, the Tory grandee Sir Edward Leigh told MPs: “I was able to buy my first house – although it was a bit of a struggle – for £25,000. The opportunities for young people are so difficult now”. Younger people are “overwhelmingly reliant on the rental sector”, Leigh conceded, but the problem as he saw it was one of supply: “We have to build many more houses, and we have to free up the rented sector.
The project of “municipalising” the private sector enjoyed cross-party support. With landlords desperate to sell, and councils having access to preferential public loans and grants, there was not even a need for compulsory purchases, and social housing stocks could grow cheaply, sustainably and without a single new brick being laid.
We now find ourselves in a situation where one in every 21 adults in the UK is a landlord. We have four times as many landlords as teachers. As a consequence, virtually everyone struggles to afford a home that meets their needs despite a net gain in housing stock. Landlords are entitled to ask for whatever rent they think they can get, and insecure contracts drive a coach and horses through the concept of tenants’ rights. This is the market that Leigh, landlords and developers want to “free up”.
Our recent history shows us that landlord abolition, while maintaining adequate levels of housing stock, is an entirely realistic ambition. It is so modest a demand that it has been subsumed into Conservative party policy.