The difficulty of accessing social housing is adding almost £8,000 a year to the amount some families need to achieve a minimum acceptable standard of living, new research has found.

For the first time in the 18-year history of Loughborough University’s Minimum Income Standard (MIS), researchers are no longer assuming that households would be able to access a socially rented home if they needed one.

Instead, this year’s budgets assume households will have to rent privately, reflecting the views of members of the public taking part in the research that waits for social housing have become too long.

The change has significantly increased the amount households are calculated to need simply to achieve what the public considers a decent minimum standard of living.

A lone parent with two children renting privately now needs an annual income of £67,600 to meet the MIS, compared with £59,800 if they were living in social housing, a difference of almost £8,000.

For couples with two children, the figure is £77,400 when renting privately, almost £4,000 higher than the equivalent social housing budget.

Single pensioners face a difference of more than £5,000, needing £21,300 a year in the private rented sector compared with £15,900 in social housing.

The research, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), highlights the growing role housing costs are playing in household living standards.

Average private rents in 2024/25 were almost twice as high as social rents, at £250 a week compared with £129. Private renters spent an average of 34% of their income on rent, compared with 28% among social renters.

The findings also show how far many lower-income households remain from reaching an acceptable standard of living even when they are working.

A lone parent working full-time on the National Living Wage reaches just 67% of the MIS after housing costs, while two parents both working full-time reach 80%.

Out-of-work couples with two children receive just 28% of the amount they would need to meet the standard.

JRF said the findings point to a wider concern about whether people can still rely on key public services and institutions to provide the foundations for a decent standard of living.

Darren Baxter, Housing Lead at JRF, said the private rented sector was no longer simply a temporary option for younger households.

“We are no longer living in a world where privately rented homes are a temporary pit stop for young, single professionals,” he said.

“They’re now the homes where families are bringing up their children, from babies to teenagers, as well as where people are growing old.”

He added that high rents were denying households the “stable foundation they need for a good life”.

The research comes as the government has committed to increasing the supply of social and affordable housing, but JRF warned that new development will take years to have a substantial impact on housing costs.

It also argues that high private rents are eroding the effect of measures intended to improve household finances, including increases in the National Living Wage, Universal Credit and childcare support.

Housing support for low-income private renters remains constrained by Local Housing Allowance, which has been frozen since 2024. Fewer than 2% of properties advertised on Zoopla in 2025/26 were affordable to households receiving housing benefit.

Dr Chloe Blackwell, from the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University, said tackling housing costs would need to be central to attempts to improve living standards.

“Private renting has become the only real option for more and more people in the UK, with many households facing crippling costs just to keep a roof over their heads,” she said.

“If this continues, we can expect to see the gap between incomes and needs widen further.”

JRF is calling for rent controls in the private rented sector alongside measures designed to increase housing supply.

The Minimum Income Standard is based on detailed discussions with members of the public about the goods and services households need to achieve a socially acceptable standard of living, with those requirements then costed for different household types.