We live in an era where ever more so than before what constitutes ‘truth’ is being bent into different shapes to suit political ends, writes property commentator Nigel Lewis.
This is not a new trend, but it is intensifying to the point where some campaigners, particularly in the housing sector, make claims that appear disconnected from the official data which, one would hope, is as near to the truth as possible.
One example is the English Housing Survey. Put together by data wonks within the Office for National Statistics, the annual research is designed to give Ministers and the private rented sector a regular snapshot of activity and standards.
The most recent release, which came out a few days ago and catalogues the quality of landlords’ rental homes, paints a somewhat varied picture of housing standards within the private sector.
Are landlords up to scratch?
The data reveals that in some ways standards are improving but that in other areas some landlords are not meeting the minimum.
Specifically, the report looks at whether properties are meeting the Decent Homes Standard, have HHSRS Category 1 hazards, or have problems with damp.
To sum up, landlord homes achieving the Decent Homes Standard stayed the same; the number of Category 1 hazards declined from 14% to 10%; but the proportion of rented homes with damp has risen from 4% to 9%.
Of course, no landlord with any decency would want to see tenants living in damp, poor-quality or even dangerous accommodation and it is not good enough that approximately 10% of rented homes in the UK fit this description.
But my issue with all this are the campaign groups who operate within the private rented sector representing the interests of tenants.
While their desire to drive out rogue and criminal operators from the sector should be applauded, too often they tar all landlords with the same brush, painting the sector as a cauldron of profit-seeking and uncaring individuals impervious to the living conditions of their tenants, attitudes that some Labour MPs have repeated in parliament.
Finding a solution
Some of these campaign groups have used this rhetoric to go further, calling for ‘landlording’ to be abolished and the profit/income system that underpins it to be outlawed and renting to become ‘nationalised’, in effect.
While this would solve the problem by ejecting rogue landlords from the sector, it is not practically, fiscally or politically possible.
Successive Tory housing secretaries showed little interest in restricting what property owners do with their homes whether to rent out temporarily or as long-term property investments, and neither does the current Labour government.
And the nation’s precarious finances, particularly at the moment, mean the funding of a large new construction programme to create thousands of affordable rent homes is also a long way off.
Also, the increase in the size of the private rented sector over the past 20 years as nearly two million households have been transferred from the public to the private sector highlights this challenge.
To summarise, under-funding of social homes and the encouragement of private landlords by Thatcher and those that followed her in No.10 mean there is no longer a simple solution – so it would be better if the campaigning groups and landlords worked together, and some firebrands stopped taking to social media to put the boot into those who provide accommodation in this sector.
And as the ONS figures show, 85% to 90% do a relatively decent job. Is that a reason to get rid of private landlords?
