Renting can be hell in a country with no State control over rents. Austria has a highly socialist rent system whereby tenants(and their descendants if the latter so want) can legally avoid paying any rent-increases. This has resulted in outrageous situations where some people and their descendants have lived in the same flat since WWII while still paying roughly the same tiny rent they paid in 1945, no inflation or whatever increase allowed! The laws only protect long-term tenants after 5 years of renting, so landlords in Austria always get rid of their tenants after 3 or 4 years, and then up the rent for the next lot. At any rate, the socialists have been building large numbers of cheap flats with low State-controlled rent for all and sundry in recent years in order to win votes while creating vast budget deficits at the same time.So cheap renting is easy for Austrians.
London is different, unless you already own another house/flat in London to sell or are a millionaire you cannot afford to pay for a decent family home in most parts of London - state-owned homes for rent are too few.Renting is also appallingly expensive. This is due to immigration, crooked deals between landlords and State housing benefit claimants, property speculation from up to as far away as China etc. etc. There was an appalling news story recently about a female student who was offered a flatshare rent costing 500 pounds sterling a month , which involved just a bed under some stairs:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3254727/A-bed-stairs-500-month-Woman-shocked-tiny-London-flat-share-advert-DOES-say-s-not-just-stay-room.htmlPoverty is defined by the US, I think as rent exceeding c.40%(45%?) of your income. Any more than that, and one really has to look for alternatives. In the UK, I had some luck as I was pretty poor at the time. While the grassfed meat was prohibitively expensive unless in minced form, the farmers' markets provided astonishingly cheap raw wild game and raw organs and I got raw wildcaught seafood at dirt-cheap prices as well. I had a habit of overspending on various gadgets etc., so I would sometimes simply switch to Intermittent Fasting(ie alternate day fasting) with a little caloric restriction as well, in order to not go into debt.
Having a partner is also incredibly useful. Everything from holidays etc. is cheaper as a result(per person). Having a flat-share is a nightmare, however. Renting rooms in London is so difficult that I have been shown homes where large holes were in the walls between most rooms, and yet I was still facing a charge of 55 pounds sterling a week and the like(in c.2000). On one or two other occasions, I have been faced by seriously clinically-paranoid potential flat-sharers who demanded every prospectee flat-sharer show a stamped police-file to demonstrate that they had no criminal record(sort of like being back in Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia).
When I checked US prices in the past, I was astonished to find out that the prices of food and gadgets like juicers was roughly the same in numbers as equivalent UK prices. Since, in those days, it was c. 1.7 US dollars to 1 pound sterling, now 1.53, it was clear that USers were benefitting from the enormous economies of scale available in the US etc.. Sadly, my buying US goods was foiled by nasty, eagle-eyed UK customs officials who decided to deliberately slap lots of import tax on any incoming US products. Therefore, I would imagine that things are a lot cheaper over the pond, surely?
My own situation is a bit different, I don't rent, I own a flat, but the utility/maintenance etc. bills are appallingly high for no valid reason. I suppose a figure of 75% is correct in my case.
