Islington Green Party is glad, but also saddened, to hear that MP Jeremy Corbyn intends to bring a Private Member’s Bill to Parliament to try to tackle the crisis in the private rental sector.
We agree that there’s an urgent need to address the worsening situation for people renting privately, but it’s shameful that when the Labour Party had the chance to deal with this during its 13 years in government, it instead actively encouraged the crazy housing bubble and resulting increase in property prices.
Now, private renters can rarely save to buy a home and instead are forced to pay a rent allowed to stay high by a lack of government control, often paying it for properties in poor condition, where lack of regulation is failing them again.
Highbury campaigner Charlie Kiss said: “Labour shied away from helping private tenants when it was in power as it was still in awe of the “private is best” mantra. “Now, painfully, it is slowly realising, as others are, that a free market in housing does not produce the outcomes desirable for a functioning cohesive community.”
Mr Corbyn’s planned Private Member’s Bill appears now to be promoting a long-held Green Party policy that rents, contracts and conditions need to be controlled in the private sector.
The Green Party’s fresh and more inclusive approach to housing also includes support for a massive programme of investment in public housing, an end to subsidies for empty properties and second homes and a rebalancing of housing to focus on homes for people rather than just opportunities for developers, investment and profits.