I have joined campaigners and fellow MPs to sign a joint statement with the Labour Campaign for Council Housing, opposing plans for “rent convergence”. These proposals come after years of above-inflation rent hikes, where social rents for low-income households have risen 58% in real terms since 1994, and arrears have nearly doubled to £397 million since 2015.
These policies would impoverish already poor tenants, and will not resolve the financial crisis of housing revenue accounts or the indebtedness of housing associations.
I have committed to campaigning for the government to abandon above inflation rent increases and ‘rent convergence’, and to scrap unaffordable ‘Affordable Rent’ (up to 80% market rent). Rents should be set at levels tenants can actually afford, and not at levels that drive poverty and social exclusion.
