‘The rental market won’t survive Zack Polanski’s lunatic housing policy’, the headline of the Tory-leaning Daily Telegraph’s coverage of the Green Party leader’s support for rent control.
More ‘mind-blowing’ is the stat that costs for those renting privately have risen by 27% over the last five years. What worries the Telegraph editors isn’t our ability to meet rent payments or risk being forced into homelessness, but the bottom line for big landlords.
Much of the press coverage of the Green Party’s local election campaign launch was about Polanski’s support for universal rent control. Beneath the headlines though: “Polanski acknowledged that Green councils would not be able to introduce rent controls if they win councils on 7 May” (BBC website 16 April).
In fact, councils have existing powers to introduce compulsory registers of private landlords. Many councils already have landlord registers more stringent than the minimal mandated by central government for houses of multiple occupancy.
Green councillors are already part of the administration in over 40 local authorities, have the largest group on Bristol council and lead West Suffolk council. They will almost certainty win more local authority clout in May.
Rather than ‘acknowledging what can’t be done’, Green councillors should be fighting to do everything possible to ease the burden of the cost-of-living crisis on the working class. That includes introducing compulsory landlord registers, with stringent conditions over quality, safety, and cost – determined democratically by workers and the trade unions.
Rent controls are possible now, if there are councillors prepared to fight!
