A survey carried out by the Association of Retail Landlords (ARLA) has suggested that Britain is running out of residential rental properties.
The survey revealed that 74% of ARLA members who responded said that demand was outstripping supply in the private rental sector, the highest level since records began.
At the same time, the number of new homes being built is also at an historic low, with only 134,000 properties built in the UK in 2010.
The National Housing Federation (NHF) has warned that private sector rents may increase by as much as 19.8% over the next five years.
A ruined economy plays its part, but we have also to consider the most obvious burden placed on housing, and other sections of our critical infrastructure, namely our increasing population.
We've a school place shortage, and now we find we are facing a housing shortage.
Prices of rental properties will increase quite simply because of demand, too many people are competing to obtain housing in a finite market.
For the same reason we have seen wages kept artificially low - too many workers in a marketplace where there are finite jobs.
Average people lose out in all ways when the population increases at a pace with which a nation cannot cope, more people impose increasing demands on every aspect of national existence.
The heaviest weight of the burden caused by overpopulation falls squarely on the poorest in society, faced with increasing rents, lower wages, reduced job security, an endless list of costs and hardships.
Yet, despite all these shortages, over population - due to mass immigration and immigrant birth rates - is the obvious fact which all mainstream politicians ignore, we continue to allow people into Britain at an alarming rate.
These hundreds of thousands arriving each year need somewhere to live, jobs - or income via benefits, school places for children, medical care, and every other resource of which we are now discovering we don't have enough of to cope with the existing population let alone support countless additional people.
We have to face the truth - that a population cannot expand rapidly and indefinitely. It is limited by room and resources, no matter how we fool ourselves that is a simple fact.
As we near the point where room and resources are exhausted we see hugely increasing costs and shortages as demand on resources grows beyond all possible hope of supply, and then we hit the point of collapse.
Even if we increase the availability of resources - eg build more houses - we only delay the inevitable, we cannot forever continue increasing resources, and even if we could we're still limited by land mass available to us.
The longer we dither in facing the truth, the worse the situation we will find ourselves in and the more difficult it will be to fix. Absolute disaster awaits all the people in Britain if we blindly continue down this road.
A survey carried out by the Association of Retail Landlords (ARLA) has suggested that Britain is running out of residential rental properties.
