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The Budget is great for landlords but a disaster for renters [1]

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Date: 2024-03 

With all the political point-scoring and tax cut debates, you’d be forgiven for missing what Jeremy Hunt’s Budget has overlooked.

There was plenty for homeowners and landlords, with cuts to capital gains tax, making it cheaper to sell properties. Abolishing tax relief for holiday lets also looked like an attempt to please residential landlords who have complained about the unequal playing field. This Budget will also help high earners – cuts to National Insurance will disproportionately benefit the richer in society, and a British ISA means the wealthy can invest (tax free) even more than before.

So all those struggling landlords and investors will be able to sleep easy tonight. Meanwhile there’s a growing crisis being ignored by the chancellor: renting.

Right now, the country is in the middle of a cost of living crisis. Rough sleeping has soared for the second year in a row, with an annual increase of 27%. Yet protections for renters, who are facing the most expensive rents on record and are at constant risk of homelessness, are nowhere to be seen.

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Day in and day out the political agenda is stuck in the past, failing to deal with the country as it is right now, not 30 years ago. Yes, there were large aspirations for homeownership in the ’80s. Now, that dream is dead for most people: it takes 30 years on average to save for a deposit in London, and 13 years outside of the capital. Renting is the second biggest tenure in England, so why aren’t we trying to help people with the situation they’re in right now?

It’s not a wild idea that the chancellor could introduce protections at times of crisis. Look at the way the government responded in the pandemic, introducing mortgage holidays for homeowners. Rent controls would provide immediate relief to renters – alongside those other commitments the Tories have failed to fulfil such as banning no-fault evictions (although this wouldn’t have come in a Budget).

There’s at least a silver lining. The conservatives didn’t introduce a 99% mortgage, which would have inevitably spiked house prices to even higher levels than they are now. But that’s hardly a relief to the millions of people facing eye-watering monthly rents, permanent insecurity and no settled place to call home.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/jeremy-hunt-spring-budget-renting-crisis-evictions/

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