Its research found that almost a third of Londoners expect to leave the capital over housing costs, with 65% of aspiring homeowners believing they will ever be able to afford to buy in their area of the city, up from 46% two years ago.
Shelter revealed that, with a chronic shortage of homes driving up prices, a typical deposit for a London home is now almost £85,000, while the median wage is £24,500.
It added that average rents in London are already more than double the national average, at over £1,300 per month for a two-bedroom property.
The housing charity highlighted that, from May, London’s Mayor will have powers over the housing budget and public land and called on the next Mayor to use the full extent of these powers to solve the capital’s housing crisis.
Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, said: “Decades of failure to build enough affordable housing has left huge swathes of Londoners locked out of home ownership, pushed into a revolving door of private let after private let.
“Unless something is done to fix London’s housing, we’re going to see a growing exodus of people, many of them families, who have simply given up hope of ever finding a stable and affordable place to live in the capital.
“We need the next Mayor to give London’s housing the same leadership and profile as we see for transport. This means bringing together a complex web of budgets and departments into a simple, public-focused agency that can drive the change we need.”
