Front page article in today's Observer by Toby Helm and Tegan Rogers examining a report on housing carried out by Cambridge University for the Resolution Foundation. The mildly sensational way in which the newspaper reports the study presumably indicates that they think a "renting way of life" a deleterious development and that they would prefer a property-owning democracy. I thought we had too much national capital tied up in property ownership?
The article's emphasis upon exploitative landlords is also sensationalist and belies the truth. Obviously there are bad landlords who need to be legally admonished, but they are a minority (as are bad tenants). The vast majority of landlords want stable long-term lettings and are prepared to invest in rental properties to achieve that - no normal landlord would want the hassle of evictions and finding new tenants.
However I think there should be more regulation of lettings agents, and also perhaps a legal requirement for properties to be only available via regulated lettings agents.
Commenting on the article Owen Jones (a writer for the Independent, although this was on his Twitter account) called for more social housing. This is not practical while "emergency cases" can leap-frog the social housing waiting lists. The construction of social housing can only resume when taxpayers support the concept of council housing - and this will only be when most taxpayers see the benefits applied to their extended families and acquaintances rather than a class of social tenants chosen on the highly-politicised basis of "need".
Owen Jones as a single person without children would probably have to wait his entire life on a council waiting list without being allocated social housing, and even if by some fluke a property did get offered to him it would not be the "high quality" accommodation he is calling for.
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