labour's proposed rent reforms

[shifting gears]

Tax the greedy buy to let fuckers until they bleat. Make it be known that excessively profiteering from rent is morally unacceptable and repugnantly exploitative.

Well quite.

Where's there's a will, there's a way.

But there's absolutely no fucking will.

 

[brogdale]

The only way to sort out fair rents is to run the buy-to-rent fuckers out of town, and do something vaguely socialist like, you know, BUILD FUCKLOADS OF COUNCIL PROPERTIES.

Yep, and stop right to buy immediately, and then compulsorily purchase back any former public housing now let privately to house those on LA temporary/emergency lists.

 

[Wolveryeti]

Who is going to police whether the landlord evicted someone 'fairly' because they needed the home back/needed to sell/whatever?

Unworkable.

 

[captainmission]

Who is going to police whether the landlord evicted someone 'fairly' because they needed the home back/needed to sell/whatever?

Unworkable.

The county courts, as they currently do.

 

[Wolveryeti]

The county courts, as they currently do.

What we are discussing is a bit different than proving breach in a legally worded contract.

What is the difference between being turfed out by a landlord who decides he wants to use the place for himself (and then 'changes his mind' and re-lets it) and the current system?

 

[ska invita]

Here's a good read by none other than our very own vornstyle76

http://www.tmponline.org/2014/05/01/labour-rent-increases/

"Labour’s proposal begins to sound like a managed real-terms incline of rents."
Exactly.

The only way to sort out fair rents is to run the buy-to-rent fuckers out of town, and do something vaguely socialist like, you know, BUILD FUCKLOADS OF COUNCIL PROPERTIES.

yes definitely need more council properties, but in terms of bringing down rents in relation to earnings what amount of new builds in london would add so much supply to the market as bring prices down?
I dont think any realistic amount of builds would satisfy supply...in fact it may just add to the allure of london as the only place to live and work in the UK.... i think it takes a lot more than just building more

 

[captainmission]

What we are discussing is a bit different than proving breach in a legally worded contract.

What is the difference between being turfed out by a landlord who decides he wants to use the place for himself (and then 'changes his mind' and re-lets it) and the current system?

For a landlord to turf someone out of their house they need a possession order. Which requires statisfying a judge that the grounds for possesion are met. For assured tenancies (and assured shorthold, although it'd never be used) such a ground already exists. It's know as ground 1. The landlord would need to prove they intend to live in the house and leave their current home.

The difference being under the current system they'd need to give an assured shorthold tenant as little as 2 months notice then, if the tenant didn't leave apply under an accelerate procedure for possession- this could go ahead without a hearing and take about 3 months.

 

[vornstyle76]

You can bet your arse landlords will be undertaking mass evictions two months before any act comes into force, then reletting at a higher rate

Yeah, this is something I neglected to mention in my blog piece. The rentier has been given at least an 18 month headstart on this. Will be interesting/depressing to see if evictions and rents shoot upwards in the mean time (even though the policy sounds like it will have significant scope for rent increases structured into it).

 

[Dogsauce]

It could be a catalyst for clearing out whole areas.

Landlords also use change as an excuse to increase rents no matter what. I remember landlords where I used to live all put rents up by £5 per week (about 20%) when the poll tax came in, even though it removed a cost (and administrative burden) from them.

Rent is basically 'what you can get away with' (the prime tenet of capitalism) and there's fuck all chance of government intervening meaningfully. If an affordable housing 'solution' comes, the only one I can see under our current idealists is some sort of corporatist Wetherspoons/Easyjet no-nonsense hostel product, with government subsidies. Maybe that's what they have in mind eventually for housing associations?

 

[SpookyFrank]

You can bet your arse landlords will be undertaking mass evictions two months before any act comes into force, then reletting at a higher rate

If this happens it could be the perfect catalyst for a mass rent strike.

 

[SpookyFrank]

If an affordable housing 'solution' comes, the only one I can see under our current idealists is some sort of corporatist Wetherspoons/Easyjet no-nonsense hostel product, with government subsidies. Maybe that's what they have in mind eventually for housing associations?

If these projects do start happening they'll porbably be run by the same companies that run prisons and detention centres.

Just so the working class in this country know eactly where they stand.

 

[el-ahrairah]

cheers all, plenty to think about.

 

[treelover]

The county courts, as they currently do.

Will there be legal aid for this?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Tax the greedy buy to let fuckers until they bleat bleed. Make it be known that excessively profiteering from rent is morally unacceptable and repugnantly exploitative.

Fixed that for you.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'm not sure but I'll have a guess: around parts of south London there's a definite feel of a residential building boom. But most of the new properties are out of the range of normal people. So I guess there's just a lot of demand to be soaked up at the higher end of the market, which means the big companies will focus on putting their capital into that, particularly with limited land availability. In the long run an increase in house numbers should affect the bottom end of the market too, but at the same time the population of London is growing, so perhaps new building at the top end will have little to no effect on the bottom end.

Yup. Good old selective development by developers (building "luxury apartments" rather than homes) has been a curse on housing for at least the last 15 years, and legislation to enable this sort of shit hasn't helped.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Who is going to police whether the landlord evicted someone 'fairly' because they needed the home back/needed to sell/whatever?

Unworkable.

Someone with a taser and a bullwhip, hopefully.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Yup. Good old selective development by developers (building "luxury apartments" rather than homes) has been a curse on housing for at least the last 15 years, and legislation to enable this sort of shit hasn't helped.

Thing is most of the 'luxury apartments' aren't really, as far as I can tell. They might have a built in ice machine or something but ultimately they're titchy little flats. They're just incredibly expensive because absolutely anything is. They could sling up some prefabs in Dagenham and they'd be out of most people's range. Certainly family homes would be. So I don't really see that the problem is the type of building in itself.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

So to go back to the question 'why aren't they building more homes' I think the point isn't that they're building luxury homes rather than other types of building, it's that if you keep overall supply throttled enough then you can make massive premiums on any old crap.

 

[marty21]

the increases in RTB discounts have made the housing shortage worse imo - before the Tories increased the discount from £16k to up ro £100k, I hadn't dealt with a single RTB app on the estate i was managing in North London in around 3 years - since the discount was increased in 2012? I was getting apps most months - and this process has continued. I doubt very much that the Tory promise that they will build one council home for everyone sold will be kept to.

 

[Dogsauce]

They won't be building council homes, it'll be 'affordable rent' homes, which that mop-headed cunt that runs London has decided is 80% of 'market rent', which isn't affordable.

'Luxury' just means £3.99/m2 laminate flooring and white walls, pretty sure developers are using something else to convey exclusivity these days.

 

[maomao]

So to go back to the question 'why aren't they building more homes' I think the point isn't that they're building luxury homes rather than other types of building, it's that if you keep overall supply throttled enough then you can make massive premiums on any old crap.

Exactly, having a secure home is now a luxury so they can build shitty concrete flats and call them luxury homes.

 

[captainmission]

Will there be legal aid for this?

Currently a tenant on a low income facing a possession claim could potentially get legal aid.

 

[ska invita]

What happened to Prescots Thames Gateway flats building programme - has that happened? I was up in Woolwich earlier in the year and there were new flats there, but IIRC the scale of building was meant to be a lot bigger.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Thing is most of the 'luxury apartments' aren't really, as far as I can tell. They might have a built in ice machine or something but ultimately they're titchy little flats. They're just incredibly expensive because absolutely anything is. They could sling up some prefabs in Dagenham and they'd be out of most people's range. Certainly family homes would be. So I don't really see that the problem is the type of building in itself.

I absolutely agree that they aren't "luxury" by any stretch of even a febrile imagination! However, the builders sell them as such, because it's an extra premium that can be charged, even if the places are plasterboard shoe-boxes so appallingly-designed (to maximise numbers of units) that they'd make even an agoraphobe claustrophobic.
I also agree that type of building shouldn't matter, btw, but we've (the public as well as the media) got historic issues with some modes of construction. People still hark back (rightly or wrongly) to Ronan Point, and to the problems common to system-build (fewer and more easily-remediated than a lot of the issues common to timber-frame, btw, but people don't like concrete) of any form, and want houses or (very) low-rise flats.
All of which really isn't helped by the fact that there is never enough new-build being developed to even satisfy the annual rise in demand for housing in 2/3rds of England and Wales, and that developers actively-resist building enough to satisfy the market because that would deflate prices.

Capitalist shit-eating obese feline fucks!

 

[ViolentPanda]

So to go back to the question 'why aren't they building more homes' I think the point isn't that they're building luxury homes rather than other types of building, it's that if you keep overall supply throttled enough then you can make massive premiums on any old crap.

Absolutely. And not merely from those who want to be owner/occupiers, but from the ever-expanding rentier class too.

 

[Belushi]

I live in a lovely new housing association shared ownership flat; dual aspect, excellent build quality and design and it's a fairly generous (for a London one bedroom!) 52sq metres. The private 'luxury apartments' that have just been finished next door are single aspect, 8sq metres smaller and cost 22k more than my place.

 

[_angel_]

I could never be a politician because I'd just sit at a housing committee table and keep repeating, "BUILD MORE MORE COUNCIL HOUSES, YOU FUCKERS" until I was removed from the building.

I don't even know if there's a need to build more, in Leeds, when you see the vast amount of empty office and industrial units that could be converted into housing. Why this doesn't happen I don't know.

 

[ska invita]

I don't even know if there's a need to build more, in Leeds, when you see the vast amount of empty office and industrial units that could be converted into housing. Why this doesn't happen I don't know.

because of the role london plays in the national economy which is pulling everyone towards it and not to leeds?

 

[_angel_]

because of the role london plays in the national economy which is pulling everyone towards it and not to leeds?

There's a huge waiting list for council housing in Leeds. I was talking about here.

 

[editor]

I don't even know if there's a need to build more, in Leeds, when you see the vast amount of empty office and industrial units that could be converted into housing. Why this doesn't happen I don't know.

They're never going to be converted into council housing. Not ever.