Landlords aren't providing a valuable public service – they're exploiting their tenants

The conversation about landlords and tenants is always controlled by people, like Sky News presenter Jayne Secker, who own and often rent out property. Is it any surprise the debate is so warped?

TV news was full of debates about the rights of landlords and tenants yesterday, hardly a fun, easy-going topic. Although sandwiched between another day of Brexit gridlock and the fire at Notre Dame, it still felt like a breath of fresh air.

The government had announced changes to legislation governing the private rented sector. No-fault evictions – a major factor in Britain’s growing homelessness crisis – might soon be coming to an end. Labour committed to the very same thing back in 2017, and so it looks like real change may well be on the horizon.

It couldn’t come sooner: according to Generation Rent some 216 households evicted every week in England under section 21 of the 1988 Housing Act end up homeless. Citizens Advice say people who formally air grievances around issues such as damp and mould have an almost one-in-two chance of being served with an eviction notice within six months by their landlord.

Not everyone believed this was such great news, as demonstrated by the various men in various suits doing the rounds on behalf of landlords through the studios. No-one embodied their misplaced outrage more than Sky News presenter Jayne Secker, herself a private landlord. “Do you think you’ve found mounts your friends, perhaps that you aren’t equipped with the necessary skills to rent?” she asked Kirsty, a young woman who had recently been evicted from her home in London, citing her own tenants who apparently don’t know how to change a lightbulb.

I’ve just moved into a private rented flat in London – the only skill required as far as I can tell is to know how to send someone the entirety of my bank balance on monthly basis. What Secker’s patronising line of questioning reveals is a conclusion that I’ve recently come to – that many landlords truly believe they are providing some noble public service: we all do need somewhere to live, after all.

I don’t mean for a second the most evil and unsavoury types. The ones who turf out entire streets to make a quick profit, force tenants to live in illegal box rooms or look at spaces unfit for human habitation and think: you know what? That’ll do. There’s no redemption for these exploitative and inhumane charlatans who know exactly what they’re doing. The fact none of the estimated 10,500 rogue landlords operating in Englandhave been issued with one of the government’s new banning orders shows how on this front there is still much more to do.

Consider instead, the 2.5 million people in Britain who are landlords, many of whom will own a single “spare" property or two and abide by the law as best they can. People like Jayne Secker who feel they’re being demonised through no fault of their own. The reason there’s such a disconnect between how landlords perceive themselves and the experience of tenants across the country is simlole: it’s because landlords who are playing by the rules don’t understand that the rules of the game are warped and wrong.

According to the IPPR, around one in 10 tenancies which come to an end do so as a landlord has terminated them, typically through a no-fault eviction. In the eyes of the landlord, who may wish to sell, hike up rents or move in themselves they’ve done no wrong. The havoc this can reek on private renters (including 1.7 million children in 2016/17) remains legal. Some 42 per cent of landlords surveyed by Shelter had an outright bar on letting to people on housing benefits – that’s legalised discrimination.

In 62 per cent of local authorities the median private rent would be unaffordable to those on low incomes, and in 52 per cent to those on middle incomes. In all but one local authority, someone earning minimum wage would find the average private rented home unaffordable. Landlords can point to “the market” to justify charging high rents and feel they aren’t to blame. This government’s refusal to introduce rent caps (unsurprising given 28% of Tory MPs are landlords themselves) means this structural inequality won’t go away. I could continue.

For decades, the debate about landlords and tenants has been skewed in favour of those who own property – older, privileged people in positions of power and who (by definition) are wealthier. The work of campaign groups, a shift to the left from Labour and the fact more middle class young people now can’t buy their own homes is helping to redress that balance.

Some people are struggling to keep up: those who still see home ownership as a signifier of competence and success continue to look down their noses at renters, for a long time media discussions were dominated by bodies who represented landlords, or occasionally renters in a state of distress. Now grassroots groups like the London Renters Union are vying for attention while shifting the terms of debate.

Thankfully, preposterous comparisons between some confusion over a lightbulb and an unfair eviction on national television – as we’ve seen on Sky News – no longer go unchallenged. But when debates are disproportionately being chaired and participated in by people who are landlords themselves, is it any surprise moments like this keep happening?

What landlords like Secker must understand is that they can shout #NotAllLandlords, but that’s not the point. Even landlords acting in the confines of the law are contributing to the housing crisis, so those laws need radically overhauling.