Teribus's suggestions are pretty shaky. None of them are any good to anyone with a family wishing to move to London for work. And even for people on their own, by no means everyone has friends of family with room to put up an extra person for an indefinite time. That's even more true in the wake of the bedroom tax.

As for cheap B & B, decent ones are far and few. And "cheap" doesn't mean the same as it used to. Renting a bedsit in somewhere in commuting distance would set you back about £100 a week if you were lucky, and commuting fares are expensive.

You'd need to be in a well paid steady job for solutions like that to be available.

The system is broken. And the people who broke it are very much in charge.