Tory MP Richard Benyon has come under attack in The Guardian for buying an estate of affordable housing in East London and jacking up the rents to levels residents can’t afford.
The New Era estate in Hoxton was built by a charitable trust in the mid-1930s to provide affordable housing to local people. But a consortium led by Benyon’s family firm recently bought the estate and plan to up rents to match the rest of the market.
The Guardian quotes one tenant who has been paying about £640 a month for the two-bed flat she shares with her daughter. Since the buyout, her rent has already shot up by £160 a month but when her contract expires in July 2016 she expects to be charged around £2,400 a month, typical for a property in the area.
This is more than the resident in question’s take home pay – so she’ll have to move out.
The tale is particularly galling as Benyon hardly needs the money. He lives in a stately home just outside Reading complete with deer park and 3,500 acres of woodlands. Benyon inherited the property along with land stretching from London to Berkshire to Inverness – what The Guardian describes as “a whopping slice of Britain that makes up a family fortune worth anywhere between £110m and £200m”.
Last year Benyon’s estate received £625,000 in tenants’ housing benefit from just one council, West Berkshire.
The article by Aditya Chakrabortty has received more than 1,100 comments in a lively below-the-line debate.
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Comments
I hear Liverpool have railroaded the landord licencingscheme through. What services do we get for this I wonder....100% council tax bills and sod all. Guess im getting out of liverpool as soon as I can cross fhe mersey.
If this was anybody else their would be no headlines or media journalists who would care about this, talk about scaremongering tactics. It is every Property Investors ethos to maximise the return on their investment, you and I would.
So Journalists get off your high horse, buy yourself an investment property and rent it out for well under the market value, I think not!!!!!
A charitable trust that built affordable housing? Aren't there any covenants in place to stop things like this happening? I would have thought so.
You mean what should we expect from a free market economy don't you? Fact is these tenants have been lucky to have an obviously artificial rent for years, now the market has caught up with them.
I am sick and tired of hearing how many Tories are multi-millionaire's and how many went to private school - anyone in the real world know how many Labour MPs and Ministers are equally as privileged (hint - by adjustment for representation same percentage)
Well what should we expect from a wealthy Tory? It was after all, Maggie T who started the council house sell off which has resulted in so little social housing being available to the following generations.
It's sad that in the UK peoples homes are allowed to be someone else's profiteering business. Houses built to be affordable should stay that way forever.
But would a govt of a different colour have the guts to do anything about it? Don't expect so.