INTRODUCE A RENT CAP IN LONDON
and here from a while back,
Rent controls: should they be reintroduced?
we have Darren Johnson arguing
Just as undermining the business model of providers of social housing is not helpful for increasing supply, neither is undermining the economics of long term provision of private rented housing helpful. Please note here long term; it's another matter to undermine the short term operators' business model by increasing supply to stop the ever upward increases in valuations.FOR: 'We cannot solve our problems with free market solutions'
However, when I come to check exactly what parties to the Left of the Conservatives are saying, I find they do understand the problem, and are not committing themselves to the simplistic policies it seems advocated by 38 Degrees. Most welcome here is the position of Tom Chance, Green Party Housing spokesperson, and parliamentary candidate here,
The Green Party’s Tom Chance talks housing
who in contrast to Darren Johnson's generalised anti-market rhetoric, makes his understanding that rent controls should only apply for a length of tenure to be agreed between landlord and tenant - so not the sort of permanent rent controls which, in the 1970s, killed off the provision of new private rented sector housing.
I worry, however, that the Greens are too committed to picking up what might be called the 38 Degrees vote, so I'm more comfortable with the Labour Party policy here
where there is a commitment to making the standard tenancy length three years.
Of course, all of this is far less important than increasing the supply of decent places to live, and whether they are in the private or public sector really is not the issue - there can be good and bad public sector landlords, as there can be in the private sector. We need renting to be as much a renters' market as a landlords'. We don't need attacks on free market solutions (has there ever been one, least of all in housing?) - just a well regulated market which allows supply to increase where tenants want housing.
I think this would normally be the Conservative position too, but as of now, they seem to have completely lost the plot.