According to Shelter, if food bills had followed property prices since 1971, we'd be trying to find £420 a week. We'd be faced with paying £2.43 for a pint of milk, £47.51 for a chicken and £20.22 for a jar of coffee. (In other words, we'd all be shopping in Waitrose.)

Shelter's director of policy and campaigns Kay Boycott said: "These calculations show just how out of line the cost of housing has become - yet we seem to have just accepted these inflated prices as normal in a way we wouldn't with anything else."

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