The Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle has secured time for a debate in the House of Commons about private rental housing problems.
Mr Russell-Moyle, who represents Brighton Kemptown, is due to open the debate next Thursday (3 November).
He is co-sponsor of the debate with the Conservative MP for Dover, Natalie Elphicke. The pair obtained the support of 30 other cross-party MPs to enable their request for a debate to be given consideration.
Mr Russell-Moyle chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Renters and Rental Reform.
On hearing that the application for a debate had been granted, he appealed for renters to email his office on lloyd@russell-moyle.co.uk to share their stories.
He said: “It’s clear renters are being evicted so landlords can charge more rent.
“We are seeing rental inflation of over 20 per cent in parts of the country and unless we get a grip of this problem there will be a wave of homelessness coming out of the private rented sector.
“Speaking to colleagues, I know some local authorities are increasing homelessness provision by seven-fold in preparation for the ongoing affordability crisis which is being driven by greed.
“The government has been sitting on a white paper to reform the private sector for months now and we need to see legislation brought forward to ban no-fault evictions and regulate rental increases.
“The debate on Thursday will be the chance to highlight injustices faced by renters and to propose solutions that can work for everyone.”
Mr Russell-Moyle is due to open the debate and a government minister is expected to respond.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle thinks by making it impossible for landlords to evict tenants and to put up rents more and more landlord will stay in and or enter the rental market.
I’m not sure why he thinks this but this is not the case and thousands of landlords have sold up in the city as they are frightened that due to the ban of no fault evictions they will not be able to evict tenants.
All that is happening and will happen is the poor people in his constituency will be replaced by people from London who wish to buy and move here as the population is growing and the demand is high to live in the City.
So unless you have been given scarce Brighton social housing it will be like many areas of London most people cannot afford to rent in.
So LRM appeals for renters to contact him and share their stories, which will of course be horrific (why else would they enail him), and will be extrapolated as respresentative of the entire rental market. Note how he hasn’t asked landlords to contact him to address their concerns.
I’m all for raising standards, but the direction of travel is forcing landlords to sell up or into the lightly regulated (and more profitable) Airbnb model. Inevtiably, the availability of rental properties will be further restricted and will eventually collapse.
Poor landlords, not allowed to kick people out for no reason.
I had two tenants who threatened me after they broke the bath and I asked them to pay for it. They had two months notice to find another home . You would get nowhere near my property.
This MP must have a very small brain. How on earth can he think that the answer to a shortage of rental property is to try and make the lives of landlords even more difficult so in effect they can never regain their property or put up rents?
Will this a) encourage more landlords into the rental market or
b) Make them think there is too much to to lose if we continue renting our property as will end up with sitting tenants paying peanuts when inflation is at 10% a year. Best to sell instead or leave the property empty.
Landlords are not charities. They are not going to give their £300,000 properties to tenants rather than sell them.
Dilettante & amateur landlords with just one building/flat who have buy to let mortgages are not reliable providers of homes. They buy & sell randomly as inflation/interest rates affect their profit.
Portfolio landllords who build over decades and are mortgage-free seek stable income more reliably & tend to have retainers for maintenance. THAT is what legislation should favour. They provide longer term tenancies (usually). My mother lived in one such for 50 years and when the (Italian) matriarch died, the portfolio stayed in the family and my mother stayed in her apartment til she died.
Those types of landlords tend to favour blocks of flats which in Brighton are not really being built much. The legislation does already favour these types of landlord regardless from a tax perspective.
Similar legislation has already reduced the number of properties available in Scotland. Bring it on I say fewer students will Brighton a happier place.