After five years of delays and persistent watering down, the amendments tabled today to the Renters Reform Bill have made it effectively worthless, meaning that it will provide no extra security or stability for tenants. As of today, all the major housing charities in the UK, including Acorn and the Renters Reform coalition, have withdrawn their support and cooperation from the government’s bill.
This situation has hardly come as a surprise, particularly as 1 in 5 Conservative MPs are landlords themselves, as are many of their target voters.
There is one ray of sunshine to this situation in that as most Conservative voters are over the age of seventy and those under forty have been robbed of the chance of buying a home because there is no money left to pay for a deposit on a house because it’s all going on extortionate rents, their voting block and dying out and there will be few smug homeowners left to replace them.
It’s not much, but it’s something.
You can read about my experience of the housing crisis here.
Five years ago today the Renter’s Reform Bill was introduced to Parliament with a view to sorting out the utter carnage that is the United Kingdom’s rental sector. It’s primary focus was to redress the power imbalance favouring landlords that happened in 1997 when section 21 of the Housing Act became law… The infamous ‘No fault’ evection legislation brought in at the request of the banking sector so that borrowers could take out mortgages on properties that they planned to rent out, safe in the knowledge that a tenant could be thrown out within a couple of months for no other reason than ‘because’.
You can do a lot in five years, you can conceive and bring a child to the point that you could have a vaguely intelligible conversation with them, you can see a blockbuster movie from an idea on a scrap of paper, through castings, pre production, filming, editing, post-productions, soundtrack scoring, to a premier, you can create a ‘triple A’ video game, build a cruise liner and all manner of things. In the last five years I have made at least 250 artworks, knitted about forty garments, moved house, lost a mother, lost a friend, gained a great nephew, made four books and am currently finalising a fifth and, in all this time, what has happened with this parliamentary bill? Bugger all, that’s what!
It is no secret that at least a third of the ruling political party are landlords, from the Chancellor of the Exchequer down to lowly back benchers, the Tories are coining it in off the labour of others in the form of rental income, as are many of their voters; why would a turkey vote for Christmas? The Renter’s Reform Bill has met nothing but obstacles at every stage of its slow progress through Westminster and it’s been watered down at every opportunity to the point that it is hardly worth bothering with and it is now reaching the stage where a new government will come in and it will just vanish along with any other unpassed legislation.
Will the Tories mark two (What is left of the Labour Party) do anything for renters? I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that they are clearly in the pay of big business and they seem to be focused on meeting the needs of the highest bidder rather than the most needy and I don’t see them being any different in this manner than any other.
Today is not a day for candles and cake, five years of poverty, fear and vulnerability is not a cause for celebration… let’s hope we aren’t in the same boat in five more.
You can buy Roof-Less my illustrated book about the housing crisis here.
Christopher Hoggins Artist 
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