“The response at the time from the government was that they were keen to reduce the ‘burden of regulation’ on landlords, and were dead set against giving councils powers which would enable them to address these concerns.”

All too many landlords seem to think that being a landlord just means free money. I and almost everyone I know who rents at some time have had an experience where basic services weren’t offered (my friend still has a gaping hole in his ceiling that drips water onto his bed from 3 months ago and I’ve just got the warm water back in my shower after 6 months without).

If you want to make money from rent it’s not just a case of lending your house to someone… being a landlord is a JOB and you have to keep your side of the deal.

Tom,

Since you have a contract, if it is the landlord’s responsibility to do something and they are in breach of contract, stop paying them (although have the money ready for when the work is done). I have no idea if this is legal, but it is morally correct.

However, having actually had good landlords (one even cut the grass, despite the fact that was on my side of the duties…) can I remind people they do exist, and would probably welcome a sensible measure so long as it did not cost them. If it does, that cost is going onto the renters anyway.

Incidentally, the Housing Minister made this announcement – has it been agreed by parliament? If not, how does this agree with the campaign of local action, that it is not voted upon by our locally elected representatives?

Hi watchman,

“However, having actually had good landlords (one even cut the grass, despite the fact that was on my side of the duties…) can I remind people they do exist, and would probably welcome a sensible measure so long as it did not cost them.”

Good point – in my experience, the good landlords are some of the ones who get most frustrated by the current situation – they put lots of effort in to keeping their properties looking nice and helping their tenants, while others just care about the rent cheque and couldn’t care less.

That’s why voluntary regulation schemes didn’t work – the landlords that signed up are the ones who didn’t need regulating anyway.

It might be that as the centre decays, some ministers are getting stuff through that has been blocked by the neocon/neolib control freaks of No.10/No.11 throughout the long years of NuLab.

There’s stuff on this in Chris Mullin’s diary “A View from the Foothills”, where one of the few things he hoped to be able to do as a lowly junior minister at Prescott’s Department of Environment, Transport & the Regions was to crack down on the easy money being poured out of government via housing benefit to unscrupulous large scale buy-to-let landlords. This was in 1999.

Whether 10 years + (or 7 years in your case), frankly I think it’s all been too long to wait for what are mild & moderate reforms. The wrong people have been in charge all this time.

There’s a different social issue on buy-to-let, which I would like to bring up. In cities with a housing shortage, it is almost de rigeur now for some in the 30/40/50-something professional classes to have 2, 3 or more rental properties in their portfolio to supplement their income, whilst the 20 somethings behind them are denied any foothold onto the so-called housing ladder. So their earnings are going in rent as a subsidy to their preceding generation. People talk about problems for first-time buyers in terms of the banks/credit crunch etc, but there is also the simple issue of landlord-speculators hoarding all the stock. The only way into home ownership (the only ticket going to some kind of security in your old age in this stupid society) is to inherit. Hence the decline in social mobility already being observed, will just get worse & worse.

This isn’t the greatest injustive in British society, but what interests me is that the people on the receiving end are the young & energetic and I just can’t understand why they aren’t getting radicalised by this.

Strategist,

I think the answer is in the issue of perception of rights over property (wierdly I commented on a parallel discussion on this on a liberatarian blog earlier). People accept ownership is total, and will not accept that the state can interfere. The buy-to-let problem is the same as holiday home problems in rural areas, but I can’t see an easy solution to it other than building lots of cheap housing (maybe an answer for council housing, but councils are rarely great landlords in my experience). Perhaps strengthening tenants rights to an extent where it is less attractive to be a landlord – maybe ensuring that tenants only pay rent if the landlord has complied with the contract or certain responsibilities (i.e. carrying into law my suggestion in 2. above) would deal with the problem: landlords could therefore not make money out of substandard housing. We can’t impose charges, as landlords, already holding the supply of housing, would simply pass the cost onto tenants, who have no alternative suppliers – my concern about the scheme Don supports incidentally.

I’m not convinced this reflects how you need to campaign in the fast paced, 2.0 world. Surely the real reason for this success is due to the clever application of social media? Social media is how you campaign these days not via “meetings” – ugh! Don’s anecdote just doesn’t reflect how modern, vibrant people campaign in the modern world. It must have involved a hashtag somehow. Or maybe a Facebook group.

@6

I can’t work out whether you’re being all groovy and postmodernistically ironic or what.

Personally I don’t think you can beat a good old-fashioned face-to-face meeting. Sure, tweet away after it and set up a facebook group/event promoting it, even invite all of your 1000+ myspace friends along. But for community issues (and even national ones, for that matter) I don’t think you can get a better idea of what’s what than actually *talking* (remember that? it’s what we did before txt…) and bouncing ideas/arguments around. Don’t forget a LOT of people don’t have/care for so-called “social media”, at least outside London anyway…

oh and @6 again: sorry if you were being ironic. I’m tired and it never translates well across the internet :/

@5 “People accept ownership is total, and will not accept that the state can interfere.”

Although you could do lots through quite minor tweaks to the tax regime.
But there’s a lot in the saying that the one thing the British hate more than being taxed on their earned income is being taxed on their unearned income.

For the record: yes, I was being ironic.