Generation Rent claims that young minority ethnic private renters are being priced out of the communities they grew up in.

A report jointly prepared by the rental activist group and an organisation called Naked Politics claims minority ethnic renters under 30 were 18% more likely than white British and Irish respondents to have moved away from the area that they grew up in. 

As well as this, minority ethnic respondents who had moved out of the area they grew up in were over twice as likely as white British respondents to have moved because the area they grew up in was too expensive. 

Meanwhile, minority ethnic renters who had remained in the area they grew up in were half as likely as white British and Irish respondents to have remained locally because it was affordable, suggesting that these communities are struggling more to afford to continue to live in the areas they grew up in. 

Overall, 46% of young minority ethnic people had struggled to find somewhere affordable to rent close enough to their work, with this rising to 52% amongst minority ethnic women. 

But the survey for this exercise was very small. Just 145 people, between the ages of 18 and 29, who had experienced private renting – be it whilst growing up in a private rented home or independently as an adult – took part in the survey. 

Some 118 participants had been a private renter as an adult and 72 individuals had grown up in a privately rented home. 

Analysis of Census data, also included in the research, found that 27% of white households with adult children are renters (either in private or social homes). However, this rises to 57% of Black households with adult children, 50% for mixed ethnicity households and 48% for ‘other’ ethnicity households. 

Because many landlords ask tenants to provide a guarantor who owns their own home, minority ethnic young adults are more likely to encounter this additional barrier to finding a private tenancy when they want to live independently.

Generation Rent claims many young people, especially ethnic minority young people, are being forced to make these decisions because they cannot afford any other alternative.  

A statement from the organisation says: “We need a system which offers young people opportunity and prospects, not one which limits and restricts them. The government must urgently slam the brakes on unaffordable rent rises so that everyone is able to find safe, secure and affordable homes within their own communities.”

The activist group says the Renters’ Rights Bill, which this week had its Second Reading in the House of Lords, must be amended to include restrictions on unaffordable rent rises; an introduction of relocation relief for tenants when landlords evict to sell or move in; and an end to what the group calls “the discriminatory Right to Rent policy.