A spokesperson for the Centre for Policy Studies think tank – Emma Revell – says the scandal surrounding humiliated ex-housing minister Rumanasha Ali shows the irrationality of the Bill.
Ali behaved logically by landlord standards but hypocritically by government minister standards.
Referring to the Bill’s numerous anti-landlord measures, Revell comments on the business newspaper City AM: “It should be obvious even to our politicians that if we make it harder to make money out of renting a property, we will get fewer people renting out their properties. And the Bill definitely makes it harder.
“… The more difficult it is to do something, the fewer people will do it. But legislators seem to think this will magically not apply to landlords who, faced with the prospect of even more legislation – like the possible re-emergence of rules requiring rented properties to be at least a C grade on an EPC certificate – are already withdrawing properties from the market.
“What does the government think having fewer properties available to rent does to the cost, I wonder?”
Revell says the problem is not landlords but too few homes.
She continues: “Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has campaigned for powers to enforce rent controls in London for years – despite countless cities around the world providing incontrovertible real-world case studies for why that would be a phenomenally stupid thing to do. In the meantime, the city he has been mayor of for going on a decade has seen housebuilding grind to an almost complete halt.”
She claims that analysis by the Centre for Policy Studies found that London has just 427 homes for every 1,000 residents. If London were to match the average ratio in comparable European countries such as Italy, Denmark, France, and Finland, it would find it had an implied shortage of 1.1m homes.
This article is taken from Landlord Today