A welfare state for landlords

This essay is very interesting:

In terms of privately rented housing in the last 25 years, the single biggest change in housing law was effected by the Housing Act 1988. This abolished rent control from January 15th 1989 and brought in the Assured Shorthold Tenancy, the most common form of private rental agreement today. Its impact and knock on effects have been enormous. Problems with high rents, inflated housing benefit levels, high levels of tenant debt lack of security and summary repossession all derived from this piece of legislation.

And the problem of median rents isn’t even mentioned.