Sian Berry vowed to never stop pushing the Mayor to fight for rent control powers today when she went head-to-head with him during Mayor’s Question Time.
Sian criticised the Mayor’s ‘defeatist’ attitude towards campaigning for rent controls.
As well as requesting details of the Mayor’s meetings with ministers on this issues, she pointed out that, in a MQT exchange in October 2016, the Mayor gave negative views about the chances of winning both rent control powers and a ban on letting agent fees.
At that meeting he said ‘the Government is not going to ban letting agent fees’. [1] However, the cross-party campaign to ban letting fees was successful in April 2017.
She wants to see the Mayor apply the same pressure to the Government to address the crisis in renting costs. A Shelter report released today revealed that homelessness is rising again due to ‘the perfect storm of crippling rents, welfare cuts and a lack of social housing’. [2]
In a heated exchange the Mayor accused Sian of ‘doing things simply for the sake of them being popular’. Sian has been a private renter in London for the past twenty years.
Sian says:
I will never give up on pressing the Mayor to fight for rent control powers for London.
We all know how sky-high rents are a particular problem for Londoners, a leading cause of homelessness and poverty with many, many working people struggling to pay them.
Playing this video will set cookies from YouTube/Google
Notes to editors
[1] Sian Berry questioning the Mayor on powers over rent rises, Oct 2016 http://questions.london.gov.uk/QuestionSearch/searchclient/questions/qu…
[2] Shelter’s commentary on their report (includes link to data) https://twitter.com/Shelter/status/1065512228126740481
[3] Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called for rent controls in September 2017 https://www.bigissue.com/latest/corbyn-promises-rent-control/