The Guardian‘s “social affairs correspondent”, Richard Booth, has written an article with the title “Five things that could help fix Britain’s private rented sector”. By “fix” he must mean “fix its current problems in stone”, because, with the possible exception of the first, every one of them would make yet more landlords run for the exits while they still have the chance.
An astonishing number of people think it is a good argument to say at this point, “Aha, but the houses would still exist, so landlords selling up would be good for the tenants because they could buy them”. There is indeed often a temporary glut of houses for sale just before laws such as Mr Booth advocates are passed, which is like winning the lottery for the people rich enough to buy at that moment. Then the door closes for decades. The great majority of tenants cannot afford to buy the houses they are renting and most would not want to even if they could. They are students, or people on temporary contracts, or people happy to do a fast-paced job in the big city while they are young but who never had any intention of settling there forever. Rent control and legal “protection” for these tenants is nice for one generation of them, a disaster for those who come after.
Then again, a return to the days of yore when most people lived and died within a few miles of where they were born can seem quite a charming prospect to those who think that it will not apply to them. And there is no doubt that an end to all this social mobility would be very eco-friendly.
“Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city except for bombing”
– Assar Lindbeck
Interesting that the photo shows a row of nice semis, making you think that’s the sort of property the maligned tenants live in. Far more likely to be the slumblock at the left of the photo.
The flat I live in is above a shop – how could I buy that? Similarly, the flat I let out is also above a shop that I let out. How could my tenant buy that? If my landlord was forced out of the landlording market, they are highly likely to just knock the flat through to the shop and leave it as storage – just as with most of the shop/flat combos around where I live.
UM, property rights? If you want security, buy your own bloody house.
I think the only protection renters should have is a fair notice period.
Maybe net zero immigration might ease our housing shortage?
#1 was the one I didn’t believe, because the Guardian’s man said something that would actually work. Namely, increasing the number of houses built by relaxing or removing planning controls.
Of course, by suggesting options #2 to #5, rent control and reducing the landlords’ rights to remove problem tenants and even cripple their ownership rights over their own property, he pretty much ensures none of the new houses built as a result of #1 are going into the rental sector.
Still, 1 out of 5 correct is way above the Grauniad’s usual strike rate, so baby steps…
Yes Perry – Assar Lindbeck is correct.
As with so many demands for interventions, price controls, minimum wage laws, occupational licensing, and so on, the following question comes up….
“Do they really not understand the basic laws of economics, of supply and demand – or are they deliberately seeking to do harm?”
With some of the people who pushed interventionist policies in the United States, such as Saul Alinsky (who inspired Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama) and the husband and wife team of “Cloward and Piven” (who were proud of trying to increase the number of people dependent on government benefits or other government dependent income – in order to undermine “capitalist” society), they did harm – and they INTENDED to do harm.
It is most likely that the Guardian, with its long record of supporting evil – such as Stalin, the murderer of millions of human beings, in the 1930s – INTENDS to do harm in this article (as in so many of the articles in it pages), but even if it had noble intentions – violating the basic laws of economics, of supply and demand, can only do harm.
And, of course, government benefits to pay rents pushes up rents – just as government paying tuition fees with “loans” pushes up tuition fees.
But there are two more factors to be considered…
Firstly there is the vast expansion of Credit-Money – this money goes into assets, such as property, hence asset price inflation.
There is also the matter of the vast increase in POPULATION – almost all by mass migration.
Around ten million more people since 1997 (Mr Blair’s policy of mass migration has continued under the Conservatives – whether one believes that the various Prime Ministers from Cameron onwards, lied when they promised to end mass immigration, of whether elected governments are powerless in the face of the officials and the courts, is a matter of debate).
The land has not grown, the population has grown, so the price of accommodation has increased – and, no, turning England into a vast housing estate will not help.
Contrary to the figures cited by so many clever people in London, lots-and-lots of houses have been built – as anyone who has eyes to see (eyes – to see the land, not just computer screens), can tell you. Sometimes the new houses do get counted even for Parliamentary and local boundaries – but then London officials think all sorts of odd things – for example they think the village of Isham, in walking distance of this house (it is between the towns of Kettering and Wellingborough – presently it is in the Wellingborough Constituency), is in Daventry. Daventry is a town on the other side of the county – I doubt whether many of the people in Isham have ever been there – there is no reason for them to go there.
Hard to trust the knowledge of officials and “experts”, on Covid or temperature figures – or anything really, when they tell me that the houses I see being built in every town I visit (all over England) do-not-exist, and that villages I can walk to are part of a town on the other side of the county (which will be a shock to the people who live in such villages at election time – or if they try to contact their Member of Parliament).
They don’t need five things, they need one thing, the first one on the list. Lift the grossly burdensome restrictions and limitations on house building, then there will be more homes, more private landlords, and all the other problems will quickly go away. If there is competition, tenants have bargaining power. Section 21? No big deal, I’ll easily go somewhere else. Ban on benefits recipients? No problem that landlord specializes in those types of rentals. Bad electrical? Fix it or I’ll move down the street. Wanna keep your five cats — that landlord specializes in pet friendly rentals.
The problem with housing is government interference, not a lack of government interference.
“Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city except for bombing”
– Assar Lindbeck
Lindbeck lived in a quaint old time that the third option wasn’t well known. I think today this should be modified to “Rent control and defunding the police appear to be the most efficient technique presently know to destroy a city except for bombing.” Of course in those quaint old times the idea of “Defund the police” was so ridiculous we might as well have warned of the dangers of a Godzilla rising from the sea to destroy Tokyo.
Just about every city, town and village has had housing estates built around them. Blocks of flats built in towns and cities.
Then the door closes for decades.
I think we can now clock up a whole century. I recall reading not long ago that Paris introduced rent control round about the end of WW1, and net-net no accommodation for rent has been built since.
So, in essence, a “15 minute city”.
And they say there is no joined up thinking …
#6 should be “one new unit of housing must be built for every two immigrants allowed to enter the country. Immigration must be limited as needed should this new housing not be in current development.”
Shouldn’t this also be implemented for movement between cities? If you want to move to another city, you have to wait until there is enough housing available.
It doesn’t seem to me like this should be necessary. If there are many immigrants entering the country who want housing, then more will be built. If prices are too high, fewer people will immigrate.
That’s where it falls down. Planning guidelines and permissions stifle the development of new housing, at least here in the U.S. In Britain, I’m assured it’s worse.
“If prices are too high, fewer people will immigrate.”
If they’re coming from areas of tents and shelters, that won’t even slow them down.
We moved from San Diego to Riverside in 2016, and from Riverside to Lawrence, Kansas in 2020. Seeing what has been happening to California, I’m very glad that I never tied myself down by buying real property there. Kansas isn’t nearly so insane, but in these uncertain times I think I prefer to keep my options open still.
I agree entirely. I should have clarified that I meant, absent regulation, I think a rise in prices would cause either a decrease in demand or an increase in supply.
Like with most other shortages, housing shortages seem to be caused by government intervention more than any other factor.
But if this is the case, then they are unlikely to drive up house prices, right?
If you want less of something, put the government in charge of it. Were you to have the government run the supply of sand in the Sahara, within a generation, you’d have a shortage of it.
Probably even less than a generation.
I don’t know what these idiots expect, honestly. You can look at the situation in every city and nation that’s tried rent control, and see what ensues. Why you’d want to do the same thing that hasn’t worked time and time again, all over the world?
Meanwhile, instead of working with the small investor to build more houses and apartments, they demonize them and try to drive them out of business, ‘cos “landlord bad”. Wait until the government is the only landlord, and you have to try and get something like the DMV to move on fixing your apartment or house up… Wait until you see how well people take care of things that don’t belong to them, just like in the Soviet Union. The tragedy of the commons, writ large.
You really have to marvel at the inability to work out cause and almost certain effect.
I’d guess that they just get on the right lists and eventually the government comes up with 800 square feet of free modern housing for them out of existing stock, thus raising demand.
In England and Wales between 2011 and 2022 there’s been an 8.4% increase in the number dwellings. Our population density can only get worse along with our quality of life
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/articles/housinginenglandandwales/2021comparedwith2011#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20there%20were%2026.4,million%20dwellings%20respectively%20in%202011.
As expected, the left scurry past the carrot larder and head straight for the stick storage, any “problem” is another reason to introduce more laws, bans, and attempts at central planning, another sticky plaster over the festering wound they caused in the first place with the TCPA and salted with open door immigration.
#1 Build millions of new homes.
Or we could just stop importing millions of new tenants. That would do it.
Fraser Orr – I have already answered your suggestion.
Vast numbers of houses have been built (so much for the “restrictions on house building”) whether the authorities admit that they have been built is another matter – but anyone who has visited the towns of England has seen the vast numbers of new housing estates and so on. Look at the land – the physical houses – not fake government records, that say that houses have not been built, that the village of Isham is in Daventry, that the Covid “vaccines” are “safe-and-effective” and-so-on.
There has been a vast increase in Credit Money – and that money goes into property, asset price inflation.
The government paying rents (housing benefit) pushes up rents – just as the government paying tuition fees with “loans” pushes up tuition fees.
And there has been a vast population increase of many millions of people via mass immigration (because Mr Cameron and co did not keep their promises to stop it) – the land has not grown, but the population has grown.
This is what matters, the Credit Money inflation, the housing benefit for rent which pushes up rents (in spite of the claims that it does not), and the subsidies for house buying as well – that also pushes up prices, and the vast increase in population due to mass immigration.
“Free market” organisations, such as the Institute of Economic Affairs (which did nothing to fight the Corporate State policies on Covid lockdowns and so on) are silent on the vast increase in Credit Money – indeed the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) recently said “interest rates are too high” – F.A. Hayek must be spinning in his grave over the Keynesians (Economist magazine readers) who now dominate the IEA – which was created to fight against Keynesianism.
And the IEA has done nothing to oppose the many millions of people who have entered the country – whilst pretending to be upset (weeping crocodile tears over) the increase in house prices and rents.
It used to be said that the immigrants-migrants turn up in the cities – displacing the people who live there. who then go off to the towns and villages (and that this is the way that house prices and rents get pushed up). But now there are lots of immigrants in the towns and even the villages – one can see them and hear them. People and organisations who claim to care about house prices and rents, but do not oppose this mass influx, are hypocrites.
Just as people to claim about inflation, including asset price (property) inflation, but then say “monetary policy is too tight – interest rates are too high” are hypocrites.
“There have been mass influxes before” – yes, but not the ones normally listed in the education system and the media, in recent centuries (before World War II) immigration into this island was actually quite limited – my great-grand father was one, but such people were not in large numbers.
The last two great influxes into this island were that of the Germanic tribes (and later the Norse – the “Vikings”) on the collapse of the Roman Empire, and (more extreme) the coming of the Indo Europeans, with their horses and spoked wheels, at the start of the Bronze Age.
The Bronze Age great replacement was particularly extreme – some 90% of the population of the British Isles.
Although it did not happen everywhere in Europe – for example the population of Sardinia, is largely PRE Indo European (they do not look very different, it is a genetic thing NOT a physical appearance thing – much to the irritation of the BBC and the establishment academics).
The Scottish National Socialist Party is in favour of rent controls. I rest my case.
Ah rent control. Anyone remember just how impossible it was to rent in London when it had rent control. And just how terrible the rentals were. Now it’s just expensive. But the quality is mostly very good.
As for property and rental prices. You can have cheap or you can have pretty. But you cannot have both. Want cheaper rentals and property then get rid of all zoning and planning permission. But they will complain they have now built all over the Green Belt and those pretty 19’the century streets are now wall to wall 10 / 15 story residential blocks..
You cannot have it both way. Current location too expense? Move somewhere cheaper. Of earn more. If you want the current status quo to stay the same.
Now the more interesting question is why is over 50% of “social housing” in some UK big cities devoted to recent immigrants in low paying / low economic output work. Thats a more interesting question.
In my town, between 2001 and 2021 the population has gone down from 13014 to 12595, yet in that same period 1059 houses were built, mainly “2/3 bed” townhouses. Cramming all the way up to the national park boundary where they’re not allowed to build.
The answer to this is fairly simple. It comes from my basic rule of politics: if a democrat (labourite) sees a problem they create a regulatory agency, if a republican/Tory sees a problem they create a tax break, if a libertarian sees a problem, they quit politics and start a business to fix it.
The solution is to allow builders, landlords and banks to conspire together to build lots of housing, and consequently give renters competitive options where landlords have to chase customers same as all other businesses.
As to immigration, there are certainly arguments against it, but I don’t see it as impacting here. There is plenty of land in Britain to build new housing, so if there is more demand there can readily be more supply. Argue against immigration if you want to, but housing in a free market is not one such argument.
Welfare and other types of charity definitely skew the relationship, but that is both an entirely different problem and one that is also subject to my basic rule of politics above.
As for property and rental prices. You can have cheap or you can have pretty. But you cannot have both.
I certainly understand the point you are making but I don’t think it is true. You can have both if you allow the free market to innovate in their competitive search for customers. You’ll find all sorts of new technology and innovative approaches to convince tenants that this is a great place to live if you’ll only get the government off their backs.
For sure you won’t end up with the crime ridden monstrosities and ugly blights on the landscape that the government housing estate plans gave us. I had a gf many years ago whose mother lived in one of these monstrous estates on the west of Edinburgh. She was a lovely old lady with some mobility issues. I feared for my life every time I went to visit her, I can’t imagine what it was like living in constant fear as that sweet old lady did. One of the proudest achievements of my 20s was helping her get into better housing.
Another aspect of all this is property taxes.
Many states and municipalities here in the US do value-based taxing, which is based on appraisals made by the government. So, you can have the spectacle of some elderly person being taxed for their paid-off home to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars per year, on the idea that their property is worth X amount of dollars if they were to sell it. The fact that it was worth perhaps a tenth of that when they bought it thirty years ago…? Not something the parasites in government comprehend, along with the idea that fixed incomes don’t automatically expand to pay whatever taxes they see fit to assess.
The matter is going to come to a head, one of these days, and the statist freaks are going to find out a bunch of things about how far they can push the public. The other issue is that the laptoperati classes have moved out of their urban enclaves, and are engaged in driving up property prices and taxes in heretofore very rural areas, where the locals aren’t exactly welcoming. Not to mention all the “issues” those urban-blight types bring with them, in terms of demanding more services and driving up demand for government.
There’s a dividing line coming into being where the urban upper classes are spreading out into the hinterlands, now that you can work remotely, and they’re bringing their urban habits with them, which ain’t going over well. Add in that these same idiots are often the ones behind having reduced rural dwellers to near-poverty in the first damn place through their idiotic ideas about “saving nature”, and you’ve got a recipe for some serious conflict coming down the pike. I do not know where this ends, but I can about guarantee that it won’t be a wonderland of peace and amity…
The disconnected-from-reality types making up most of the urban professional classes are due for a short, sharp shock of reality. I’m going to be amused when it is finally delivered.
What’s hysterically funny is hearing some of them complain about losing their cushy jobs over things like having to start going back to the office, and these are the same jackasses that forced the government to shut down all the rural resource-extraction industries like logging. Now, they’re looking around for jobs where they relocated to, and finding the same dearth of employment that they created for the original inhabitants.
One of the biggest flaws in the modern world is that the people demanding all these policies like “rent control” fail to think things through or look at things through the lens of the landlord. They see themselves as exploited by anonymous landlords taking advantage of them, but fail to see that many of those landlords are private parties just like them, who thought to provide for themselves in their later years by investing in a good they could provide to others, enabling them to have a decent place to live. By condemning all landlords as exploiters, they have zero insight into the lives of actual landlords and the life-cycle thereof. The whole thing is incredibly short-sighted and stupid.
It’s like the local renters who vote in all the property-tax increases thinking that since they don’t own, they won’t be paying them, and then bitching because their rent shot up to pay those taxes… “That’s not fair!! I don’t own any property! I voted for the taxes to go up because I wanted to make the landlords pay…”
Yeah, sweetheart… That’s not how it works. Too much disconnect, there; it’d be nice if the property taxes were a pass-through deal that the renters got itemized so they could see what effects were of their happy little votes for “More Government”.
But Kirk, and others, rent control fits the world view of the central planners. So the fact that it hasn’t worked, any where at any time, doesn’t phase them in the least! It’s not even a question for them, “does it work?”. What’s that got to do with it (their program)?
All these words at this blog are nice. But the other side is not interested in words. They are interested in power and in destroying us. No discussion about it. No negotiating. So, yes, keep talking. It’s good for us. It’s what we do. And it might be useful in the aftermath as we try to re-build (“didn’t we use to talk about things before taking action?”) But you’d better be working on Plan A and it had better involve a response to the other side’s eventual violence.
I know that’s a bit hyperbolic…I’m trying to get a reaction.
I think there’s actually a 1 in a millions chance that this will all end peacefully, with a slow implosion of the debit crisis, the corruption, etc.
“So, you’re saying there’s a chance”.
@GregWA
So the fact that it hasn’t worked, any where at any time, doesn’t phase them in the least!
What makes you say that? It absolutely has worked most places it has been tried. It is VERY popular with voters so these policies are very effective at getting votes, getting politicians re-elected, and granting power and control to government agencies, so that is a HUGE win for the people in charge.
What? Did you think it was supposed to improve the lot of voters? Nah, that is never the purpose of government policy. It it happens it is just by accident.
I think there’s actually a 1 in a millions chance that this will all end peacefully
I don’t know about that. I think a far more likely outcome is fading into poverty and irrelevance. I think Americans are far too passivated and neotanized to do much more than complain, and times that by two for the Brits. No doubt you’ll see some big protests like we have in a few places, but I think the left is the only side likely to engage in violence, and they are winning, so why should they?
The one, exception, the one thing that worries me a lot though is what is going to happen in the US next year. If, actually I should say when, Trump is convicted of one or more of the bogus charges against him, who the heck knows what is going to happen. Even if the eschew putting him in jail on appeal or simply because the Secret Service and DoC simply agree to put him on house arrest. Can you imagine the protests and probably riots that will follow.
Then what happens if these states do pull Trump’s name from the ballot, or worse, Trump wins a crucial state on a write in, and the Sec of State refuses to certify the vote because of an imagined disqualification from the 14th amendment. I can’t imagine what is going to happen if they light that fuse.
The US has been going down the tubes for thirty years, but the since Trump’s election it started going down super fast, then Covid and Biden sent it exponential. However, all of that will be child’s place compared to what is going to go down next year. I sure hope I am wrong. And Britain? You’ll be getting Labour, good and hard. (Though maybe with the Tories the way they are you won’t notice much difference.)
There’s really no telling what’s going to happen in 2024. It could go kinetic, it could go completely apathetic.
I don’t think that the current lot of idiots are going to “manage” the whole thing at all well; too many contradictions becoming clear, too many of their lies are becoming too obvious.
End state of the whole mess is still up in the air, but I seriously doubt that they’re going to manage the transition successfully. They think they’re the smartest kids in the room, and have put one over on everyone, but the real deal is that they’re drifting along on the accumulated trust and acquiescence of the public. Those are two resources that are simply nowhere near as infinite as they think they are, and their supposed infallibility is increasingly coming into question among the people whose willing participation they absolutely have to have.
Case in point: The US military recruiting crisis. They can’t make the numbers they need for just replacement. Why? Because nobody wants to serve under these assholes. What do they do, when they call on their flying monkey minions, and nobody responds?
The willing idiots of BLM and Antifa are a fragile wasting asset. The reality with those clowns is that they’re only good for cosplaying the sort of hard-core revolutionaries they’d need to be in order for all this to work, and they’d have to have the willing participation of the people in power. That shifts? The whole thing evaporates. Once the organs of state stop covering for them, they’re toast; imagine the sort of pressure applied to the J6 types gets applied to Antifa; they’ll all fold so fast your head will spin.
The real deal here is that the people running this cluster-fark really do not know what they’re doing. None of the opposition they’ve faced so far is anything more than astroturf BS they’ve whipped up themselves, just like the J6 thing. The actual people they need to worry about? They’re still out there in the wings, waiting until they have no other choice. When the current lot of idiots finally pushes things too far, and the hard cases have no choice but to act…? It will be over with, pretty quickly.
I want to remind you that we haven’t yet heard from the sort of guys who were filling the ranks of Special Forces back in the 1980s. Those guys are still trusting in the system, upset but not willing to cross the Rubicon. When they reach the point where they feel like they have no choice but to act…? Then you’ll see the fireworks. Right now, they’re pissed-off, but they haven’t given up on their investment in the system.
When they do? Yikes. Same with a lot of the other hard-case types out there. There’s still a residual number of them, who’ve been pressured to go along with the current idiocy out of a sense that they’re in the minority. When they experience that Timisoara moment, though? The worm will turn with a quickness.
It’s like the hypocrisy demonstrated by Newsome in San Francisco: They can’t be bothered to clean up the place for the working citizenry, but let his Chinese master show up? Oh, yeah… And, do note that there wasn’t a single American flag flying in that entire display that they put on. You think people aren’t noticing that, paying attention? Think there won’t be repercussions, for Newsome? He’s got delusions of the Presidency, but I think he’s going to be lucky if his future doesn’t include a prison cell.
There are a lot of people on a slow boil. When it gets to the point where it is finally boiling over? I do not know where that ends; you might see it successfully put down, but I doubt that will work out. The people they’re relying on to do that are increasingly disillusioned by the way things are going; they might well do what the Romanian Securitate did, and join in the fun rather than fight for the regime. The rank-and-file of the FBI isn’t exactly enthused about the politicization of it all, from what I’ve been hearing.
Whole thing remains to be seen. I’ve a lot of cynicism, but I also know that I’m not the only one that feels that way; nobody knows where this ends.
I don’t have a lot of confidence in the competence of the current lot of idiots-in-charge. A lot of what they have managed to accomplish has only happened because they’ve spent down the capital, in terms of public trust. When there’s none of that left to draw on…?
“Wait until the government is the only landlord, and you have to try and get something like the DMV to move on fixing your apartment or house up… ”
We already have this in the UK. Local councils own lots of social housing, and getting them to do anything towards repairing and renovating their properties is a nightmare for tenants, the same applies to tenants of housing associations, which are quasi-State bodies that own and run social housing projects. It was noticeable that the landlord in the case of the small child who died allegedly from the effects of mould in his parents flat was a housing association.
Any organization run along the lines of government eventually turns into a jobs program for the lazy and incompetent. It may start out well, but after the first wave of participants retires or moves on, the whole thing inevitably gets colonized by the jobsworthies.
Britain’s lifeboat service is another example, from what news stories I’ve seen.
Organizations have entire life cycles and existences that are entirely outside the individuals making them up. You can observe it in action, if you pay attention. Part of the problem is that we fail to exercise sufficient care in selecting the people to run these things, and they wind up becoming a major part of the problem.
I’ve observed it happen, time and time again. I think it’s an inevitable thing, given human nature and our inability to deal with the parasite class that exists everywhere. What we really need to do is eliminate the “permanent organization” mentality, and then there’s nowhere for the parasite class of human being to colonize. God forbid they’d have to actually find work and contribute…
The really mind-boggling thing? If you were to zero out all the budgets of these things, particularly in health care? Demanding that they do away with the administrative overhead that’s ballooned past all reason? You’d have more than enough money for platinum-grade health care for all. The problem is how much gets siphoned off for administrivia that’s supposedly necessary to “save money”, and always winds up hiring more and more useless mouths that don’t actually do health care. Or, as seen here, housing maintenance…
Lay you long odds that they’ve got a whole herd of office-dwelling parasites, though. One guy in a white van to do maintenance on a thousand housing units, and a hundred desk-bound types to tell him what to do…
And, odds are, they insist the poor bastard keeps up on all his mandatory health and safety training, plus the LGBTWTFBBQ nonsense… Never mind the real work he’s supposed to be doing.
Do you mean the RNLI? I thought that was entirely private and mainly run with volunteers, a real life example of how these kinds of services can work without government.
There were a spate of stories like this one, awhile back:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5719757/Britains-heroic-lifeboat-volunteers-drowning-sea-political-correctness.html
I’ve seen others, not from the Daily Mail, which corroborate this one and which indicate that the parasite class is alive and well inside this well-known charity. Where they’re at five years on, I’ve no idea…