Labour MP accuses agents in 'slum landlords' row

A Labour MP has accused agents in his area of using slum landlords to house vulnerable people.

John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, said that as a result, some families are living in appalling conditions. He called it the worst housing crisis since the last world war.

Another Labour MP, Jeremy Corbyn, accused landlords of deliberately neglecting their properties in a bid to force poorer tenants out, so that they could re-let at higher rents.

McDonnell said the Government is cutting investment in social house building and in housing benefits. “This means local families having virtually no hope of gaining a decent roof over their heads,” he said.

“In the private sector, many buy-to-let landlords are making massive profits from housing families in overcrowded appalling conditions.”  

Speaking in a debate on social housing in London, McDonnell told MPs that families are coming to his regular surgery “with their children at their ankles, in tears and desperate for a roof over their heads”.

He said the borough now has 900 homeless families and 7,600 families on housing waiting lists. On average, they wait between seven and ten years.

He hit out at the London Borough of Hillingdon’s housing policies, which include using local estate agents to find private sector rental accommodation for families.

“We have discovered that the estate agents it has been using have often used these buy-to-let slum landlords,” he said.

He said he also believed there is an “informal agreement” in place where estate agents will only seek properties for vulnerable families in the poorer south of the borough, rather than the more affluent north. This is creating ‘an apartheid regime’, he warned.
He added: “This has resulted in families living in appalling conditions and overcrowding. Some families are living in almost developing world conditions because some of the properties are so poor.”

He also spoke about a “planning free-for-all” in Hillingdon whereby landlords are erecting ‘leisure rooms’ in their gardens to be rented by families.

McDonnell told MPs: “What is happening is that landlords are constructing these leisure rooms and getting families to live in what are, in effect, garages.

“In some instances we have discovered these places only when the family has turned up to register for council tax and we have found out that they are living in a shed or a garage.”

He used the debate to call for an emergency housing programme “on a scale not seen since the Second World War”. He said the Government should treat the plight of families in Hillingdon and other areas as a crisis.

The debate was introduced by Jeremy Corbyn, Labour MP for Islington.

He said: “Excessively expensive private rented accommodation that becomes unaffordable for poorer people leads to landlords not maintaining, supporting, improving or looking after properties, and virtually forcing people out of them so that they can rent them out at a much higher rent.

“There is also a problem about the number of people living in private rented accommodation who are in receipt of housing benefit in London.”
 
He called for rent controls and criticised the Government for refusing to consider the idea.

He said: “If the problem were limited to housing benefit in the private rented sector, that would be bad enough. However, in parallel with the cut in housing benefit payments, the Government have refused to introduce rent controls or even countenance the idea of controlling private sector rents.”