An interesting point about the licensing of private landlords:

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An idea that is (sort of) national policy for the Labour Party. Here's Ben Reeve-Lewis (not exactly a natural pal of rapacious private rental sector (PRS) landlords):

...if you go down the strict, blanket licensing route, you can forget building a partnership approach with the PRS community.

Whereas the social lettings agency route is based on building bridges and understanding, the licensing approach is a blunt tool that I would argue damages more than it helps...

Councils need PRS landlords more than they need councils and to entice them over we need to offer a hell of a package that will work for the PRS community.  And in the working of it, councils will find it easier to police what is going on.

Ben goes on to say that the selective licensing approach (which we have - to Bradford's leadership's credit - twice voted down at full council) damages the relationship between the PRS and Councils to the detriment of the market and one assumes the tenants.

Ben concludes by despairing at the killing off of partnership approaches to lettings and the impact of the licensing approach championed by Newham Council:

The damage caused to schemes that are trying to build bridges and work with the PRS carries further than the borough boundaries of Newham and confirms endemic fears of many in the landlord community that councils are simply looking on the PRS as a huge cash cow.

Battle lines are beginning to get drawn and personally, I predict a civil war between town halls and the PRS if blanket licensing becomes the idea virus that it is threatening to become.

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Shelter should be supporting the private rental sector not trying to regulate it to death

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In an egregious piece of research (in every sense of the word), Shelter claimed - more or less - that private landlords were killing children:

Shelter’s research, released today, based on a YouGov survey carried out in November last year of 4,327 adults in England living in the private rented sector, found 44 per cent of the respondents said their child would have a better childhood if they had a more stable home.

Well not quite killing children. And not even half of the respondents either. Indeed it is true that many people living in private rented property, just like many living in the social housing sector, would have wished for a more stable place to bring up the children. However, it simply does not justify the over-the-top comments from the big Shelter boss:

Shelter’s chief executive Campbell Robb said the findings of its report Growing up renting proved ‘that today’s volatile rental market is simply not fit for purpose’.

Now I don't wish to be boring here but what Shelter are doing (egged on by the Labour Party and local council leaders who really should know better) is mounting an attack on private landlords. The idea that private landlords would prefer to kick out a tenant after six months is arrant nonsense - the volatility is mostly down to the tenants not the landlords.

If these idiots from Shelter (and the Labour Party) get their national register of landlords - doubtless under the aegis of a new regulatory body, OfRent or whatever - the result will be to raise rents, reduce supply and exacerbate housing problems in places such as London. Instead of damning landlords with exaggerated claims of their evil nature, Mr Robb should be supporting the private rental sector, helping it to meet the complicated and varied needs of people needing housing.

But then that wouldn't get a headline, would it?

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Housing quality vs housing supply?

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While part of me welcomes this sort of initiative, it does seem also that it will do precisely nothing to address the housing challenges especially in London:

‘All landlords should be licensed and required to raise the quality of their homes to the decent home standard required by the Department for Communities and Local Government.

‘If they are unable to do so, they should hand over long-term management of their property to a social letting agency in return for a fixed, lower rate of return. The social lettings agency could raise funds on the open market, allocate on the basis of need and have a more supportive, community-based relationship with their tenants.’

We need to decide whether we care more about housing quality or about housing supply. We can't address both at the same time.

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Should Bradford's Labour councillors stand on their (housing) principles...

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At a recent Bradford Council meeting, a dozen or so Labour councillors declared interests as landlords (for completeness three Conservative councillors and one Green did likewise). The sight of this made us grin a little - socialists as a new rentier class!

However, there's a serious point to be made here about the housing debate. Bradford's Labour councillors are adamant that we are facing a "housing crisis" in the City and that we desperately need "affordable" housing for the vast hordes of future Bradfordians. As a result Cllr Slater, the housing and planning lead is adamant that "middle-class" objectors to greenfield housing development must be slapped down:

And Councillor Val Slater conceded she and other councillors will be locking horns with “middle class” protesters as the battles rage over where to build the 45,500 homes said to be needed by 2028. 

So why then are those rent earning labour councillors not playing their part? After all Cllr Malik, chair of the corporate scrutiny committee doesn't just own one or two houses:

 At Premier Housing we have been providing quality rental properties for over 20 years. Whether you are a student or a professional we have an ever expanding portfolio of quality, studios, flats and houses, you can be certain that we will find a property that suits your needs.

You could ask why Cllr Malik doesn't stand on his socialist principles and provide some of that "affordable" housing?  Or is this what is meant by affordability:

He (Cllr Malik) is one of two directors of Premier Housing (Bradford) Ltd who, along with the company itself, were fined a total of £34,000 by the courts earlier this year.

The firm has a portfolio of rented flats in Bradford, Leeds, Halifax and Liverpool and was taken to court by Liverpool Council over 41/43 Holt Road, Liverpool, for eight offences under the Houses in Multiple Occupation legislation.

The charges described the flats above a shop as rat-infested and poorly-converted.

The company re-appeared in court for six similar offences relating to flats in Laburnum Road, Liverpool. 

Not much evidence of caring for the poor but that's not really my point here - why don't those Labour councillors rent their properties out to the poor at affordable rents rather than argue for the rest of us (who don't earn rents) to pay more taxes so as to pay the higher rates of housing benefit needed to pay those higher market rents?

And here's another idea - Cllr Slater lives in a large three or four bedroomed house in Bingley (about ten miles or so from her 'deprived' ward). Just her and her husband. Why isn't she doing something to help with this "housing crisis" she's invented by renting out those spare rooms?

But then I remembered! The thing about socialism is that it's not about people actually doing caring things to help less fortunate folk. Such activity is patronising and to be stopped - the state through taxes will provide what those folk need! And Cllr Slater can sit in her comfortable home in a pleasant market town secure in the knowledge that she has forced those pesky taxpayers to cough up for subsidising affordable housing.

Taxpayers like the one who wrote to me recently:

"My full army and OAP adds up to £14,590 of which I pay almost £1,000 tax."

These are the "middle classes" that Cllr Slater is so disparaging about. This is the lie of her ostentatious socialism - condemning decent, hard-working folk to virtual penury while lecturing us about how we don't care because we don't support higher taxes and more government.

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Is there really a housing crisis?

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I'm just not sure how much of a problem we actually do have. For sure in London and some parts of the South East, rents and income have diverged - to the point where their affordability is open to question.

But the "there aren't enough houses" crisis - this would suggest rapidly rising rents everywhere. Which doesn't seem to be the case:

Private rents in England and Wales fell for the first time in 10 months in November, according to the latest buy-to-let index from property services firm LSL.

Average rent dropped by 0.4 per cent to £717 month, down from October’s figure of £720 per month. It is the first time there has been a month-on-month fall since January.

OK there are seasonal factors and rents have risen in some regions - but this doesn't suggest that, right this minute, there's a crisis level shortage of housing.

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So we don't need to build more houses, do we?

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Rents in London and the South East are climbing through the roof. Market rents in the City are already beyond the means of most working people and continue to climb:

The cost of renting a property in London has reached a record high, despite the continuing economic slowdown.

 According to research from tenant referencing service HomeLet, the average rental price in the capital went over the £1,200 barrier for the first time ever.

In August, tenants paid an average of £1,202 compared with £1,154 the previous month.

The figures show a 12.2 per cent month-on-month rise in rental prices, while average tenant salary in Greater London rose by just 2.4 per cent.

The South East needs more houses yet the sclerotic planning system, the stolid banks and the idiot government (local and national) conspire to make it ever harder an ever more expensive to develop and ever more difficult to rent.

At the same time rents in the social housing sector (council houses and housing association lets) average about £330 - little more that 25% of the market rent. The scale of subsidy this represents is astonishing and demonstrates the difficulties with getting an effective rental market in a city where over half the properties for rent are in the social sector and in receipt of a massive subsidy determined by the property rather than by the earnings of the person(s) living in the property.

These figures - and a similar picture will be played out across the south east and in cities such as Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham - represent a huge challenge. If we fail to realise that subsidy isn't the most efficient way to manage a housing market where a great deal of the tenure is rental, we will find ourselves with an escalating problem of homelessness, default and housing debt from unaffordable rents rather than unaffordable mortgage risk.

And yes we do need to make it a lot easier for developers to build houses - this needs a sensible discussion about how to protect the 'green belt' rather than the "build the houses in the grotty industrial bits where the poor people live" approach pioneered by the CPRE.

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