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£1350-a-month London room rental sparks fury: no heating, no guests, no noise

People on social media have been rightly roasting a London landlord for an extortionately-priced London room rental listing – with some ridiculous caveats. The landlord in question has since deleted the ad – but it has sparked fierce debate over extreme rental prices amidst London’s housing crisis:

For £1350 a month you can have a 2m by 4m room. The catch though? She would prefer you to only be in between 8:30pm to 8am, Monday to Thursday. Add into the mix violin lessons in the house and the nearby train line – it doesn’t sound like you’ll be getting much sleep.

After a post about the listing got some traction on X, the landlady tried to quietly tweak the listing:

 

The CHAIN annual report shows rough sleeping figures for London increased by 19% in 2023/24, compared to the previous year. That year alone, authorities counted 11,993 people rough sleeping in London. This is the highest number ever recorded. During that year, outreach teams were only able to directly help 4,379 (37%) of these people to access accommodation.

Highest figures on record

Labour have promised to build 1.5m homes and focus on social housing in a bid to try and ease the housing crisis. Meanwhile, Angela Rayner, housing secretary, is set to lead a cross-government unit to tackle homelessness.

A 2024 analysis by the Financial Times found that 1 in every 200 households in the UK are experiencing homelessness. They also found that in England, the number of households living in temporary accommodation has more than doubled to 112,000. Again – these numbers are the highest we have ever seen.

The also found, citing research from Crisis:

Conditions in these buildings are often atrocious. Damp and mould are commonplace, as are insect and animal infestations. The disruption of being moved from place to place causes adults to drop out of work and children out of school. In the past five years alone, the parlous state of temporary accommodation has been cited as a contributing factor in the deaths of 55 children in England.

These arrangements also impose enormous costs on local councils, which last year spent almost £1.8bn on emergency shelter, a figure that has more than doubled in real terms over the past decade.

London room rental market: filled with grifters

Is there any wonder homelessness figures are increasing, when landlords are able to exploit working people – no doubt to pay off their own mortgages while they put their feet up.

For the years 2021/22, government spending on housing was £30.5bn. That’s compared to £22.3bn in 1975/76 in real terms. Yet out of the £30.5bn expenditure only 12% (or £3.7bn) was used to build or improve homes. 88% (or £26.8bn) was used to subsidise landlords with either legacy housing benefit or the housing element of Universal Credit.

If Labour is serious about tackling homelessness, it needs to get it’s rental housing market in order – with genuine rent controls and safeguards for tenants.

Local housing allowance

Local housing allowance (LHA) deciphers the maximum about of Housing Benefit and Universal Credit that people can receive to cover housing costs.

Back in in 2008, the government calculated LHA using the 50th percentile of rents within the ‘broad rental market area’ where a claimant lives. In 2011, they reduced this to the 30th percentile. In 2020, they decided to freeze the amount until April 2024, when they increased it again. However, this increase was based on rents from September 2023.

According to the Office for National Statistics, private rents increased by 8.4% in the year to September 2024.

Average rents increased to £1,336 (8.5%) in England, £760 (8.3%) in Wales, and £973 (7.2%) in Scotland, in the 12 months to September 2024.

Research now estimates that LHA is nearly one third below the average growth in private rents.

As rents continue to increase, the governments LHA freeze means that homelessness figures are only likely to spiral even further without direct action:

As things stand, with no rent controls and the freeze in LHA both rent prices and homelessness figures will continue to spiral out of control. Meanwhile, landlords will continue to profit from their disgusting exploitation of hard working people.

Feature image via 

By HG

This post was originally published on Canary.