Petitioners plan to ask the council to support their campaign for rent controls by lobbying the new Labour government.
The Living Rent Campaign started a petition which was signed by almost 1,800 people and is due to be debated at a Brighton and Hove City Council meeting this week.
The campaigners are calling for rent controls on private homes and for more social housing to be let at living rents.
The petition, on the Change.org website, said that private rents for a three-bedroom flat in Brighton and Hove were about £1,700 a month and the average take-home wage about £2,250 a month.
The petition said: “Private renting is unaffordable for many households yet, since 1989, when fair rent tenancies were replaced, national governments of all parties have been committed to ‘free market rents’.
“It could be different. Other countries in Europe have rent controls, lower rents and better-quality homes to rent.”
The petition also said: “Over two million council homes have been lost through the ‘right to buy’.”
The campaigners want on the council to write to ministers asking them to give councils the power to cap and reduce rents.
They also want the government to provide grants to councils to provide more homes at living rents and end the “right to buy”.
In Brighton and Hove, the Living Rent campaign, co-ordinated by former Green councillor David Gibson, has staged protests outside council meetings, including creating a bedroom outside Hove Town Hall.
The petition is due to be debated at a meeting of the full council at Hove Town Hall on Thursday (11 July). The meeting is scheduled to start at 4.30pm and to be webcast on the council’s website.
Everywhere there are rent controls there is a shortage of rental properties. Landlords get out of the market and new ones don’t come forward. Since rent controls were brought in in Scotland the number of properties available has dropped and rents increased at each term renewal. No new rental property has been built as the private sector now will not build on these terms. State interference never helps. The state should build social housing for people who need it not palm off responsibility to the private sector.
Works all over Europe. Are you saying there is some reason that the UK is different?
Property cheaper/ more land / less people. But even there it is changing.
Also a very different culture towards home ownership. We’re quite obsessed with the idea in comparison.
Can you name examples of where?
If you want cheaper rents you need cheaper bank loans …
Money is borrowed to pay for the property
Also tax has to be paid (council, income, NI and employers NI )
Insurance has to be paid.
Various inspections have to done and paid for (fire, gas, electric etc)
Maintenance costs have increased.
All of this from the rent before any profit….
The campaigners have the wrong aim. What they should be campaigning for is more social housing. If rent caps happen first, then the number of homes to rent will plummet. How can that be good for renters?
If the campaigners need convincing then they should try putting themselves in a landlord shoes. I was asked to help a friend build a business case to start renting last year. When we looked at the price to buy a flat and then how much rent it would get it made no sense to become a landlord. They didn’t start and many other landlords seem to be quitting.
The only solution in my humble opinion, is to build lots more social housing.
I think that is a very reasonable opinion. Simple supply versus demand is the key issue at the moment in Brighton. Just looking at the housing waiting list, last time I saw it, the figures were about 7,000 people waiting.
And social housing doesn’t free up very often, few hundred a year. I think greater accessibility to senior housing schemes is an important aspect as well to encourage freeing up social housing.
My housing association treats me better than a private landlord – not perfect, but good situation.
A young single mother I know has to move out of her place, & find somewhere else. Who is helping that family?
Is political power just to get more money personally, or to help the poorest, because it’s right?
High rents, domestic or otherwise, are largely down to greed and in the case of the former, to a knowledge that those desperately needing accommodation will pay nearly anything – which amounts to the same thing.
To help bolster our pensions we bought 3 properties about 10 years ago, in low property cost areas of the country where there was some deprivation. Since then we have increased the rents minimally so as to keep good tenants and frankly, because we hate the idea of damaging someone’s finances just so we can live rather better. It really isn’t a difficult choice.
But could you afford to do it now if you had to mortgage those properties ?
Apples and oranges. Try buying a property in Brighton (much higher purchase price) and at current BTL mortgage rates (not the ultra low rates of the last 10 years) and see if you can pull the same trick.
It is somewhat unclear as to what your personal virtue signalling brings to the discussion.
Back in my day, we just called it subjectivity.
It’s not a free market if the supply is so controlled. Build houses and then talk to me about free market rent.
Thing is, there is no incentive for a property owner to ever charge anything but the market rate. Stock is our number one factor here. Central government’s announcement of forcing building if it is deemed critical, might go some ways to developing against NIMBYs complaints.
Well we have a negative birth rate, yet a rapidly expanding population who have to live somewhere.
Indeed, but that is not an incentive to what I mentioned.
The only realistic way to affect the longer term market rate in a positive way for renters would be to increase the stock of social housing. Hopefully the new government will do this. Interventionist policies will likely just reduce the supply of privately rented property which will not be conducive to low rental prices.
I’m curious how hard the new government are going to lean into this central enforcement of building “critical” infrastructure, because that has some big potentials both positively and negatively.
I agree some landlords are greedy but also not all tenants are that great either, so all this will do is stop them renting their properties and possibly go into the more lucrative Airbnb or just give up and sell them altogether.
I am not one, but I know a few – and they are exiting the market. Rental stock now on the open market for any buy to let or residential sale. Buy to let mortgages are too expensive, and the property is expensive. The rental stock will end up in private buyers hands. I think the exception is the rent to students gig as it is normally all inclusive and the deal underwritten by parent’s guarantees. And they do not hang about so there is a natural break in the rent agreement.
Not with the upcoming AirBnB legalisation, registration, taxation, and inspection coming in, if rumours are to be believed. Also, you need a specific mortgage for that as well.
Ah yes but then it will go underground like it already has in New York. Free of all regulation and taxation then ?
Memories of prohibition, huh? I would gently argue that it already is free of regulation and taxation as it is currently, so such a choice of illegal action would have no actual detriment. Also, there are good websites available to scape data of these being advertised, and then you can target the AirBnB and hosting websites whenever they host an unregistered property with a fine, for example.
Many will also just keep properties empty. Many people buy a property and move in with a partner but don’t want to sell incase the relationship breakdowns. I also have a lot of friends who own property here but work abroad and plan to come back here when they stop working. They will just keep properties empty instead of letting them if more legislation starts hitting this sector.
Unfortunately state intervention is often quite blunt and fails to recognize the nuances of what actually happens versus what the soundbite merchants quote. I stand by what I said two days ago at the top of these comments.
That’ll double their council tax according to the current powers, which could help to purchase more social housing. I’m less sympathetic to someone who can afford two properties and keep one empty, and I think it is appropriate that the city discourages empty homes, considering the shortage of stock.