Tag Archives: Rent Freeze

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No to 10 Years of Above Inflation Rent Increases – Call out to groups and organisations

Paul Burnham, Haringey Defend Council Housing and Martin Wicks, Labour Campaign for Council Housing are seeking support for their statement / petition.

“Rent convergence” is being presented like it’s a done deal. It means massive rent increases for those in social rented and council housing, and higher benefit bills for the government. We must oppose it.

STATEMENT

We are asking tenants organisations and housing campaigns to support the statement which opposes ‘social rent convergence’ and 10 years of CPI+1% rent increases, for council and housing association tenants.

As the statement says this will impoverish already poor tenants who do not have all their rent covered by housing benefit. We will need to campaign for these policies to be overturned. Making tenants pay for the under-funding of council housing revenue accounts, and the indebtedness and commercialisation of housing associations, is a substitute for adequate central government funding. These increases are guaranteed to drive up rent arrears.

The government’s own impact assessment says that a £2 a week convergence payment will cost the Exchequer £4 billion in increased benefit payments. That makes no sense.

We are looking at the possibility of a meeting on this theme, in the House of Commons in November. In October we will know what the September inflation figure is, which will determine next April’s maximum rent increase.

If you support this statement, please add your organisation’s name to the statement/petition.

Paul Burnham, Haringey Defend Council Housing

Martin Wicks, Labour Campaign for Council Housing

Supporters also include:

BAFAWU (Bakers Union), Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), Labour Campaign for Council Housing, Streets Kitchen, UNITE Community National Housing Group, Somerset & North Devon UNITE Community, UNITE housing Workers Branch LE1111, Unite Community National Housing Group, Paula Barker, MP, Neil Duncan-Jordan, MP, Glyn Oliver, Branch secretary, Unite Community Southampton, Jackson Caines, Housing Campaigner, Harrow Law Centre, Housing Action Teeside, Kim Johnson MP, Jon Trickett MP, Brighton and Hove Housing Coalition, Chris Hinchliff MP

Sign the statement / petition

Labour Campaign for Council Housing

Haringey Defend Council Housing

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Homes for All hosted campaigners to discuss “housing and planning revolution”

Housing and planning campaigners headed to the culture tent at Marxism 2025 on Sunday to discuss ‘why we need a housing and planning revolution’.

Over 80 people attended, with contributions from Just Space, Living Rent Scotland and ACORN. Another participant in the meeting raised how impressed they were with how H4A raised broader political issues in their campaigns such as anti-racism and asked for advice on how to get their campaign to do the same.

The meeting, hosted by Morag Gillie from Homes For All was an opportunity to consider the kind of change we need, and how to fight for it. Morag said “There were too many people waiting to speak and as usual we ran out of time.”
After the meeting people formed two long queues for getting involved and taking away leaflets. 14 people signed up to the H4A WhatsApp group and we ran out of leaflets on both tables!

Destructive

Eileen Conn from Peckham Vision spoke about her personal story as a grassroots campaigner for 50 years with much of it about neighbourhood planning issues. She gave a snapshot of the current 5-year campaign against Berkeley’s plans for the overdevelopment of the Aylesham site in Rye Lane which locals view as destructive to Peckham as a place, to the town centre and its diverse vibrant local economy.

“This phenomenon is happening all over London and other places across the country and why we need to bring grassroots housing campaigners together with planning campaigners. This is to mobilise local people everywhere onto the streets for a total change in the national housing policies and planning policies” Eileen Conn, Peckham Vision

Struggles

Paul Burnham from Defend Council Housing spoke about UK housing policy since 1914, pointing out how struggles from below had driven high priority council house building campaigns in the past. There had also been other successes from campaigning over a long series of issues and struggles. Paul pointed out that Angela Rayner’s latest promise of £39 billion of social and affordable housebuilding, including 180,000 social rent homes over ten years, must be examined alongside the government’s tenure-blind target for 1.5 million new homes over five years.

“When all these schemes are up and running, there would be 300,000 new homes a year, of which 18,000, that is, only 6%, would be at social rent. That is not going to cut it.” Paul Burnham, Defend Council Housing

Developers

Tanya Murat from SHAPE Coalition said solving the housing emergency would mean a new generation of council housing – for all, wherever you were born. She outlined the need to struggle on many fronts. We have to call for the requisitioning of empty homes; we must break the power of landlords and fight for a nationally enforced system of rent control now. The government must end the building safety scandal, and we need Justice for Grenfell. We have to stand up to developers.We must demand – Refurbish don’t demolish. We have to support campaigners who are fighting to stop their councils demolishing structurally sound housing.

“Expecting developers to solve the housing emergency is like expecting fossil fuel companies to solve the climate emergency” Tanya Murat, SHAPE (Southwark Housing and Planning Emergency)

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Spanish housing movement forces rent control, beats back racist housing policy, stops evictions

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Homes for All heard from Tarek Cheriha Dkik, a housing and anti-racist activist speaking from Girona, northeast Catalonia.

The housing rights movement is led by the Tenants’ Union (Sindicat de Llogateres i Llogaters). The Union calls for protecting renters and fighting for the de-commodification of housing including rent control, increasing public housing stock, and stopping evictions. 
The main demands of the movement in a massive demo in November were:

  • 50% reduction in rental prices
  • indefinite rental contracts 
  • recovery of vacant and tourist-use homes for residential use
  • a ban on real estate speculation.

Then on 5 April 5 2025, there was another demo in over 40 cities across Spain, including Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Seville, Málaga, and others. Both Madrid and Barcelona saw over 100,000 protesters.

In a stunning victory, left-wing parties in the parliament of Catalonia responded to the massive movement by reaching an agreement to regulate seasonal and room rents, establish a sanctioning regime for housing violations, and build 50,000 rent controlled housing units.

Activists from the city of Salt’s anti-racist network formed a committee to identify and stop migrant families being evicted from their homes, which later became the Salt Housing Union. They also successfully lobbied to remove a discriminatory condition excluding migrants from public housing, and exposed the racism in the private rental market.

It is clear that a huge movement can challenge the political business as usual, and demands which seemed impossible before can take on a life of their own.

Thank you to Tarek for taking the time to explain how to fight for people and housing!


YouTube Video for Tarek’s presentation (including summary of his comments)

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Housing groups and trade unions call rent freeze Day of Action – 11 February 2023

#RentFreezeNow day of action called by LRU, 3 December 2022 (Outside Foxton’s Wood Green)

Join us in London or call a protest in your local area

Saturday 11 February, Assemble 12 noon
Department of Levelling Up, 2 Marsham St, London SW1P 4DF

  • Rent Freeze Now! – Service Charge Freeze Now! – Stop the Evictions!
  • Demand the Government funds a rent freeze!

Download the Rent Freeze Day of Action Leaflet here

As the social emergency intensifies, more and more of us find it harder to cover the basics – living on poverty wages and inadequate benefits. In many places rents are rising faster than inflation, private landlords force prospective tenants to pay for viewings and tenants in social housing are faced with a 7% rent rise in April 2023. We came together to protest at the Department of Levelling Up in October and we supported the London Renters Union and Greater Manchester Tenants Union on their Rent Freeze Day of Action on 3 December.

Homes for All invited housing groups and trade unions to a Round Table to talk about what we could all do next. We were joined by representatives from Defend Council Housing, Social Housing Action Campaign (SHAC), Grenfell Community Campaigners, UNISON, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), UNITE Community, Action on Empty Homes, Fuel Poverty Action, University of Manchester Rent Strike, Southwark Group of Tenants Organisations (SGTO), Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), NASUWT, Deputy Leader of Islington Council, Labour Campaign for Council Housing and others.

The group agreed to call a Day of Action on 11 February 2023 to demand a rent freeze and call attention to associated housing issues such as poor conditions, mould, reduced services and fire safety. A letter has been written to Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to demand that the government fund a rent and service charge freeze.

This demand builds on the example from Scotland where the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) Act was passed on October 2022,  freezing rent until March 2023, with regulations allowing an extension until March 2024. This is a fantastic win for Living Rent Scotland, shows the impact of political pressure from the housing movement and also how the Labour Party, who proposed the policy, can support a 0% rent rise. We also welcome Sadiq Khan’s call for a rent freeze for private renters and a rent rebate for social housing which in effect is a rent freeze.

Facebook event: London Demonstration- please share

Download the Rent Freeze Day of Action Leaflet and template local leaflet here

There will be a Tweet storm on Tuesday 24 January (9am -11am) to build for the Day of Action. If you would like to take part in the Tweet storm and be sent Twitter assets please email southwarkdch@gmail.com

Use these hashtags: #RentFreezeNow #ServiceChargeFreeze #StopEvictions #FundRepairs

Contact us to support the rent freeze,  join the Day of Action on Saturday 11 February 2023 in London or to organise in your own area infohfanew1@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/homes4alluk/status/1605543480746422272?s=20&t=XzAsgba-vCINsm28DDVqRQ