NEARLY two million Britons spend half of their salaries on rent as the housing crisis continues to worsen, according to data published yesterday.    Figures compiled by the Resolution Foundation showed that in London alone about 430,000 households — close to a million people — are “housing pinched,” spending more than half their income on housing costs.    According to the foundation, nearly 6 per cent of all working households in Britain are now doing so, which amounts to almost two million, but the housing crisis is hitting hardest in the capital.   Senior policy analyst Laura Gardiner said that although pay in London is higher than elsewhere in Britain, the extra income is dwarfed by London’s higher housing costs.   Almost three-quarters of London’s housing-pinched population (71 per cent) are in working households — far more than the national average — and the majority (54 per cent) are renters rather than homeowners.   Almost one in four (24 per cent) private renters in the capital spend more than half of their income on housing costs compared with 12 per cent of those with mortgages and 8 per cent of social renters.   Ms Gardiner said: “Dealing with the cost of housing is a particular problem for renters, almost a quarter of whom are ‘housing pinched’.   “With home ownership a distant dream for many Londoners, improving the quality, security and affordability of the capital’s private rented market must be a top priority for the new London mayor and councils across the city.”   Generation Rent policy manager Dan Wilson Craw told the Star: “A divide is opening up in London between the old who have taken home ownership for granted and the young who are struggling more and more to remain in the capital.    “The single biggest thing the next mayor can do to improve living standards is bring down private rents.”   Labour’s London mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan has said he wants to introduce a London “living rent” for new builds labelled as affordable, as well as a London-wide not-for-profit letting agency.   Green Party hopeful Sian Berry has proposed a cap on rents or even a rent freeze for the forseeable future.    But Zac Goldsmith, Tory MP and mayoral candidate, has merely offered the vague prospect of building more homes “for young people who neither qualify for housing lists nor are unable to buy.”