GENERATION RENT campaigns for professionally managed, secure, decent and affordable private rented homes in sustainable communities.
Join us today and help campaign for a better deal for private renters.
GENERATION RENT campaigns for professionally managed, secure, decent and affordable private rented homes in sustainable communities.
Join us today and help campaign for a better deal for private renters.
This week has been the Conservative Party's conference, and their chance to match Labour's pledges to abolish Section 21 and seed-fund renters' unions.
There is a lot of worry among the party faithful that they are not doing enough about housing - the defining political issue of a generation. But with consultation responses on security being scrutinised by officials back in Whitehall, and Help to Buy facing negative attention, their options were narrow.
Read moreAt the Labour party conference this week, delegates adopted a motion to (among other things) "Help private renters with an end to ‘no fault’ evictions, controls on rents and new minimum standards, including three year tenancies as standard."
The BBC reported on this commitment, but beyond the wording of this motion and John Healey's speech, we haven't had any more detail of what this would entail.
Luckily, Sadiq Khan has obliged. While the Mayor of London is not a member of the Shadow Cabinet, last week's publication of his response to the government's consultation on longer tenancies revealed that he is calling for much the same thing, plus some more idea of what it might look like in practice.
Read moreWe kind of knew this already, but Labour is officially backing our campaign to end Section 21 and will scrap landlords' ability to evict tenants without giving a reason. It was reported by the BBC this morning, was part of the shadow Housing Secretary John Healey's speech in the conference centre, and then a motion on housing that included it was passed.
This follows members of the End Unfair Evictions doing a lot of work behind the scenes to successfully get local Labour parties to support the motion.
An even bigger piece of news was a £20m pot to jumpstart tenants' unions in the UK, reported by the Independent.
Read moreFinding a flat to rent in England can be tough. The stress only compounds when things don’t go as planned. When I lived in London, I got caught out when my landlord insisted on “renegotiating” the tenancy terms after I had paid a holding deposit (a troublingly common practice in the market).
Here are twelve things tenants can do to protect their rights, which helped me succeed in my legal claim against my landlord.
Read moreOn Wednesday, the Sun reported that 10 Downing Street and the Treasury are blocking moves to legislate for longer tenancies.
Although the recently closed consultation left open the question of making the new tenancy mandatory or voluntary, the same newspaper had previously reported that the Housing Secretary, James Brokenshire, wanted all tenants to get it.
That sets up a big internal government battle over tenants' rights as the Conservative Party worries more and more about winning over younger voters.
Read moreAs the consultation period on the government's proposals for longer tenancies draws to a close - the deadline to respond is this Sunday - we are handing in our End Unfair Evictions petition to the Ministry of Housing today. It passed 50,000 signatures on Tuesday, helped along by #VentYourRent.
And if that wasn't enough to make the government pay attention, new polling from Survation finds that our demands have the backing of the wider public, including Conservative voters.
Section 21 is the leading cause of statutory homelessness. This law allows evictions with no reason needed, and this is one more reason why we should scrap it.
To some extent, this is stating the bleeding obvious. Since 2012, the end of a private tenancy has been the leading cause of homelessness cases accepted by local authorities, but until now no one has specifically pointed the finger at Section 21. Today, we've been able to demonstrate it.
Source: Ministry of Housing
Read moreThe latest English Housing Survey was out last week, and the results are further evidence for what we’ve been arguing for years: England’s rental laws are making life insecure and expensive for growing numbers of people.
Read moreIt is less than a month since we launched our joint campaign - with ACORN, the New Economics Foundation and the London Renters Union - to end section 21 no-fault evictions, and we've already had some major successes.
Here are four things we can celebrate already.
Read moreAfter reports in the Sunday papers, late yesterday afternoon the Ministry of Housing published its long-awaited consultation paper on "Overcoming Barriers to Longer Tenancies in the Private Rented Sector".
It allows us a moment to celebrate the first success of the End Unfair Evictions campaign: an acceptance by the government that private tenancy law is failing England's tenants - just as our petition passes 40,000 signatures.
Leaving the detail of the policy to one side for now, it is significantly the first time the government has considered a change to tenancy law. Up to now ministers have been talking of merely "encouraging" landlords to offer better terms - while most landlords might do this, a lot of tenants would get no benefit. We have been arguing that we need full reform and, while incentives are still an option, mandatory reform is now on the table.
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As to buy to let landlords buying all new builds, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. As an example, there is another new development going up in my area now. I registered an interest as a potential buyer, and asked the developer whether there would be any for owner occupiers, or if they were going to the buy to let market. They told me they expected most/all to go to private landlords. This is not the first time that’s happened, and in many different areas. Most potential first time buyers would be only too happy to wait as long as it took to get their own bricks and mortar. If developers were not allowed to sell off plan (another argument for a different forum), predatory landlords would not have the time to wait, especially as many of them need to regularly increase their debt to service their empires. So you own argument in that field defeats you.
You’ve been offered statistics and proposals but all you do is insult, which is why I think you deserve some of it back.
Your ‘solution’ is to stop BTL overnight but that is a solution that in your own mind is going to help you, not anyone else. It’s all about me, me, me in your book. So come on then, where is your solution to housing all the immigrants and where is your solution for building more houses? You certainly haven’t offered one so far. And if you remove private investment from the industry then things just get worse, though probably not in the Utopian land you’ve dreamed up.
You come out with more rubbish about Rachman but you know nothing about the accommodation I offer. Your narrow minded approach is indicative of ignorance, which of course you displayed much earlier when you went on about ‘guaranteed mortgages’ which only exist in your head.
In the same earlier posts you admitted to distorting facts about numbers of viewers on a property being disproportionate of FTB to landlords, but then later said you were only talking about one particular day.
You keep on about me being worried about my income and cash cow drying up. Well my old son you couldn’t be further from the truth. Like I have repeatedly told you I have always kept my rents low but now your super hero is forcing me to put them up, so the tenants are going to pay George what he wants and that was part of his plan anyway. Indeed I see great buying opportunities ahead.
The headline grabbers of 500,000 properties being sold are I think, greatly exaggerated but we’ll see. Mark Carney (in case you don’t know who he is, he’s the Governor of the Bank of England) has states all along that that is one of his biggest concerns, and now George is trying to make it happen. If it does happen and prices tumble you can watch the building industry shut down,which will have a knock-on effect for generations. The country is already teetering on another recession and that could be the tipping point. I wonder if you’ll have a job then FW, even if you do manage to keep one, lenders probably won’t want to give you a mortgage.
So my friend there is no desperation from where I stand but I completely believe that the tax grab is going to hurt millions of tenants and it’ll be the ones that are the poorest that will be hurt the most. Still you’re probably living with Mummy and Daddy and sponging of them so you’ll be alright.
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