The Green Party leader wants to set up a Triple Lock style arrangement for private renters.
Zack Polanski wants a three-year “emergency brake” on private rent increases and is today telling his party conference that private renting is now an issue of what he terms “generational fairness.”
He wants the government to limit private rents rising above whichever is lowest out of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), wage growth or 2%.
Polanski says generations are having to live with their parents because of rent prices, from 19-year-olds commuting to university, 25-year-olds unable to find a job, to 35-year-olds moving back home with their partners.
“For too long, landlords have been able to hike prices way beyond wages, leaving renters forced to meet the cost to keep a roof over their heads, cutting back and back and back on everything else” he says.
Restricting rent rises “would give renters vital breathing space” and would encourage the government to create what Polanski calls a national Fair Rents Guarantee, permanently restricting future rent rises.
Polanski will make the comments today at his party conference in Brighton, but his emphasis on private rents coincides with his role as Green Party candidate in next week’s Holborn and St Pancras by-election.
That London constituency has 27% of its demographic in the 18-to-29 age group, and 73% of households in either private or social rented housing.
Last month it was revealed that some of the Green Party leadership are, in fact, private landlords.
