Rachel Cox, Oxford Socialist Party
Rents just keep on cranking up. The price of almost everything else does too.
In many cities, rents are on average well above 30% of a worker’s income. In reality, many pay closer to 60%. Too often homes are overcrowded and have damp and mould, and all the health risks those bring.
Meanwhile, council housing waiting lists stretch for years, even for those who qualify for priority access. Most can’t even get on. One in fifty Londoners are homeless, living in temporary accommodation and waiting for a council home or an alternative.
What is needed is huge public investment in building high-quality council homes, an end to right to buy, and democratic rent controls.
The Labour government has pledged to increase money for its ‘Affordable Homes Programme’, and says it aims for 60% of homes built under it to be for ‘social rent’. How about 100%, and guaranteed by work done directly by government and councils, rather than through grants and cheap loans to big business developers?
The government has also baked in above-inflation rent increases for ‘social rent’ tenants for ten years. How about no rent increases?!
And to top it off, the threshold for how much housing benefit claimants can get has been frozen again, like it was under the Tories, while rents continue to climb.
All of the establishment parties stand with corporate landlords and big business construction companies instead of workers and young people. We need a party that fights for investment to meet need rather than for profit.
Local councils have powers which could be used to bring down rents, employ teams to monitor housing quality and mandate repairs, and launch mass council house building programmes. Thousands of councillors will be elected in May, including to every single seat in London.
We need councillors who will fight to freeze rents and build council homes, who will use their position to help mobilise struggles and demand Starmer’s government coughs up the funding our communities need.
Help us build the broadest possible, anti-austerity, socialist stand in May. Help us fight for a new mass working-class party and for socialist change.
