Private tenants are crying out for a living rent commission

The campaign for a limit on rent hikes and a fair deal for private sector renters won't stop until the government admits failure and starts looking for solutions.

Every time it seems that the housing crisis couldn't get any worse, it does. Our social housing stock is fast diminishing, buying a home is still and impossible dream for many and the rental market is both viciously competitive and increasingly unaffordable. 

Figures released today compound the already dismal picture for those living in the private rented sector. Average rents across Britain went up by 4.9% in 2015 - an increase far higher than most people saw in their pay packets. In some places the hikes in rent were particularly eyewatering. In Brighton & Hove - where my constituency is based - landlords raised rents by an average of 18% compared with 2014. These record rent level rises mean a typical flat in my home city now costs 1,078 pounds a month and an average earner pays 65% of their salary for a typical two-bed flat.

The effects of these colossal rent increases are profoundly disturbing. Many on low incomes are forced to go without food and heating to pay rents. People who grew up in Brighton are having to move away from friends, family and communities to afford enough space to have children - a situation echoed in unaffordable neighborhoods across the UK.

With experts from PwC predicting that by 2025 7.2m households will be in rented accommodation, compared with 5.4m today and just 2.3m in 2001, it's abundantly clear that something needs to be done to help renters.

It's within this context that today I attempted to amend the housing and planning bill to include the establishment of a living rent commission - a proposal I had promised to take forward as part of the housing charter I published before the election. The remit of the commission is simple: to establish what a living rent should be and how to get there.

The commission would use the principles behind the living wage and link to it in order to calculate what a genuinely affordable level of rent looks like in different places, bearing in mind other costs of living and wage levels. It could also incorporate factors such as tenancy security, for example, by taking into account the average length of tenancies in a given area. It would also consider whether we need two different living rent levels - one for London and one for everywhere else. Or whether, as seems more likely, it should be more localized and on what basis. The commission would work with all options on the table. That means considering not just so-called "smart" rent controls - which would limit rental cost increases in line with inflation - but also mechanisms to cap and lower rents.

Regulators in other countries agree that rent controls can be part of the solution. In Sweden, rents in the private rented sector aren't allowed to be more than 105% of rents in equivalent accommodation owned by a municipal housing company. There's a stable private rented sector in which the quality of repairs and maintenance is rated as good. Tenants and landlords alike benefit fro secure indefinite tenancies. Indefinite tenancies and rent controls are credited for giving Germany the most stable private rented sector in the world, alongside the US. France, where they also have rent controls and more secure long-term tenancies than we have in the UK, has a growing private rented sector.

Understandably, there will be concerns about the impact on landlords and, in turn, the effects on supply. A living rent commission would model all these possibilities and risks, taking them into account when making its rent level recommendations. I don't pretend to have all the solutions - but the scale of this crisis clearly demands urgent further investigation.

It was deeply disappointing that there wasn't sufficient support for the living rent commission in the House of Commons to push my amendment to a vote - leaving renters consigned to yet more financial hardship. But the campaign for a fair deal for rents won't stop here. The untenable and indefensible situation for those in the private sector cannot last. With the evidence stacking up against them, and public pressure growing, it's time for the government to admit its utter failure on housing and begin to search for real solutions.