In his latest criticism of landlords, the chief executive of Generation Rent says rent controls would protect “so many renters from poverty and homelessness.”

Ben Twomey has spoken out following the Institute of Economic Affairs extensive study of rent controls across the world.

The IEA found that 56 out of 65 examples of rent controls did indeed lower rents as intended – but almost all produced unintended side effects such as deterring new homes being built, reducing quality of housing stock, limited tenant mobility, and a strategic misallocation of housing.

Twomey claims that some of the downsides found by the IEA would actually benefit tenants, such as forcing more into buying rather than renting, and limiting the mobility of tenants which – he claims – is currently forced upon them because the average rental period is only some three years. 

He goes on: “It is also claimed the quality of homes will not improve or may get worse under rent control models. About a million privately rented homes currently don’t meet the decent homes standard and more than one in 10 private renters are living with potentially life-threatening hazards – all in the absence of rent controls.”

And he adds: “The idea that desperately needed rent control protections for renters would be outweighed by the so-called harms above is completely out of touch with the pressures facing tenants right now.

“Rent controls will not solve everything, and more affordable homes need to be built where people want to live, but renters on low and middle incomes need breathing space now. 

“A fair and common-sense approach to stop rents rising  faster than our wages or inflation is not going to drive landlords into poverty and homelessness, but it would protect so many renters from that fate.”

A spokesperson for the IEA says: “Economists are a notoriously divided profession: ask three economists, and you get four opinions. But there are exceptions to this, and the study of rent controls is one of them. 

“This is an area where the empirical evidence really overwhelmingly points in the same direction. The finding that rent controls reduce the supply and quality of rental housing, reduce housing construction, reduce mobility among private tenants, and lead to a misallocation of the existing rental housing stock, is as close to a consensus as economic research can realistically get.”