Call on the Mayor of London to make private renting affordable

The London Mayor has been setting out his plans for tackling the housing crisis. But the London Living Rent will only help a few - high rents are pushing people out of London and making life harder for those left behind.

Generation Rent’s policy document, ‘London’s Turning: Towards a sustainable private rented sector under the new Mayor’, outlines the scale of action needed to properly reform the private rented sector and asks the Mayor to take forward these policies imminently.

In London, over two million private renters continue to live under threat of ongoing rent increases, sudden evictions and poor standards. This includes some of the poorest residents in the city, but also families looking to maintain their roots in the city and first-time buyers desperate to save for a mortgage.

Excessive housing costs affect everyone from young professionals desperate to buy a home to families threatened with homelessness. Yet the most obvious solution – and one adopted across the world from New York to Berlin – of rent controls, has yet to be properly considered in London politics.

Please use the template below to write to Sadiq Khan, asking that he starts a full-scale investigation into different forms of rent control to support private renters. Feel free to include details of your own situation if you think this would help make the point.

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Dear Mr Khan, I am writing today as a London resident to ask that you consider what forms of rent control would help make London affordable again. The private renters' campaign group Generation Rent has recently published a new policy document that states how you can both take forward your Mayoral commitments to improve private renting, but also what more needs to be done at different levels of government to genuinely change the way housing works in London’s private rented sector. With the average rent in London now standing at £1,222, and increasing numbers of young families leaving the city, it is clear that the cost of private renting in London cannot continue to rise. We need urgent action to ensure that private renters from a range of incomes can continue to live in London. Will you use the resources at City Hall to initiate a full-scale investigation into different forms of rent control in the private rented sector? Your plan for a London Living Rent on new developments already recognises the principle that private renters in London need rents set at levels of around a third of average wages. Your commitment towards making half of all new builds genuinely affordable recognises the fact that the market alone cannot provide housing that is accessible to London’s diverse population. More homes need to be built to bring down costs, but until they are, high rents will inflict ever deeper damage on London's economy, communities and people. We can't rely on the same old theories that have done nothing to prevent this crisis. You can read Generation Rent’s full document <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/npto/pages/4312/attachments/original/1473935900/Mayoral_Plan_for_London_final.pdf?1473935900" target="_blank">here</a>. It calls for nothing less than a new approach from the Mayor’s office to the private rented sector that recognises the long-term costs to the city of rocketing rents and insecure housing. Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you.

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