The core texts for Your Party are out, and the process of deciding policy will soon follow. Its principles declare that it stands for “equality and social justice”. A key issue the party must address is the misery faced by private housing tenants as their incomes are eaten up by relentlessly increasing rents.
By Cormac Kelly
In England, rents are absorbing more than a third of tenants’ income. The need for rent controls has never been more urgent. Someone on an average salary will spend 36.3% of their income on the average priced rented home last year – an increase from 33.1% in 2023. In London, an average tenant spends a huge 41.6% of their income on rent, rising to three quarters in the most expensive areas of the capital. Meanwhile, average annual rent increases reached 9.1% in March 2024, which is the equivalent of an extra £107 a month. A rise on this scale is as good as eviction! Nearly 30% of renters say they simply could not afford any rent increases at all.
The average rent in London now stands at £1,957 per month – £1,232 in the rest of the country. It is no wonder 228,000 households live in temporary accommodation, a record high for England! The reality of these increases are families cutting back on heating, food and clothing, a lack of savings and increasing debt and stress. Rent rises often force long-term residents to leave their homes and abandon their communities where their children may be well established in local schools. The effect on families can be devastating, with children losing their friends and their education disrupted as they are dragged into poorer housing or end up in temporary accommodation.
Landlord politicians
The government has set out plans to deliver 1.5 million new homes, but with a totally inadequate ten-year deadline. So why the delay? Labour has more landlord MPs than even the Tories – hardly an incentive to construct adequate social housing or pass laws to defend renters’ rights. Their tenants, like all the others, face rent rises, evictions and a grim future.
There are 85 MPs who declare themselves as landlords (13% of all MPs), owning 184 rental properties between them. Three of the top five landlords in parliament are Labour MPs, including the biggest landlord, Jas Athwal. In total, Labour has 44 landlords – 11% of its 404 MPs, while the Tory party has 28 – a quarter of its 121 MPs, and the Liberal Democrats have eight among their 72 MPs. Athwal rents out 15 residential and three commercial properties – more than that of former Tory minister Jeremy Hunt, who owns nine properties.
Rampant profiteering
Renters have few rights in the current system. Many are stuck in unsafe and insecure conditions, with limited ability to exercise their rights. Almost a quarter of private rented homes are in squalor and classified as non-decent, with 13% posing serious risk to health and safety. Those who complain often face the risk of ‘revenge evictions’, when a landlord decides it is easier to evict tenants than carry out repairs. This means renters are reluctant to complain about safety issues as they worry about losing their homes. All this leads to many tenants struggling with mental health issues.
Developers and landlords are compelled to constantly look for opportunities to make money on the capitalist market. As well as pushing up rents, they buy up land to apply for planning permission. But in a shocking example of capitalism’s wasteful profiteering, this planning permission is not used for building. Rather, it is used solely to increase the value of the land, so it can be sold on for a profit. In England, 400,000 homes with planning permission are going unbuilt by speculators.
Landlords claim they increase rent because of economic shocks such as COVID or cost of living crises. In reality, landlords put up their rents because the state allows them to do so through anti-renter laws, which enable them to maximise their income. 43% put up rents because their letting agents advise them to. This doesn’t just happen because of the ‘greed’ of individual landlords, even if this plays a role. The core reason is the capitalist system, where housing is not built to meet the needs of residents, but to turn over the greatest sum of profits possible.
Fight for rent control and council housing!
Workers know what’s going on. Polling already shows there is massive support for rent control in the private sector, and two thirds of people want the expansion of social housing to make it available to those who need it.
The revolutionary socialist Friedrich Engels argued in 1872 that the ongoing crisis in housing was inherent in capitalism, and that “by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, is the solution of the housing question made possible”. Your Party must work to this end. Tenants, their families and dependants have the right to a home which is in good condition, regularly maintained and not subject to arbitrary rent increase. There must be indefinite tenancies and the end of Section 21 evictions.
Socialist Alternative calls on Your Party to campaign for an immediate freeze on extortionate rent increases and a comprehensive programme of council house building to end the homeless crisis. Above all, Your Party must stand as the party of the renters – not the landlords!
Glasgow 1914-15: When renters fought back
The working class have long fought bitter struggles for rent controls. In the First World War between 1914–1915, a rent strike broke out in Glasgow. This was in response to landlords opportunistically raising rents after an influx of people to the city, seeking work in the war and munitions industries. Women led the strike and set up committees in the tenements to coordinate action against bailiffs who attempted to impose rent rises. 20,000 people were involved and it spread to other working-class communities in the UK.
The workers were victorious, winning the first legal restrictions on increases in rents which were introduced in 1915. Winning and maintaining similar victories today will require similar methods of mass struggle and resistance.
