After months of debate and campaigning, the London Mayoral election is imminent. Despite housing being the absolute number one issue of the election, the two frontrunners have not managed to face each other to debate it.

There have been general hustings between Sadiq Khan and Zac Goldsmith, including the Evening Standard and Centre for London debate on 21 April, where, amid heated exchanges on policing, transport and extremism, the only real look-in that housing had simply highlighted the similarities between the candidates: building ambitions, first dibs for Londoners, and refusal to build on the green belt (despite Zac’s desire to paint Sadiq as a park concreter).

The final manifesto we're looking at for Vote Homes is UKIP's Peter Whittle's. Like all the other candidates, Peter recognises that housing is the biggest challenge facing London. But unlike the other candidates, he sees the cause as excess demand, rather than a shortage of supply.

The Respect Party candidate, George Galloway, has set out his manifesto on his home page, and we've updated our candidate comparison on Vote Homes. This is what he is promising London’s renters.

Caroline Pidgeon, Liberal Democrat candidate for London Mayor, has published her manifesto. We’ve taken a look at what she’d do to fix the housing crisis and how she compares with other candidates so far.

The Green Party candidate Sian Berry has already promised to establish a Tenants' Union for London. But what else does she have up her sleeve? She recently published her full manifesto and we've now updated her scorecard on www.votehomes2016.com.

The Conservative candidate for London Mayor, Zac Goldsmith, has published his housing manifesto, and we've updated the Vote Homes policy grid with his offer for London's renters.

As the candidate of the governing party in Westminster, it was always going to be interesting to see if he would go any further than current government policy. One of the biggest divides between the Conservatives and the other parties is on security of tenure, and it's safe to say that Zac has stuck his neck out on this, though we're yet to be convinced that renters will benefit from his proposal.

More than a hundred people came to the Renters’ Hustings on Tuesday to hear candidates from five parties tell us what they’ll do for private renters if they’re elected as London Mayor or Assembly Member – a lively discussion chaired brilliantly by Buzzfeed’s Jim Waterson. All five candidates (Sian Berry: Green, Tom Copley: Labour, Joy Morrissey: Conservative, Zack Polanski: Lib Dem and David Kurten: UKIP) said they are private renters themselves, so perhaps they know how, er, ‘special’ it is trying to survive as a private renter in this city.

The London housing crisis is taking its toll on families in the capital as they move to other parts of the UK in ever greater numbers. The net number of thirtysomethings and under-10s leaving the city has increased by 25% between 2012 and 2014 according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.

We have always seen more people in these age brackets move away from London than move there, but the difference is getting bigger. In the same two-year period, rents and house prices rose three times as fast in London as the rest of Britain.

We have just updated the Vote Homes policy grid with Sadiq Khan's offering in his manifesto, which was published on 9 March. Also updated are a number of recently announced policies from Caroline Pidgeon.

A flurry of news reports in the past week have told many of us what we're already thinking: more private renters are facing a lifetime of renting. 

First, the Resolution Foundation said that, in ten years' time, 90% of under-35s on modest incomes will be renting for life. 

Then, PwC said 40% of Londoners will be renting from a private landlord by 2025. 

And today, the government-commissioned English Housing Survey found that 57% of private renters expect to buy their home - down from 61% in the previous year's report.