to get the idea. They have managed to boil the received, complex discipline of food journalism to minute-long, hyper-optimised videos interviewing London restaurateurs. They’re extremely popular, both thanks to actual followers and the hate-watchers, and embody a historical food media trend focused exclusively on the least affordable and most generic corners of Zone 1. So, naturally, The Fence had a lot to talk about when they let their ‘Secret Chef’ rip into the duo for hundreds of words in his latest column.

These photos document west London’s car cruising culture - Dazed

Zimmers of Southall is a new documentary photobook by Hark1karan which explores British Panjabi identity in west London, through classic-car culture. Dazed has a selection of images from the book and has spoken to Hark1karan about his attempts to tell “a human story about human beings... just normal people who are passionate about culture, music, weddings and cars”.

From dawn till dusk 

We all know London can be unbearably huge. So every week we’ll take you through an ideal day across the city using our little black book of the best London venues. We hope it’ll be equal parts glitz and spit and tube dust.

Breakfast: The French existentialist author Albert Camus once wrote that "you will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.” To which we say, clearly our man has never been to Spuds in Kingston and ordered one of their omelettes. Pretty much everything else on the Spuds menu is your regular, charming but ultimately unmemorable caff fodder, but the omelette is near-perfect. Not too runny, not too thick, you can poke it with the tip of your fork and watch it bubble over like an Icelandic hot spring. 

Lunch: HT Harris’ electric blue awning is like a beacon on the corner of Great and Little Titchfield streets. Its landscapes of cured meats, wheels of cheese, chunks of focaccia about the size of a flattened mallard are a thing of beauty. Don’t look for the menu because there isn’t one, just trust in a place that’s survived in a W1 postcode for over 60 years and serves up a chicken schnitzel sandwich that makes people tear up when they talk about it.

Drinks: A couple of years ago, anyone who enjoyed drinking late night hot chocolate and/or industrial-strength cocktails in old Vespa repair shops got into a bit of a panic because it looked like fire regulations were going to cause Scooter Cafe on Lower Marsh to close for good. Thankfully the place got a last minute reprieve and it’s still dishing out espresso martinis made on that amazing 1950s coffee machine and pouring liberal servings of affordable wine freehand.

Dinner: Last week brought the sad news that Leytonstone’s legendary Thai cafe, Singburi has closed (or “gone on sabbatical” for at least the rest of the year). If you’re lusting for some larb then Fitou’s up in North Ken is a solid alternative. But if you want something more central, there’s always Kiln on Brewer Street, whose walk-ins only policy lets you leave a number and pop away for a streetside pint elsewhere in Soho while you wait. 

Later: How late is later? If it’s late enough you might be able to visit Spuds in Kingston. If you struggle to power through to 7am though, you can always try the Boston Arms in Tufnell Park. Though it’s slightly toned down its outward sympathies towards a certain republican army west of Liverpool, it’s still a fun place to relax and drink industrial amounts of Guinness. And unlike most pubs in this city, it’s open until 2am at weekends.

To Do List

This week

Part of the BFI’s Art of Action season, Stunt Saturday is an entire day of talks, panel events, screenings and workshops about the people who get paid to jump off buildings, set themselves on fire and sit back and laugh when Tom Cruise hurts himself doing something stupid. Tickets are £17, but for an extra fiver you can get a ticket for the screening of the 1980 dark comedy, The Stunt Man, with Peter Toole (the best stunt-based film of the last 50 years - sorry Ryan).

The Tottenham Literature Festival starts today and runs until the 17th. This year,  the theme of the festival is ‘Black Imaginations’ and the artist in residence and keynote speaker is the poet, Victoria Adukwei Bulley. Also on the bill are Diane Abbott, Zeinab Badawi, Ekow Eshun… and Dr Ronx, from CBBC’s Operation Ouch!

Last chance to catch

Korean artist and choreographer Geumhyung Jeong taught herself robotics for her debut solo exhibition, which is on at the ICA right now. Under Construction features full-body animatronic figures along with DIY electronics, and is on until December 15. On Wednesday evening Jeong will be staging a live performance alongside her robot creations; and on Friday she returns for a “performative lecture” featuring images, video clips, and movement demonstrations.

And beyond

Created by the London-based Migration Collective, the Migration Film Festival aims to portray “the diversity and humanity of migration,” through works by established directors as well as new artists, and films directed, produced and starring migrants themselves. The festival, which opens on the 20th, runs across multiple venues until the 29th. On the 26th there’s also a workshop exploring ways to “adapt recipes from another heritage to new culinary contexts” and on the 22nd there’s a drag night.

At the end of the month Tate Modern launches its new exhibition, Electric Dreams, which will showcase the machine-made art created between the 1950s and the early 1990s. The ‘vintage tech art’ includes work from 60s Japanese art collective Computer Technique Group and London-based artist Suzanne Treister.