Wales consults on right to housing and fair rents

Posted: June 8, 2023 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Private renting, Rent control, Wales |Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

The right to housing. Rent regulation. Two of the most prominent big ideas for fixing the housing system have just gone out for consultation in Wales.

There is still a long way to go after publication of what amounts to the lightest of green papers and there is a big difference between proposing something and implementing it. However, taken together they represent a big challenge to current orthodoxy.

The green paper on housing adequacy and fair rents is the result of the cooperation agreement between Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru. A white paper will follow but this is more of a call for evidence than a definite commitment to action or legislation.

The right to adequate housing is part of a United Nations covenant on economic, social and cultural rights that the UK signed up to almost 50 years ago. However, turning a vague aspiration to ‘housing as a human right’ into something more meaningful means incorporating it into national law, a move with strong support in the housing sector in Wales.

At the same time, as in the rest of the UK, support has been growing on the left and among private renters for some form of rent regulation.

The green paper combines both ideas by going back to the UN definition of adequate housing: affordability is one of seven criteria alongside security of tenure, availability of services, habitability, accessibility, location and the expression of cultural identity.

Much of the consultation is spent discussing the current affordability of rents, identifying gaps in the data and asking how a ‘fair rent’ should be defined.

The most widely used definition of ‘affordable’ is that housing costs (not just rent, but utilities, council tax etc) should make up no more than 30 per cent of household income. 

For households on low incomes in Wales that means no more than £466.50 a month – but the average private sector rent alone is £550.

Climate change minister Julie James says in her introduction that ‘for those on low incomes we want to explore opportunities to use the levers available to us to secure greater support that will make renting a home more affordable’.

The green paper discusses different forms of rent regulation elsewhere in the UK and around the world but it does not express a firm view on the options.

That has not stopped the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) diving in with both feet to warn that ‘rent control proposals would be a disaster for Welsh renters’.

Chief executive Ben Beadle said: ‘The minister herself diagnosed the issues when she rightly rejected calls for a rent freeze before Christmas. The same reasons apply now. We all want to see more homes available to rent but adopting the tried and failed ideology of rent controls is not the way to do it. The best way is to introduce pro-growth measures to increase housing supply that will reduce costs for renters.’

This looks like a pre-emptive response to something that is not actually being proposed yet. There is no commitment to rent regulation, let alone rent controls, and plenty of discussion of the implications for the future supply of rental properties.

However, there was also a disappointed response from the housing sector to the green paper. The Back the Bill campaign, formed by the Chartered Institute of Housing Cymru, Shelter Cymru and Tai Pawb to call for legislation on the right to housing, argues that the consultation frames the issues the wrong way around. 

For them, the green paper implies that a legal right to adequate housing should come in after everything else is in place in terms of the supply of homes, affordability and homelessness legislation.

They argue that the right to housing is ‘the 21^st century equivalent of the NHS’ and should come first. ‘Our predecessors did not wait for enough hospitals, doctors, and nurses to form the NHS – they recognised legislation would drive it and got on with it,’ they say. A statutory right introduced first would force statutory authorities to come up with ways to deliver it over time and there would be long-term savings for the Welsh Government.

There will be consultation and debate on both ideas ahead of more definite proposals in  a white paper. It will be fascinating to see what emerges.

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