The new Mayor’s project could impose different regulations to limit and cap the private rent prices in the English capital.
The Mayor of London wants to introduce more control on private rent in London, as its prices are increasing year by year.
The first London Living Rent homes launched this week: find out more about my plans to help Londoners who rent https://t.co/7JImy2VvIv
— Mayor of London (@MayorofLondon) 4 May 2017
The weekly average private rent has risen by 39 pounds from 2008 to 2017, according to the Department for Communities and Local Government, while outside London this cost has stayed stable.
Khan’s “London Model”, which will be published in spring 2019, will contain the changes in how to supervise the private rent in London. This will affect the section 21 “no fault” evictions, which gives landlords the right to repossess their property, without providing a reason for it. At the moment, landlords cannot serve a section 21 notice within the first four months of the initial fixed term. A housing campaign group Generation Rentaffirmed that this current right has represented one of the main causes of homelessness since 2012, they told the Guardian:
“This law allows evictions with no reason needed, and this is one more reason why we should scrap it.”
This is not the first time that the Mayor Sadiq Khan attempts to solve the housing crisis, as in 2013 he proposed new measures in order to make rents more predictable and controlled. In his manifesto for the 2016 London mayoral election, he said: “I will fight for the mayor and London councils to have a greater say in strengthening renters’ rights over tenancy lengths, rent rises, and the quality of accommodation.” He wrote in a letter to Karen Buck, the Labour MP for Westminster North, seen by the Guardian:
“I have long advocated such reforms; in 2013, I suggested reforms could give renters the right to longer-term tenancies and predictable rents. The housing crisis is now having such an effect on a generation of Londoners that the arguments in favour of rent stabilisation and control are becoming overwhelming.”
The new plan will give local councils more powers in order to manage and balance the current gap and difference that especially young people experienced when they have searched for a flat in London.
Clare Clancy, 25, told Westminster World:
However, there is a different angle that has not been included in the mayor’s project. The multicultural city of London is the house of thousands of students from all around the world. As a student from abroad could be very hard looking for a private room in London, so the most suitable solution for many is living in the campus, however, accommodation prices are more expensive than the private rents. Eleonora Cao Pinna, 21, who is studying and living in the University of Westminster, suggested:
Renting regulations could massively change London high living costs and balance in a fair way tenants and landlords’ rights.