In a red-brick 1960s tower block, 20-year-old Oscar Stark is heating leftover vegetarian pasta. He keeps to a strict food budget, because more than half his income goes towards sub-letting a studio apartment in one of Stockholm's outer suburbs. "I struggle to make it work, but I'm not giving up," says the marketing consultant. Mr Stark couldn't find anywhere cheaper than 11,000 kronor (£920; $,1260) a month to rent and is unable to stay at home with family, because his mother lives elsewhere.

"I really don't have a choice, but of course I'm not satisfied," he says. A shortage of accommodation in Stockholm and other cities, is causing a major headache for young Swedes - in a country which has been championing rent controls since World War Two. Rents are supposed to be kept low due to nationwide rules, and collective bargaining between state-approved tenant and landlord associations. In theory, anyone can join a city's state-run queue for what Swedes call a "first-hand" accommodation contract.

Once you have one of these highly-prized contracts it's yours for life. But in Stockholm, the average waiting time for a rent-controlled property is now nine years, says the city's housing agency Bostadsförmedlingen, up from around five years a decade ago. This wait-time doubles in Stockholm's most attractive inner-city neighbourhoods. The traffic-jam has fuelled a thriving sub-letting or "second-hand" market, with "first-hand" renters and owners alike offering apartments to tenants for very high prices, despite regulations designed to stop people being ripped-off.

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