He promised that cities would be given the power to control rents, and his advisers indicated that he wanted to go further than a pre-election promise to limit rent rises to the inflation rate. “Rent controls exist in many cities across the world and I want our cities to have those powers too and tenants to have those protections,” Corbyn said.
Assar Lindbeck: “next to bombing, rent control seems in many cases to be the most efficient technique so far known for destroying cities”
Labour sources said the party would be looking at models of rent control in cities across the world as part of a review, and said the property market was “dysfunctional”.
If you think it’s dysfunctional now you just wait until there’re rent controls.
Does no one remember how bloody difficult it was to rent a place when we had rent controls in the 70s and early 80s?
From a Parliament report:
The application of rent controls coincided with a decline in the private rented sector. The
sector had made up nine-tenths of the housing stock in 1915 but had reduced to onetenth
by 1991. Rent control has been widely identified as a factor in this decline; it is
argued that there is a direct correlation between reduced rental returns and reduced
investment in the sector.
A generation ago this would be a ticket for electoral oblivion. These days? I am not so sure. The population has changed. Part of it has literally changed – the voters are much more vibrant these days and often come from places where this would be right-wing counter-revolutionary heresy. Part of it has been the decline of things like the Methodists who did not have any truck with this sort of nonsense.
So maybe it won’t be a winning ticket this election. But it will be soon enough. You import Mexicans, you get Mexican politics. Or in our case, Samuel Doe’s.
this cunt should be dangling from a gibbet for his support of the ira and islamic terrorists. His economic plan of free unicorns for everyone is very popular with the gullible halfwits that infest the uk like a plague.
I really really want them to actually introduce rent controls just to see the catestrophic fall-out from it, and to find that I charge my tenants less than the controlled limit.
@moqifen: I like to think there aren’t that many to vote him in, but as SMFS points out, the UK has changed.
“Rent controls exist in many cities across the world…”
And have been universally disasterous.
But isn’t this just magic thinking? We like rent controls. Because we like them they must be good. Because they are good, they must work. They exist in many cities so there is precendent for our good policy. So we should do likewise. It’ll be great.
It isargued that there is a direct correlation between reduced rental returns and reduced investment in the sector.
No shit, Sherlock.
Reducing the private share of rentals is a feature to them, not a bug.
He’s just continuing the long and inglorious Labour party tradition of buying votes from the poor while knifing them in the back.
If you wanted to increase poverty, you’d be hard pressed to find a set of policies that worked better than those espoused by Labour since forever.
Bloke in Wales nailed it.
No further comment necessary.
SMFS/Julia–Which is why the vote needs to be removed from the RoP and Subsahara as rapidly as possible. And of course zero new arrivals.
The scum of the left have been importing voters long enough.
Were I PM it would be done in the first week along with the mass sacking (sans compo and pension) of the Senior Civil Service and the instant closure of the BBC.
What Matthew says. They don’t want a private sector in anything; they can’t have people expressing free will outside State control as it all starts going to rat shit.
Bloke in Wales
“If you wanted to increase poverty, you’d be hard pressed to find a set of policies that worked better than those espoused by Labour since forever.”
Quite so. The ultimate aim of socialism is equality, not prosperity or poverty-reduction. As long as everyone is equally poor, socialists are satisfied, because equality trumps all other political values for socialists.
“it is argued that ”
What kind of mealy mouthed crap is this?
Stop pussy footing about and assert the truth of basic human nature: investment WILL fall until the rate of return becomes sensible again. Thus, reduce returns and you WILL reduce investment. It’s not “linked”: it is a direct and unavoidable cause.
This piece from the BBC describes the reality of rent controls in Stockholm:
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160517-this-is-one-city-where-youll-never-find-a-home
Control rents?
Control the pool of politicians from which MPs can be elected?
Control the utilities?
Control the trains?
I can dimly see a pattern emerging here….
@Clarissa – I suspect the growth of Muslim ghettos and the ever-increasing risk of getting raped on the way home from work will sort out the supply/demand imbalance in Stockholm in the long term.
As Matthew L says, killing off the private rental sector is the goal. Then the courageous state can provide Grenfell Towers for everyone.
See also: the founding of the NHS.
The attraction of rent controls is to the middle classes, not the working classes, whatever Corbyn et all might say otherwise.
It allows the middle classes to get their hands on, and hold forever, the desirable housing in desirable areas they feel entitled to because they are middle class, and would otherwise have no chance of getting near because they can’t afford it.