The Rent Is Too Damn High – Housing is driving the cost of living crisis, with private rents in England the highest ever recorded. That will only change through a struggle of renters against the rentiers.

32 comments

  1. With less and less people being able to save for a deposit, it’ll only get worse. People with money will be the only ones who can afford to buy and they will rent out at “the going rate”. Country is absolutely fucked

  2. I read something a while back about a council putting a max price per square foot. So for example, if capped at say £15 per square foot, a 100 square foot flat would be £1500 a month. Idk if it’d work realistically or what challenges it may face, but I thought it was interesting

  3. The landlords either are in government or have close contacts who are. Until that changes, nothing about the rent situation will. There is just no incentive for it to change.

  4. When even Old Kent Road is piling in heaps, you know the Monopoly is rigged. There is no passing go, no free parking. Just Jails on each corner. Chance is stacked against you and the properties are already all owned.

    Kinda pointless trying, if you think about it. Time for a new game.

  5. Join Acorn if you live in England.

    Living Rent for those in Scotland.

    Not sure about Wales/NI, so somebody please add to this.

    The renter’s unions do some amazing work.

  6. It’s a government putting everyone in to a life of servitude, lining the pockets of their mates. It’s positively Victorian. Fuck the tories.

  7. There needs to be a process that provides renters with greater rights and more affordability (such as rent controls) or to provide greater punitive measures in place to discourage landlordism that cannot be passed on to renters (such as compounding tax for multiple properties).

    Whatever the solution something needs to change in the way our government tackles renting in the UK if it is to address the cost of living crisis.

  8. The big issue I see is with people stuck renting for life what happens when they retire? People can afford high rent while working but how about when they retire and are on a lower income. When people bought property by the time they retire mortgages are paid off and their outgoings are relatively low so they can live on a lower income but that’s not the case if you are stuck renting for life. I can’t help but feel we are facing a massive problem down the line here.

  9. Solution: cap rent as a fraction of minimum wage annual salary and heavily heavily tax second homes. Dismantle the rental industry and resolve everyone to buying. Anyone who rents today can afford a mortgage monthly repayment on the same property.

  11. The irony is , with so many renters unable to heat their homes properly, the landlords will soon have lots of damp properties..

  12. My little Council Flat has mould and energy efficiency issues but god damn I don’t mind when I’m paying half of what I’d pay for private. Hell I’m paying barely more than I used to pay 10 years ago for a room in a shared house. It used to be very common for people to live in social housing then government spin made it taboo and we sold it all off. Yet it is the elderly eating up all available council housing despite decades of opportunity to vote to improve the situation. My local council a few years ago published some stats and almost 90% of the social tenants are elderly in this Tory Safe Seat.

    Renters need more rights. Landlords need to pay more taxes while having a harder time buying properties they won’t live in. Rent rises need to be capped and justified increase only, if it isn’t costing more to rent out then price cannot increase for existing tenant. If we won’t ban Second Homes then Second Homes should not be allowed to be empty for more than 3 months of the year and someone must be living in them for at least 3 months before another empty period. Any Second Home should have increased taxing to fill the hole they create in the local community.

  13. I’m not a conspiracy theorist but I honestly think consecutive government, labour and tory have purposely not replaced any social housing to make the housing crisis what it is to benefit the banks, renters and of course themselves

  14. National rent strike.

    The house I rent was paid for in full by the landlord. They own about 30 properties. They don’t need to increase my rent and more than it already is.

  15. > That will only change through a struggle of renters against the rentiers.

    Where does that statement come from, is there any evidence for it? Would we say the same for the price of cars, bread, petrol, electricity?

    I would rather say that we have a supply problem with housing, and that is driving up the price. Nothing will improve until we increase supply and make housing more affordable. The UK did this in the 60s and 70s, and we could do it again.

  18. a four year Starmer Government in a country where Boris Johnson has shifted the Overton window so incredibly far isn’t going to make a dent on the quality of life for the people of this country.

    We need to go to war. We need to fight back hard.

  19. But what happens when nobody can afford rent anymore? They evict everyone? No one can move in so then what? Where are the gonna get money from if no one can pay the rent?

    I don’t understand where this ends or where it’s going. I have been priced out of many areas now and I just don’t know what to do.

  20. TIL the word rentier exists. Honestly though, I’ll still probably forget it and carry on using landlord.

  21. This isn’t going to get fixed because the number of MP’s across ALL major parties that are landlords is stupidly high.

    In fact the only way this would get fixed is if we swapped MP’s from being allowed to own multiple properties to the US style stock front running their senators can do then the MP’s would get richer but *might* pass policies that help renters.

    Unless a super charismatic celeb creates their own party and does a Macron and fixes this we are all fucked as renters.

  22. Private housing has failed. It will probably never recover. We need hundreds of new non profit housing associations quickly. The rents should be locked to peoples ability to pay. There are now millions in the UK who will never be in a position to buy property in their working life.

    Housing has been allowed to become an investment vehicle for the wealthy. While this might be OK for commercial property it is absolutely NOT OK for family dwellings.

    Housing is for people, it should not be a trading commodity for bankers.

  23. I want to move to a different city for up to 3 years, but we have a mortgage, we were looking to rent our 2 bed flat for **less** than nearby properties – £650 (£800 for one bed nearby) We are high earners so we don’t have a problem to not make any money on the flat, we could even take some losses, just to keep the flat in a good condition for when we come back to it. We pay ~£350 for mortgage, the bank wants to set the rent at minimum 125% of monthly payment, just to be sure _we_ can pay it, so we’re forced to a minimum payment. Everyone blaming big landlords and I get it, I don’t want to be part of the housing problem, so we need also talk how agency driven economy is fucking over everyone:

    * £600 for finding a tenant – which is literally posting an ad because there is high demand – this is for each tenant
    * £200 tenancy continuation fee – when agency extends contract with existing tenant
    * 12% of rent monthly “management and service fee”
    * £500 cleaning fee after a tenant moves out
    * one time £550 flat review
    * £300 annual “letting consent” with property management company

    I’m taking income tax from mortgage payments on me, so I would pay extra and not pass my increased income tax on tenants, the same for all fixes, if microwave breaks, that’s on me, dishwasher, washing+drying machine and TV included in rent. With all the fees included we have to rent it for at least £750 and we would still be losing ~£60 per month, assuming we rent another property in a different city for £750. Changing mortgage product or selling the it would cost me over £6k in current conditions, and that doesn’t include fees from solicitors. When I bough the flat I paid around £2k for them to give me report “roof might or might not contain asbestos” and location of the flat was incorrect on a map… by fucking 350 meters. Let’s talk about this scam too

  24. Half the boomer generation are covering their costs as buy-to-let barons, it won’t end until the boomer generation are dead.

    The post-war/greatest generation wanted to give their children the life they were deprived of themselves, they handed the boomers boundless opportunity and wealth.

    The boomers are the spoiled brats of history who decided that rather than make way for their own children, they’d just keep it all for themselves instead and steal as much from the younger generations as they can to feed their own greed.

    Boomers are the first generation in recorded history to experience a better quality-of-life than their own children, an objective failure of a generation.

    We’ll be deciding their care budgets in a decade or so though. Karma will prevail.

  26. The answer lies in preventing the situation where mortgage lenders don’t lend to people who are already paying rent, and therefore by definition can afford a mortgage.

    It is within the power of the government and lenders to sort this one out.

  27. A really deep issue with this is how low quality new housing is. We have built some new housing and we need to build a lot more (since we refuse to allocate it more sensibly) to get out of this mess. But I wouldn’t touch any of it with a bargepole. Between shitty materials, small sizes, lack of gardens or parking, inflated prices and Grenfell (plus likely 10 other life threatening hidden flaws we haven’t found yet) no sane person can buy a new build…

  28. Tories don’t do social housing. The last 30 years have proved that. If you want government aided housing and building projects we need a new government.

    Ive heard people say that Europeans don’t own their own houses they just rent. Their landlords probably don’t squeeze them for every penny.

  29. I’m honestly more surprised that cost of living protests haven’t become more frequent, more destructive and more violent.

  30. I’d just like to point out that Tokyo isn’t only cheaper because you can rent small flats there. It’s way cheaper per area. As an [example](https://suumo.jp/chintai/jnc_000073126637/?bc=100275315649), you can get a flat that’s 50m^2 and ~~20~~ about 40 minutes from the centre of Tokyo for less than £800. I wonder how much something similar would cost in London.

    Edit: Fixed time. Funnily enough it’s still pretty good value

  31. Wonder at which point people will just stop paying bills and mortgage and rent. Goto a line with all this. Its like the government is ignoring it all and just hopi g within a short space of time it will pass. Just like partygate.

  32. What exactly is my rent paying for, the small amount of maintenance that still gets botched? The rest of the money is just being pocketed by someone far richer than I will every be.

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