A Good Place To Start

Jeremy Corbyn writes:

As the local MP, I meet lots of people suffering from immense stress and need. There is one issue, however, that comes up more than any other: housing. In London today, renters are spending more than 40% of their median income on rent. Around one in five UK tenants spend over half their take-home pay on rent. More than 1.2 million households are languishing on social housing waiting lists. 

Unaffordable rents are driving more and more people out of London, which is having several knock-on effects for our community. All of Islington's state schools are operating below capacity; three have already been forced to close in Islington North in recent years. The housing crisis has been compounded by the mismatch between private rented sector rents and the local housing allowance, which has been frozen by successive governments. In our own borough, less than 2.4% of the properties that are available in the private sector are within the local housing allowance. There has been increasing evidence of landlords refusing to allow prospective tenants to top up the rent from their benefits.

The situation is making many prospective private sector tenants homeless and dependent on the short supply of available hostel accommodation. This includes many families with children. Clearly, we need an increase in the local housing allowance. However, without government action to address the ever-rising private sector rents, local authorities will still end up supplementing private landlord’s income - an absurd use of public funds. I was pleased to hear Andy Burnham’s recent commitment to end rough sleeping. However, I was beyond disappointed to hear the housing secretary rule out private sector rent controls in that same week.

Rent controls exist in many cities across the world as a means of reducing the cost of living, ending excessive profiteering in the private sector, and easing the grotesque exploitation of people who are in desperate housing need. While around 5,000 people are sleeping rough, around 300,000 people are homeless, in large part because of unaffordable rents. There is no answer to the housing crisis that doesn’t include controls on private rents, alongside a massive council housebuilding project. We are facing an ever-pressing housing crisis that has reached epidemic proportions in every city in the country. If the government was serious about tackling it, then it must show that it is prepared to stand up to private vested interests. Bringing in rent controls would be a good place to start.