Ken Livingstone's proposals for improving London's private rented housing sector, unveiled in a speech on Tuesday, have been greeted in some quarters like a sighting of rising damp, with dire warnings being issued about the ruinous impact of introducing rent controls. This is no surprise: the smallest prospect of tighter regulation is guaranteed to have such as Boris Johnson and some landlord pressure groups howling about toadstools sprouting from skirting boards. But were these people aware that rent controls as such weren't mentioned by Ken in his speech?
If asked about them the Labour mayoral candidate will advocate the principle with that cheery insouciance some love and others, including political media managers of the conventional kind, really hate. But he knows he'd lack the power to put it into practice. And there was no promise to pursue such a path among his words to the IPPR/Centre for London conference.
Two pledges were made. The first was to "establish a campaign for a London Living Rent," which would learn from the achievements of the London Living Wage campaign by "arguing, cajoling, intervening and collaborating" to persuade landlords that it can be in their interest for rents to take no more than a third of tenants' incomes rather than the more than 50% now devoured by two-bedroom dwellings in most London boroughs. Longer-term, more co-operative tenants might be one beneficial result.
The second was to "work with other stakeholders" to establish a "London-wide, non-profit lettings agency," which would "put good tenants in touch with good landlords across the spectrum of private renting so that both can benefit from security of tenure and reduce the costs of letting." Such an agency, I'm told, would be run from City Hall like a social enterprise and seek to encourage good practice and root out rogues and rip-off artists.
Both are quite large ideas. But coming from a politician who, according to the interwebby chums of his Conservative opponent, is interested only in forcing Chingford to twin with Cuba they have a bridge-building, consensual quality.
Ken's initiative and the housing policy jousts of the mayoral contest in general have brought a measured response from Richard Lambert, chief executive officer of the National Landlord Association. Commenting on the idea of a London-wide non-profit lettings agency he welcomed "initiatives that seek to improve access to private housing for tenants on housing benefits," citing an example already working in Harrow.
On the wider question of access to affordable housing, Lambert made the point that, "Rising rents in the private sector do not automatically mean bigger profits," and said he hoped "the real focus of all candidates in the lead up to next year's mayoral election will be the overall affordability of living in London. We would welcome a debate on what constitutes a 'living income' at a time of rising costs of living, expensive housing, stagnating salaries and decreasing housing benefit."
Judging by Ken's speech, which majored on living standards in the capital, he's not the only one.
