The Metropolis

You only need £2,000 in fees to rent a London flat now. That's good, right?

Josh Hall | Thursday 8 December, 2011 15:47

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the mounting threats facing council tenants. The viciousness of the government’s concerted attacks on the provision of so-called social housing have taken many by surprise – but it is becoming increasingly clear that private tenants are next in the firing line.

This morning the Resolution Foundation published a new report into the state of the private rented sector. The sector is notoriously mismanaged, as anyone who has had the misfortune of dealing with a lettings agent will testify. An astonishing lack of regulation, along with tenancy agreements that are stacked in landlords’ favour, has meant a gradual erosion of tenants’ rights – an erosion that has quickened since the onset of the financial crisis.

£2,000 was the headline figure from the report – that’s the amount that prospective tenants in London are paying in up front agency fees in order to move house. If you’re lucky enough to have a job, and if that job pays roughly an average salary, that’s about a month’s wage. The report also pointed out that there are wild variations in the amounts charged by different agencies, often with “no discernible differences in the quality of the service received.”

The report calls for the establishment of an ombudsman service charged with mediating disputes between tenants and agencies, and for letting agents to be brought within the remit of the Estate Agents Act – a move that would give the Office of Fair Trading powers to strike off ‘rogue’ agencies.

These are both important suggestions. Indeed, the mere fact that a think-tank has to suggest that letting agencies ought, perhaps, to be subject to some sort of legal oversight demonstrates the absurdity of the current situation.

But better regulation of agencies is nowhere near enough. Private tenants find themselves in their most vulnerable position for decades. Buying a house is now an impossibility for an increasingly sizeable chunk of the population and, as a result, hundreds of thousands of people are being pushed into private rental. Inevitably, exploitation of tenants has increased as demand for rental property has risen. Rents have crashed through the barrier of affordability, rising many percentage points above inflation. An August 2010 survey, conducted by Shelter, found that the number of private renters “constantly struggling” to keep up with the rent payments had increased by 85 per cent on the year. The number is likely to be significantly higher today.

It is not just unsustainable cost with which tenants have to contend. An ever-increasing pool of potential customers has meant that tenants are of little individual value to landlords. Decide you don’t fancy this one? Not to worry – stick the flat back on Gumtree and it’ll be taken by lunchtime. Landlords don’t need to entice tenants with a properly maintained property, or a reasonable attitude, or a fair tenancy agreement. Landlords can dictate the terms of the tenancy, safe in the knowledge that they can find someone else to exploit if you turn them down.

In that strange utopia we sometimes dream of, in which we have a government that occasionally acts in the interests of the people, we would remedy this problem by investing in the wholesale provision of social housing. Or, at the very least, by introducing fair rent rules and the proper regulation of landlords.

In reality, we are stuck with a government of landowners – a government that has already killed even the infuriatingly moderate idea of a register of landlords.

Rather than legislating to protect tenants, the government is drafting laws to have them evicted. The next stage in the Conservative-Liberal assault on housing is the introduction of Mandatory Possession Orders, which would give landlords the power to force judges to approve evictions of tenants accused of ‘anti-social behaviour’. The primacy of capital over justice is thus beautifully illustrated.

Housing will be amongst the most significant political battlegrounds in the UK next year. We must realise that it’s not just council tenants or squatters who are under threat – it’s all of us. We need to start building private tenants’ networks to forcefully defend our right to decent, affordable housing, and to link up with existing support groups in council housing, housing associations, and squats. Housing is a right – but it is a right for which we are going to have to fight.

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