Ryan Aldred, Socialist Party National Committee
Living in mouldy, squalid and overcrowded conditions, transferring ever-increasing sums into the landlord’s bank account for the pleasure, is the grim reality for millions of renters in the private sector. The number of households renting privately has more than doubled since 2000 to 4.6 million.
Many renters will be familiar with the feeling of not wanting to do anything to remind their landlord of their existence for fear of a rent increase or eviction. Increasing numbers of people find themselves without a home – unable to pay rising rents or, after a tenancy comes to an end, unable to finance a deposit and convince another landlord to let them move in.
271,000 people are recorded as homeless in England, including 123,000 children, according to Shelter. In London it is as many as one in 58 people.
Most private-sector renters will start their tenancy with an Assured Shorthold Tenancy (AST), usually lasting six months or a year. Many will then move onto rolling, periodic, weekly or monthly contracts.
The end of an AST was the reason nearly half of homeless households with children became homeless, according to government statistics which cover until the end of 2022. Councils have seen a 25% increase in households with children seeking assistance.
A fixed-term AST might bake-in rent at a certain level during its term, although many landlords will put in a ‘rent review clause’. Nothing, however, stops the landlord increasing the rent at the end of the contract period, or using a ‘section 13’ notice once a year.
And if they want to force you out, using a ‘section 21’ notice, landlords don’t need a legal justification to carry out an eviction!
Renters’ reform, but in whose interests?
The Tories’ Renters (Reform) Bill, moving through the House of Commons, includes a ban on these ‘section 21’ no-fault eviction notices. In introducing the bill, housing secretary Michael Gove acknowledged: “Too many renters are living in damp, unsafe, cold homes, powerless to put things right, and with the threat of sudden eviction hanging over them.”
Readers will be less than surprised that Gove hasn’t suddenly happened upon a social conscience, for in the very next breath he reveals: “Our new laws introduced to Parliament [last month] will support the vast majority of responsible landlords who provide quality homes to their tenants.”
So, the Renters (Reform) Bill would appear to be a bit of a misnomer. While it does grant tenants the right to request a pet, and intends to protect potential tenants with children being discriminated against, the bill will actually strengthen the hand of landlords to evict ‘problem’ tenants.
According to the government website: “The new bill also protects over two million landlords, making it easier for them to recover properties when they need to – so they can sell their property if they want to, move in a close family member, or when tenants wilfully do not pay rent. Notice periods will also be reduced where tenants have been irresponsible – for example breaching their tenancy agreement or causing damage to the property.”
The government website also claims the bill will increase protections against backdoor evictions by ensuring tenants can appeal against excessive rent rises. Tenants already have the right to go to tribunal, where a court will decide whether or not your landlord is charging above the market rate. With prices rising across the board, this offers little consolation.
A shortage of homes
The number of homes on the rental market fell by a third in the 18 months to March. This helped drive rents for new tenants up 11%. More people than ever are looking to rent privately, unable to afford to buy and unable to access social housing.
In its attempt to rein in double-digit inflation, the Bank of England has ratcheted up interest rates to their highest level since before the global financial crash of 2007-09. Yesteryear’s aspiring buy-to-let landlords are quickly looking to jump ship before they are shipwrecked by spiralling mortgage rates. In its current form, the Renters (Reform) Bill seeks to protect these landlords looking to sell up far more than the tenants who would be forced to vacate as their home is put on the market.
A number of banks such as Santander, TSB and the Coventry Building Society have recently made changes to their mortgage rates, which will lead to a squeeze on 100,000 mortgage holders. What measures will prevent these extra costs from simply being passed on to tenants in the form of rent rises?
The bill will make it easier for landlords to evict tenants in rent arrears by reducing the notice period required. This will penalise those in financial hardship, and be used as a stick to beat those who withhold rent or go on rent strike.
There are simply not enough homes for people to live in. According to the Economist magazine, England has 434 homes per 1,000 people, comparing badly with France which has 590 per 1,000. Added to this, with lack of investment in infrastructure, the Economist reports that new house builds are becoming harder to accommodate into the existing National Grid, which is further exacerbated by the increasing necessity and speed of rollout of charging ports for electric vehicles.
The housing question cannot simply be addressed by building more houses alone. It requires proper investment and planning of necessary infrastructure and public services.
“If you want to be an open, trading, free-market economy, you cannot leave your housing system, your land market to the open market. Because if you do, the property market will basically swallow your economy.” This is a quote from Toby Lloyd, once special advisor to Prime Minister Theresa May, in an interview for the BBC Radio 4 series Rental Health. What is this, if not an effective admission that the market economy is woefully ill-equipped to deal with the question of housing?
‘Affordable’ or council housing?
The government’s so-called ‘affordable’ housing scheme builds properties to sell at 80% of market value. These houses are still unaffordable to the majority of young people, and do little to check speculative housing developers. With the jobs market saturated with zero-hour gig-economy jobs, home ownership is increasingly out of reach for young people. The average age of first-time buyers is now over 30 in every region of England, reflecting young people’s financial insecurity and inability to get a footing on even the first rung of the property ladder.
Housing available at ‘social rent’, linked to local wage levels, is shrinking. In the year 2020-21, there was a net loss of 15,000, according to Shelter.
Getting a council home is simply not an option for all but a few of those in the most severe need. And many of those can spend years in temporary accommodation, often whole families in single hotel rooms.
The building of new, high-quality council homes on a mass scale would provide an immediate solution to the ever-growing demand for housing. It could house the hundreds of thousands currently living in temporary accommodation, and be made available for tenants who wish to move out of the private sector. Such a building programme would have the added benefit of applying downwards pressure on out-of-control private rents, which should be democratically controlled by the local community.
New council homes could be built to incorporate climate-friendly technology, using the best methods of home insulation, heat-pump boilers and solar panels fitted as standard.
A council with the political will to do so could start to implement such a council house building programme immediately, choosing to use its borrowing capacity to invest in meeting the needs of its people. In the 1980s, Liverpool’s Labour council, led by Militant (the Socialist Party’s predecessor), was elected promising to build thousands of council homes. And that it did – with front and back gardens and community leisure facilities – mobilising thousands of working-class people to support it and winning millions of pounds from Thatcher’s government.
Fighting for renters’ rights
Tenants have some limited existing legal rights; however many working-class people cannot afford to exercise them. Restoring full legal aid to all those who need it would be a step in the right direction, giving tenants a fighting chance at challenging landlords.
Similarly, scrapping ASTs, brought in by Thatcher in 1989, and reintroducing Regulated Tenancies with much-better security of tenure, would give tenants some more much-needed stability.
The planned ban on no-fault evictions should be extended to include a ban on evictions for those unable to pay due to the effects of the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
A mass council house building programme and democratic rent controls, which cap rents at a level agreed by elected committees of tenants and trade unionists, would end rip-off rents.
Local authorities could set up a compulsory register for landlords, holding them accountable for repairs, safety and conditions. Council-employed housing officers could inspect properties to uphold standards. Landlords that refuse to comply could have their properties put up for compulsory purchase by the council. These are all measures which Labour councils could implement now.
In some areas, tenants are already getting organised to fight collectively for their rights. Campaign groups such as Acorn and London Renters’ Union are campaigning on tenant rights. The Social Housing Action Campaign (SHAC), set up to bring together social housing tenants and housing workers in the trade unions, has organised numerous rent and service charge strikes. Communities can get organised to collectively resist evictions, like the ‘Butterfields Won’t Budge’ campaigners in Walthamstow in 2016.
Students learned valuable lessons during the pandemic, taking collective rent strike action and forcing serious concessions from some universities and private student accommodation providers.
A political alternative
If the ban on no-fault evictions does make it onto the statute books, the pressure on many renters might be released slightly. But the pressure of rising rents and awful conditions will remain. The Tories, acting in the interests of big business, will not introduce policies that seriously threaten profits.
In 2019, Labour under Jeremy Corbyn went into the general election with a manifesto pledging 100,000 new council homes a year. It promised: “We will take urgent action to protect private renters through rent controls, open-ended tenancies, and new, binding minimum standards”.
Though not enough, if implemented these policies would have made a difference. Now, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says the slate is wiped clean and has abandoned the pledges included in that manifesto.
Renters and working-class people need a party that is prepared to carry out policies in the interests of the working class and renters, and is prepared to seriously hit the profits of big business, the property speculators and the banks. A party that is prepared to build council homes to meet need and to introduce rent controls at a truly affordable level.
Socialist Party members stood as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in this May’s local elections, fighting for policies like these. We campaign for a new mass workers’ party, with mass organisations of the working class, the trade unions, at its core – fighting for socialist policies.
And for the next general election, whenever it is called, we call for the trade unions to back a workers’ list of candidates that could include Jeremy Corbyn and others barred from standing for Labour or deselected. Such a stand, or if one is not brought together in time, a number of TUSC candidates standing, could fight for socialist policies to deal with the housing question at the next general election.
Currently the banks and big business profit from the shortage of housing and sky-high rents. Thousands of homes lie empty as investment portfolios for the super-rich, and only the most profitable homes for sale and rent are built. Building homes for need not profit, on the scale needed, means bringing the big building developers and banks into democratic public ownership – so building can be planned and financed accordingly.
Ultimately, a fundamental break from the chaos of free-market capitalism, with a move to a democratically planned, socialist economy is what is needed. This will ensure that we are able to eradicate homelessness and squalor permanently, at the same time paving the way for decent quality, cheap, green housing benefiting all, not just the richest.
