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A nation of landlords

Hildy Johnson | 05.05.2009 11:58

This link is to a Times article about proposals to introduce a landlords register. An interesting statistic is that there are now 1 million private landlords in Britain today. With rents falling and massive arrears building up me thinks it might be time for a rent strike.

http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/article6223112.ece

From what I can see the divide is becoming increasing apparent. The land is split into current property owners and those for whom it is impossible to become a property owner. With the collapse of industry, the main way to make money out of the poor is through a quasi-feudal system of property ownership`.

These are the people who bothered to vote New Labour in and these are the same people who will vote the Conservatives in. These are the people calling for discipline, for protesters to be shot, for more roads to be built, for an end to taxes especially on flights to the Caribbean. Some of the comments at the end of the article are revealing. These are the type of people we are up against. And some of these will be the ones that welcome the rise of the strong man or perhaps woman. (Incidentally, i wonder what Hitler would have made with Twitter)

What the article doesn´t say is that as banks repossess busted buy to let properties and take over control of failed construction companies they are themselves becoming the landlords.

It is our acceptance of this system that is our principal weakness. OK so we may get housing benefit but this serves only to pay off the mortgages of the already wealthy increasing their control.

A few days ago someone was talking about an overall strategy or even an ideology. For fucks sake we need something. A few hundred people on the move in Brighton is unlikely to change much by itself. We need to get people on side.

We could start by talking about organizing strikes- that is to say rent strikes and debt repayment strikes. This could be combined with a concerted effort to challenge the immense power of the credit rating agencies like Standard & Poors or Moodys. For example, it is said that if the UKs credit rating is downgraded we will be in trouble as a country in the same way that we might be if Experian were to downgrade as individuals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_%26_Poor%27s

The credit rating agencies are the weak spot in the present financial and corporate oligocracy. They can only be undermined by a rejection of their authority and a campaign to close them down.

Hildy Johnson

Comments

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squat

05.05.2009 13:29

The most important tactic when dealing with private landlords is not to deal with them. Rent from Local Authority Housing & Registered Social Landlords

The way social housing had been destroyed in this country makes it incredibly difficult to do this however. That is where squatting comes in.

If you are already in private rented property then yes - an organised mass rent strike would be a fantastic way of hitting them.

The 21st century Highland Clearances.

05.05.2009 14:20

The effect of the years of Tory rule is that the housing sector has been privatised. Social housing sold off, either to tenants, or capitalist style Housing Trusts. Private landlords being encouraged to supply the demand for rented accommodation. Either way, housing is run for profit, not people.

The neo con way then cut back on benefits so creating homelessness on a grand scale. Whereas people would have their rents paid by the benefits system, this no longer met the costs of rents.

The consequences are that landlords will not let property to people who are claiming benefits. Since there is no prospect of buying a place, people are forced on to the streets. Revisions to housing law resulted in councils having few duties to house people, even in temporary accommodation.

There is a desperate need for concerted action on housing in the UK today. The system has many similarities to the days of the greedy landlords putting people out, when the clearances occurred.

An organised cooperative network would be a start.

Jolly Roger

Taleban, Landlords and the BBC

05.05.2009 14:56

Connected I think is the BBC article on the Taleban in Pakistan. It reports how they have gained the support of the peasantry by expelling the feudal landlords from the North West provinces. This begs the question- Are the Taleban wholly retrogressive and what are the Western armies truly doing- reinstituting feudalism? Why no discussion/debate on this from the 'Left'. Maybe it's more comfortable to accept the corporate media's representation of the Taleban as just wife/daughter beating cavemen?

I agree

06.05.2009 17:22

There is a great crisis of housing in the UK right now. Council and Housing Association tenancies are thin on the ground, and even then the housing associations leave alot to be desired (See Places For People for example, one of if not the largest in the UK). . . There are thousands on housing register waiting lists )recently it was reported 20,000 on the housing register in Bristol alone) awaiting rehousing, and then there is the private sector, sheriff landlords exploiting the need for housing and the agencies. As has been pointed out, private landlords will generally not sniff at the unemployed, and the agencies are worse. So the result is mass homelessness. It's a real crisis and the neocon policies since the Thatcher era have created it. Personally, I fear squatting, what with the fast move on rate and evictions, and lack of security. Squatting is alright for young Anarchists perhaps, but if you're a single mum with a child or an aging person with valuables you don't want to lose or health problems, what can you do?

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