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.

Video advice on rights of private tenants

Community Legal Advice has produced a video on how to deal with rent problems.  It’s signed using BSL, but has a voice over as well.  It’s a great starting point on what to do if you’re having problems.

Housing benefit pushes up rents for the private tenant

A great analysis by Burning our money shows how housing benefit pushes up rents across the whole rental sector:

The Local Housing Allowance, because it is based on the median rent, is creating an ever-rising floor for rental rates that is completely disconnected from local incomes. If you’re a landlord, why would you rent for anything less than the LHA even if 50% of local workers don’t have the incomes to pay the LHA rents?

It’s free money. As landlords raise their rents to the LHA level, when the rates are recalculated each year, the lower 50% of the distribution has been truncated so the median will be progressively higher and higher following each round of recalculation. At the same time, because the government is guaranteeing landlords an above market rent, it drives up property prices and prices people who are actually working out of the housing market.”