Rents in London have increased by a staggering 18%. Rent arrears have now risen to higher levels than during the pandemic. Most of our rip-off homes are overcrowded, mouldy and in poor repair – with landlords doing nothing to fix them.
Why should young people pay for the failings of the capitalist system while rouge landlords and bosses get richer and richer at our expense?
13 years of Tory governments have seen the housing crisis grow. Their ‘Help to Buy’ scheme cost £29 billion, but helped just 300,000 people buy a house. Research has showed its main impact was inflating house prices. That money could have been used to invest in council house building.
None of the mainstream, pro-capitalist parties, including Keir Starmer’s Labour, have a solution to the housing crisis. Shamefully, Lisa Nandy, Labour’s housing spokesperson, has said a Labour government will not bring in rent controls.
Super-rich hoarders
Rather than building the tens of thousands of decent council homes needed, Labour councils have been busy giving contracts to private property developers. These new private homes are unaffordable for us. While young people dream of living in their own places, there are thousands of properties in London that lie empty as investment portfolios for the super-rich.
We say enough is enough! Young people need to get organised and fight for a decent future – a socialist future. Socialist Party members have led and won campaigns against unfair rental debts, evictions, and services charges. Trade unions are showing that collective action gets results in the workplace. We need to link those struggles to a political alternative in working-class interests.
Starmer has cleared out the Labour manifesto of all the radical policies of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn. We call on Corbyn and other socialists to be part of a workers’ list standing at the general election – as a step towards the new mass workers’ party we need.
Socialist Party fights for
- Introduce rent controls now
- Compulsory licensing of all landlords to force decent housing standards
- A mass programme of council house building
- Support the strikes! End low pay – scrap youth rates and zero-hour contracts. A £15-an-hour minimum wage for all now
- Councils must set no-cuts budgets. Restore services, reopen libraries, reverse cuts and re-employ sacked council workers
- For free education and scrapping of student debt
- Kick out the Tories, but Starmer’s Labour won’t fight for us. Build a new workers’ party with a socialist programme
- Fight for a socialist world. Take the banks, monopolies and major industries into democratic public ownership to provide us with a future
