Angela Rayner

UNAFFORDABLE private rents are a crisis of “epidemic proportions”, Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn warned this week as he urged the government to implement rent controls.

In a letter to the newly appointed housing secretary Angela Rayner, he told how soaring private sector rents are forcing people into homelessness and that he was “beyond disappointed” to hear her rule out rent controls in an interview last week.

“The housing crisis has been compounded by the mismatch between the private rented sector rents and the local housing allowance, which has been frozen by successive governments,” Mr Corbyn said. “In my own borough, less than 2.4 per cent of the properties that are available in the private sector are within the local housing allowance. Nationwide that figure is 2.7 per cent. The situation is making many prospective private sector tenants homeless and dependent on the short supply of available hostel accommodation.”

Ms Rayner, hired to new Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s senior team, was told that residents who might once have been able to rent privately — using their housing allowance to pay for or top up the rent — are now completely priced out of that market, especially in boroughs like Islington where the average monthly private rent is more than £2,800.

While an increase in housing allowance is “clearly necessary”, Mr Corbyn said, without private sector rent controls local authorities “end up supplementing private landlords’ income”.

Councils pay millions to private landlords to house homeless families in temporary accommodation — many of them the same families who have been priced out of the private sector in the first place.

“I am sure you will agree that this is an unacceptable use of public funds,” Mr Corbyn said.

“I hope the government urgently intervenes on this to reduce the unbelievable levels of stress across the country.”

Dan Newcombe, an organiser at Islington housing union Acorn, told the Tribune: “Islington has some of the highest average rents for private housing, and it means that existing communities have been priced out of the area and replaced by young professionals. It leads to a loss of community and has a massive economic impact on the area, as people have less money to invest in small businesses and we see more and more chains popping up.”

While the new Renters’ Rights Act has brought much needed protection for private renters, it is “not as effective” without rent controls, Mr Newcombe added.

For example, even though section 21 “no fault” evictions have been abolished, landlords are still permitted to dramatically increase rents, meaning tenants still have that threat of eviction hanging over them.

“There is such huge demand that landlords know they can charge whatever they want,” added Mr Newcombe.

“It’s a problem with housing being treated as a commodity rather than a human right.”

Campaign group Islington Homes For All supported Mr Corbyn’s letter, but organiser Morag Gillie told how building and maintaining council homes is also a vital component in tackling the housing crisis.

She said: “What we see with the private rental sector is just a lifetime of poverty. People see no future where they have secure housing.

“Any kind of rent control would help thousands of people who are struggling to pay their food and utility bills, for whom most of their money goes towards paying rent.

“It’s also a huge cost to the council — money is pouring into the pockets of private landlords, so rents need to be regulated across the board.

But it is also the lack of housing that means landlords can keep the rents high. It’s all about competition and the interests of private profit rather than the interests of local people.”