Rent controls are at the heart of the local election manifesto of the Green Party of England and Wales.
Co-leader Carla Denyer, says: “This country faces an acute housing crisis. There are over a million households on council waiting lists. In England the average home for sale now costs more than eight times the annual average household earnings.
“We desperately need a massive increase in the supply of affordable social housing. I hear regularly from people who have been living in unacceptable conditions, crying out for a secure home or struggling to make ends meet because their rents are through the roof.”
Green policies include:
- What it calls “taming” the private rental market through rent controls, in places where the rental market is overheated, to ensure a fair rent, as well as ending no-fault evictions;
- Ending Right to Buy, enabling local authorities to keep council homes available and affordable in the community for good;
- Creating a ‘community right to buy’, giving councils, housing associations and community housing groups first refusal to buy certain properties that come onto the market, including former social housing bought under Right to Buy; properties in need of energy efficiency improvements; or any property left empty for an unacceptably long time; and
- Providing funding to councils for affordable social housing and lift “the overly restrictive rules on council borrowing for housebuilding” – ensuring at least an extra 150,000 council homes a year are made available through a mix of new build, refurbishment, conversions and buying up existing homes.
Specifically for London the Green Party want to see a ‘Living Rent’, where median local rents would take up no more than 35% of the local median take-home pay.
It also wants rent control powers to be given to London politicians and a two-year rent freeze, plus a Rent Commission “to look at bringing down private rents.”
Co-leader Adrian Ramsay adds: “Our Right Homes, Right Place, Right Price charter would transform the planning system to ensure all new homes are built to the highest environmental standards, prioritising brownfield sites, while requiring all new developments come with investment in local services, such as extra school and GP places, better bus services and infrastructure for walking and cycling. “
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They are basically wanting the product at a higher standard than the average home but only want to pay a third of the real cost.
These people should not be allowed to suggest such nonsensical wants until they can explain using a calculator how the sums add up.
After much head scratching looking at the calculator they will with no shame or embarrassment suggest that somebody else’s hard earned wealth should pay the difference
Not one mention of how they are paying for any of it. Sandal 🩴 Wearing non washing Fkrs..
OTHER PEOPLES' MONEY Peter. How else?
When there is such a shortage of Social Housing it's interesting that Housing Associations are selling off ex Council flats at auction. I looked at one a couple of weeks ago that was in reasonably good condition. A refurb for about 20K would have made it very nice. It sold at auction for £80K. An identical one 2 floors below is on Rightmove at £150K. At £150K it's one of the cheapest one beds in the city.
There's something seriously wrong with the Social Housing business model if they're having to sell decent stock at below rock bottom prices.
Social Housing Providers are simply 'pseudo businesses' no one in these organisations has any 'skin in the game' almost all have no business experience and are usually ex LA incapable of using a calculator.
Auction house East Anglia auctions are full of housing association ex council houses that are quite liveable in only needing minor renovations, yet we are told there is a shortage of social housing at affordable rents
In previous times landlords would have bought these.
They need to ask why this is no longer the case - but they wouldn't listen to an answer they don't like.
There was a time Robert that I would have been buying them Robert, but not now
Jo, I am sure that it is (as you have pointed out before) because the housing associations do not have enough money coming in to spend even that 20Kto bring the properties up to scratch, or they can foresee larger costs coming down the road. It is bizarre that social housing is so much cheaper than private that they are not able to keep up with routine maintenance.
Emily, social housing tenants knock the s*it out of properties and are more likely to grow mould. So routine maintenance is much higher...
You’ve got to be green to vote green and I’m not referring to the Incredible Hulk
Well said, George. I always think of this when I see any Green Party pronouncement: 🤮
If they said stop HS2 and use the money to build houses they might get my vote!
They are full of nonsensical ideas eg universal income is another so nobody will go to work!
I don't think HS2 can be stopped as such. Contracts have been made. Land bought etc. The cost to stop... You may as well carry on could be the situation.
No mention of taming landlords costs.
I think the Greens need taming. Culling seems the best option!
😂😂
I can understand they sell off Social Housing what do they want them for, they can force Private Landlords to house them for nothing and give him a £30k penalty as a reward.
LAs also get to dump their problem benefits tenants onto someone else. Wait in the wings to fine the landlord.
I like their idea to end the RTB 🏡 this has been a disaster since Maggie put pen to paper 👍🏻🆘. The Greens as a whole though are a disaster for common sense.
Wasn’t a disaster for all the champagne socialists that bought them, put a new kitchen, bathroom and windows in and sold them for £80000 more!
Maggies right to buy was a great concept. Where it went wrong was in the failure to replace the sold housing stock. This has been the cardinal failure of all Govs since then. Worse, it continues today!
Well said, A JR.
My late parents bought under that scheme as did most of their neighbours. Mind you, they didn’t expect the council to do everything for them either. Yes they did improve the properties, but they all did their own maintenance anyway.
Unfortunately where it went wrong was selling off and, as you pointed out, not replacing the stock.🤔
I would love someone to explain how we can build properties to the highest environmental standards (with associated high build costs) and then rent them out for less than it costs to pay the interest on the loans required to build them!
The only sensible comments in the statement were about making planning less Draconian and councils buying up empty inefficient homes which they can then supply to the rental market. However the councils would look at the cost and the return and then leave it the private landlords to go bankrupt instead of them.
The people who make these decisions don’t do sums and shouldn’t be in power!
The Green Party are a joke. Always have been. But wow, theyre reaching new depths of delusional here.
The problem with socialists is they are not very good with money or figures!
Good at wasting other peoples money though
Funnily enough we didn’t have a housing crisis or rent increase problem in 2014 did we? And then Osbourne started on the PRS and took away tax relief, wear and tear allowance, local authorities increased licensing, more and more regulations and now 10 years later things are dreadful for both tenants and landlords
In the same way as history has judged Brown as being the destroyer of the private defined benefits pensions, Osborne will be judged as having destroyed the private rental sector. Looked after his corporate mates, mind.
Anyone considering voting Green only has to look at the chaos that ensued in Brighton and Hove, with weeds a metre high along the pavements, rubbish piled high for weeks on end to highlight just a couple of the joys of going Green, so much so they were lost to Labour at the last local election. Even their Green MP couldn't justify the mess.
To quote Maggie 'the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money'.
Well done to the Green Party for suggesting to reduce rents and landlords "profits". Time for a sharp exit of the PR market for many Landlords thus exacerbating the already massive shortage of homes in the rental sector. Think they might have been using Diane Abbotts infamous Abacus. :)
They couldn't organise a fart in a bean factory
With all the restrictions proposed by the Greens, don't they understand that landlords will simply sell up and that will reduce the pool of properties available to rent? Oh, and it will also cause more homelessness as tenants are moved out with nowhere to go to. Dimwits.....
I wrote a few weeks ago about a mid 50's 3 bed ex Council house in a small former mining village near my birthplace still for sale for £50k by a landlord no longer willing to rent it out for a yield of over 12%.
Any tenants would almost certainly be jobless benefits claimants so it looks as if the local Council and Housing Associations, who haven't bought it either, also operate the same secret no DSS policy adopted by most sensible landlords.
It’s called supply and demand
No surprise these airhead lefties fail to grasp the simplest of basic economic concepts
A number of blocks of flats were for sale in York recently. They were once social housing/council flats. Politicians need to get a grip of social housing providers and councils who continue to sell off decent properties while shifting the blame onto private landlords. RTB was a terrible idea unless you were one of the fortunate ones to make a profit, better ask the Deputy Leader of Labour about the benefits!
Darth Rayner knows all too well about living off of benefits.
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