>>Rent $3,000 a month I assume. So $36000 per annum.
$3000/month will push you well outside the city in Auckland these days, and not everybody earns $160K! I'd imagine London is similar- for a while I kept a little place in Earl's Court that cost 400 pounds/week from memory and that was in the late 1990s... probably double or triple that now.
Current scandal in Auckland involves government having to put families up in motels if they're entitled to emergency housing but there's nothing available. Wide publicity for a family in a 2-brm motel unit costing $2300/week or NZ$10K/month, = about US$7200.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
