Two cities show the problems faced by Britain’s renters

Tara Jones-Chubb, a secretary in the National Health Service, has rented in Bounds Green, in north London, for almost 35 years. She and her two children have moved often—once, from an ex-council flat, when their landlady said she would prefer more lucrative young professionals. Now they are looking again, but struggling because rents have surged. Despite decades of good references, Ms Jones-Chubb earns too little to rent without a guarantor. The idea of owning a home is fanciful.A century ago almost eight in ten Britons lived in a rented home. Over the next eight decades families of all types got onto the housing ladder, helped at first by a housebuilding boom and later by falling interest rates. Social housing declined from the 1970s. By the turn of the millennium, 70% of people lived in their own home. Renting had become, for most, a waiting room on the journey to ownership.