The rental vote is up for grabs

One definition of madness is when you repeat the same actions over and over again, expecting a different result. By that definition, the coalition government is insane. It looks determined to have learned nothing and forgotten everything about the causes of the property and financial bubble and crash.

So George Osborne decided to introduce the Help to Buy scheme which is, as Albert Edwards, Head of Global Strategy at Société Générale described it, “truly… a moronic policy.”

It is not just appalling economics, but a matter of bad politics, too. Shelter recently published an opinion poll which found that 66% of the Scottish public don’t want house prices to rise.

And polling by ComRes for the campaigning organisation Generation Rent found that 35% of people in the private rented sector described themselves as floating voters who could cast their votes on the basis of the parties’ housing manifestos. There are 16 London seats in the 86 ‘private renter marginals’ they have highlighted and of the full list, 38 are currently Conservative, 32 are Labour and 15 are Lib Dem. The Green Party’s seat in Brighton is also threatened.

That’s 53 parliamentary seats currently held by the coalition which could fall to Labour.

But until now no party, including Labour, has taken the growing number of renters seriously enough. Yes, Labour commissioned the Rugg and Rhodes review of private renting but never got around to implementing the (very modest) recommendations. And, since coming to power, the coalition government has said that it does not intend to introduce regulation in the sector, pointing instead to the existing range of available powers under consumer protection legislation. New regulations, apparently, would “introduce too much additional red tape”.

Private renting now accounts for 17% of households and has just overtaken social housing. That means nine million people in England rent their homes, one third of them families. In London, absolutely brimming with marginal seats, the percentage of households renting is now over 50%. And they are not happy campers, which may explain why there is a housing crisis in the capital according to 82% of Londoners, as prices climb ever higher.

The dice are utterly loaded in favour of existing home owners and speculators. If you are a PAYE worker, you purchase your property out of your taxed income. You cannot “offset” the cost of mortgage interest, whereas buy-to-let investors, speculators and wannabe Rackmans are allowed to offset mortgage interest costs against the rent and other expenses. And first time buyers, stretched to the limit with house prices already beyond insane, do not get tax breaks when buying furniture, so why do landlords get this benefit? Landlords can even claim the cost of storage for their cheap furniture if a tenant brings their own,

This is why first-time buyers are in such a lose-lose situation. They pay huge slices of their income in rent, to landlords who often outbid them to purchase the very properties they cannot afford to buy, and are unable to save for a deposit. Interest for savers is pitiful in any case.

What can Labour do? Well, to start with. it must commit to introducing strict and enforceable regulations for private landlords and lettings agencies In the last government, Labour proposed full mandatory regulation of private sector letting and managing agents. It must commit to implementing this.

And why not follow the Newham example? It is now against the law for any landlord to rent out a property in Newham without a licence. Or take note that in Scotland, since 2012, all tenant charges, other than rent and a refundable deposit, are illegal.

We also need rent controls. After a long post-war period of an unregulated market, the Rent Act of 1977 gave tenants greater rights and stability, and local authority officers had some powers in setting maximum rents. This ended in 1988 when the Thatcher government, convinced the private rented sector had become too restricted, abolished all controls.

Yes, it would be controversial but there are various ways that rent controls could work. For example, why not pledge to peg rent increases so they can’t go above the rate of inflation?

Labour should also promise to introduce longer tenancies which offer genuine security, and bring to an end ‘no-fault’ evictions, where a landlord can evict a tenant at the end of the lease, usually because they reckon (probably correctly) that they can get more rent from someone else, a practice Labour London Assembly member Tom Copley described as “indefensible”.

It is not Marxist to suggest that private tenants should be less insecure and should benefit from acceptable physical standards. We face a housing crisis now. Politically, as well as morally, there are huge numbers of people in Britain  who would look beyond home ownership and support a party that stops rental rip-offs.