My friends can’t afford to go on holiday. Rent controls could change that

A twenty-pound return journey, plus the price of having fun while there. It doesn't sound like much, but with rent eating up our salaries, it was enough to give us pause. Several of my friends didn't come. One already pays half of her salary in rent, and the landlord has announced a rent rise. Her current rent is £1400 for a one-bed flat, and it is now increasing to £1600. She does not live anywhere fancy: she is from Newham, a working-class area in Zone three East London

With the new renters' rights bill, she can challenge the rise in the rent tribunal. But the court does not look at how much salaries are in the area, at whether she can afford to buy food for her kids, or whether an extra £200 a month is a reasonable bump up in a household’s budget.

The tribunal looks at market rent, and the market says that paying more than half the median London salary for a Zone 3-4 one-bed is perfectly reasonable. So my friend is not going on holiday, and has started cutting down on the weekly food shop. She is not the only one in our circles going through the same.

I organise with the London Renters Union, where I meet neighbours facing rent rises every day: I regularly see rent rises of over 50%, with some people’s rent doubling entirely.

Last week a nine-year-old girl came to our weekly meeting, crying. Her family was evicted following a rent rise they could not afford, and the council had placed them in temporary accommodation nearly two hours away from her school and friends. They kept being moved from one place to another. ‘I miss my friends,’ she said, ‘I miss my school. I can’t make any friends anymore because we keep being moved.’ Her parents, quietening her down, looked like they could use a holiday.

An elderly man spoke next, tubes in his nose from his recent hospital stay. His landlord had raised his rent by £500 a month, and he brought a tent, in case he found himself on the streets. During the break, he told me that he used to take the pressure off his health concerns by driving off into a nearby stretch of countryside and watching the trees. But since his rent increase, he is unable to pay the gas money for the trip.

I’m baffled by how small the measures this ‘cost of living government’ is introducing. A forty-five-pound-per-year discount on energy bills is not a bad thing, but when rent can rise by hundreds of pounds per month with no real limits, it is a drop in the ocean.

Rent controls are something the government could do for free. It would save councils millions in temporary accommodation costs. It’s a measure that is popular across the political spectrum, and is common across Europe. It is also a measure the UK used to have until 1988. Putting limits on rent rises would give renters the breathing space to go out for a coffee, and maybe even a holiday.

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⁠⁠Zad El Bacha is an organiser from the London Renters Union.

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