Tenants in Brighton and Hove spend the majority of their money on rent, new figures show.
Campaign groups found that average rents in the city amount to nearly 75 per cent of the average wage in the area.
It comes as the campaigners have called for better rent controls to be brought in by the next government as they say that price rises are being driven by landlords.
Ben Twomey, chief executive of Generation Rent, said: "Prices in the shops may have stopped rising so quickly, but renters are still seeing our single biggest cost go up faster than our incomes.
"Landlords can raise the rent as high as they think they can get away with and use the threat of a no-fault eviction to bully their tenants to accept it."
"We won't fix the cost of renting crisis unless the next government acts to slam the brakes on these runaway rents."
In figures released by the Office for National Statistics, average rents in Brighton and Hove hit £1,733 a month in May while average wages were estimated at £2,371.
For a single renter, this would amount to spending 73 per cent of their monthly income on rent.
In the rest of Sussex, rent equated to around half of the average monthly wage.
Hastings saw the cheapest rent-to-wage ratio with 43 per cent of monthly income spent on rent.
Across England, rent has increased 9% from last year and 35% since 2015.
Polly Neate, chief executive of housing charity Shelter, urged the next government to ban “no-fault” evictions, adding: "Successive governments have failed to build the social rent homes we desperately need and private rents are continuing to rocket as a result.
"Every day we hear from people who are forced to cough up money they simply don’t have just to keep hold of an overpriced and often shoddy rental.
"But long-term, the only way to take the heat off private renting is to invest in a new generation of genuinely affordable social homes with rents tied to local incomes.”
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