love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

Renters are facing immense worry & hardship as a result of the pandemic. Radical action is needed to support them & nothing should be ruled out including suspension of rents, rent controls and, of course, the longer term supply of the decent homes needed. https://t.co/zf2Lmh0Q1Y

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) May 15, 2020

"nothing should be ruled out" that's the kind of urgency needed here it's an emergency situation.

miss u king

My song.

Russell-Moyle and whoever posting those Biden remarks should also look at this:

House Democrats are significantly scaling back the student loan forgiveness provisions in their $3T coronavirus relief package, citing concerns about the cost: https://t.co/h56VehjUsK

— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) May 14, 2020

<3 Big John but his policy proposal document on this that was floated prior to Starmer taking over was uselessly vague.

Saying 'nothing should be ruled out' is also uselessly vague. If Biden can propose a non-means-tested government bailout of renters and mortgage-holders, the Labour left can too. As the above tweet indicates, though, that doesn't come without strings.

"nothing should be ruled out including suspension of rents, rent controls"

not my definition of vague

This was his policy before Starmer took over and people are still arguing over whether that means suspension for everyone or just for some, whether suspension is the same as cancellation and whether, if suspended, the government would pick up the tab or the proposal is to pressure the Conservatives into removing the UK from the jurisdiction of the ECHR to ensure that the burden falls on landlords.

Labour were in a kind of leaderless and useless inertia for the start of this pandemic. I'm a believer in anything is possible with the political will to execute it. Why are radical policies that kill the poor and disabled always so easy to iron the kinks out of and run roughshod over laws with. Yet radical policies that cause inconvenience to the wealthy have to be thoughtful and nuanced and lawyered to the point of absolute legally watertight. Sorry SV I'll never agree with you on this.

It's not just attaching 'strings' is it? I can't see the piece my tweet linked to but basically the Democrats are being dragged away from a progressive solution because the right will shout about the cost. A lot of Democrats probably agree so you are looking at rent strike action to win concessions.

Very clear Labour in the UK aren't going to pull their finger out either.

Yet radical policies that cause inconvenience to the wealthy have to be thoughtful and nuanced and lawyered to the point of absolute legally watertight

The short answer is that the legal system is set up to protect capital and you need to find a way to circumvent that which isn't just 'let's ignore the law'. What'll inevitably happen is it's challenged, the landlords win and get massive amounts of compensation, against a backdrop of chaos. You can either change the law (and remove the ECHR) to prevent this or you can start from the position that the government will pay one way or another and put a structured scheme in place, in line with the Omar one Biden seems to be referencing.

The alternative is a ground-up rent strike. That's not going to win concessions but it'll likely generate so much debt that it'll be impossible for anyone to recoup.

"The short answer is that the legal system is set up to protect capital and you need to find a way to circumvent that"

just accepting this imbalance and not challenging it is everything that has been wrong with Labour in my lifetime and why I'll probably never get a chance to vote for them in my lifetime.

That's fine but you have to work through what that means - which in this case is removing the UK from the ECHR. That's something Labour could embrace if it wanted to, in line with broader Lexit positions on disengaging from international commercial / legal jurisdictions.

The alternative is a ground-up rent strike. That's not going to win concessions but it'll likely generate so much debt that it'll be impossible for anyone to recoup.

― ShariVari, Friday, 15 May 2020 bookmarkflaglink

My angle was that a threat that could be carried out would mean negotiation and a deal that was fair to renters.

That negotiation can only happen at an individual level without the government being on the hook, i think. Allowing people to rack up unpayable debt with a freeze on evictions and no possibility of your landlord forcing your into bankruptcy for two years (which is the current Labour position aiui) means that huge amounts of completely worthless debt will accrue and you'll either have mass bankruptcy with nobody getting paid back or landlords will be effectively forced to accept X Pence in the Pound to write it off.

The government stepping in to force landlords to negotiate cuts, on the other hand, would fall into the same ECHR trap as cancellation.

There's already a state mechanism for assisting with rents for people who can't pay and advocating for a massive expansion of housing benefit seems more likely to be successful.

The Tories look like they're down 3, not up 6 as above:

Westminster voting intention:

CON: 51% (-3)
LAB: 32% (+4)
LDEM: 7% (-2)
GRN: 2% (-2)
BREX: 2% (+1)

via @KantarPublic, 07 - 11 May
Chgs. w/ 20 Aprhttps://t.co/xDE4qWuDxR

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) May 15, 2020

If Starmer isn't embarrassed by Debbonaire's comments to the Fabians and that is a position on landlords they are happy with I'd say get used to the idea that huge swathes of the electorate won't turn out for you in 2024 if that is all you have to offer. Thousands of them won't even be able to get on the electoral register.

There's already a state mechanism for assisting with rents for people who can't pay and advocating for a massive expansion of housing benefit seems more likely to be successful.

― ShariVari, Friday, 15 May 2020 bookmarkflaglink

I don't see this kind of bailout happening rn. With Labour currently absent it's good to see some kind of organising for rent strikes. Worth a go given the numbers of people at risk.

The more people stop paying their rent, the more an expansion of housing benefit and the Omar/Biden proposals become a bailout of landlords rather than assistance to renters. That makes them more likely to happen to happen, imo, so good luck to the strikers.

If the Tories really believed in free-market principles they would be allowing rents to fall to reflect demand.

Anecdotally I think this might already be happening - I know someone who had to move during the lockdown and asking prices appear to have dropped substantially, even in Central London. This doesn't help the vast majority of renters who are already in the middle of tenancies and can't pay rent full stop but there may be substantial room for renegotiation later down the line if things carry on the way they are.

Asking prices are doing crazy shit. I've been looking around where I live and a few weeks ago there were some places going for £1k less than you'd expect. I suspect this was a flood of desperate AirBNB hosts trying to coverage the mortgage quickly, mind

airbnb vanishing as a possibility has had a big downward effect on rents yes

a rentstrike would highlight how incredibly expensive it is for the govt just to be bailing out private landlords: one-off buyback of rental properties very quickly* much much cheaper (i linked a thing abt this upthread)

(which is definitely a demand rentstikers shd be very clearly making)

If the idea of long-term remote-working takes off, it's going to a wild time in the housing market.

What if any are the current Labour proposals for supporting people who rack up unsustainable or unpayable arrears under their policy? That's the bit that seems to be missing from the debate right now.

A one-off buyback of rental properties would represent an absolutely gigantic transfer of wealth from the government to small-time investors. It'd be interesting to see what would happen with all that money suddenly sloshing around in the economy that would otherwise be sitting in property. Obviously there are very few productive places for that money to be going right now, but during reconstruction? It's got to come in handy.

Every fucker would be buying pubs or starting microbreweries.

utopia

one-off buyback of rental properties very quickly* much much cheaper (i linked a thing abt this upthread)

(which is definitely a demand rentstikers shd be very clearly making)

― mark s, Friday, 15 May 2020 bookmarkflaglink

They aren't.

Proud to be a member of @LDNRentersUnion.

These 5 demands are exactly what we need in this crisis.

Would be great if @UKLabour & @ThangamMP could listen to the housing movement and adopt these proposals too.

Join the campaign here 👉 https://t.co/jNQXbAd1gK pic.twitter.com/5q7ZcIiXV3

— Aidan Harper (@Aidan_Harper_) May 15, 2020

"No Borders In Housing"

I too like having the practical convenience of having a toilet a few feet away from my bed.

Not in the kitchen? That's some milquetoast shit right there.

chamber pot or you're a Tory

Actually I think you'll find I'm as much a Guardian-reading liberal as the next man and *I* have a woman who comes round to empty it for me. Doesn't everyone?

"just nipping into the shitchen, ah love the smell of freshly baked bread!"

Labour: I'm sure you'll be able to come up with some arrangement to pay back the rent you owe over the next 2 years with your very reasonable landlord.
Reality: https://t.co/UYJaKiZQCo

— Ollie Daly (@OllieJD98) May 15, 2020

central govt quietly winding up support for housing the homeless during the crisis

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/the-numbers-streets-going-rocket-18254318

yeah they don't announce callous cuts like this in their daily number circus/covid-19 bulletin.

govt apparently denying it. at the end of April there was a rumour it was going to end on 10 May so who knows, this govt being totally incoherent/dynamically chaotic is vmic

guardian says nationwide 5400 ppl have been housed under this, MEN says greater manchester has put up 1600 ppl, I know homelessness is bad in manchester but ~30% of the uk total seems wrong

Between the start of April and the end of July, Greater Manchester is expecting nearly 5,000 new people to be classed as homeless here, including families, along with more than 70 prisoners a month released with no housing to go to.

if them figures are correct that is so grim.

I don't understand this at all, even the Tories must realise this is an unexploded public health bomb that's going to undermine the whole effort and will be incompatible with limiting the economic damage.

Central government has been suppressing homelessness figures for years. Numbers reported by individual councils are 5X the supposed national total.

I suspect the ultras don't really care about either of those things, they'll be worried that that these steps are the first on the way to socialism and might prove harder to remove later down the line. Same line of thinking as with furlough.

Plan seems to be to tell everyone they don't have a choice about exposing themselves to infection, so public health bombs not too much of a concern I'd guess.

it's p hard to count homelessness tbf, you have figures of ppl who present to the council as homeless, which obv excludes a lot of ppl, and then the murkier biz of counting rough sleepers, which is v difficult and no one seems to try that hard

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYDq4lYWAAUJiuA?format=jpg&name=large

summary executions for both these jerkoffs here would be too kind, they should be repeatedly thrown off a cliff and dragged back up it again.

I'd deport the lot of these Spiked cunts if I was running the country, except no-one would take them - does St. Helena still take exiles? The disproportionate access the media gives these arseholes is a national disgrace.

I've heard various right wing wankers like Isabel Oakeshott boohooing over the harm this is doing to disadvantaged children - like anyone in their right mind thinks the likes of Isabel Oakeshott cares whether disadvantaged children live or die.

One of the strange right wing u-turns is now they finally admit austerity kills people and is bad. so the working poor need to die of the Rona to prevent themselves dying from even worse austerity than before that they used to deny was killing them!

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/15/lib-dem-election-campaign-a-car-crash-says-partys-review?CMP

Turns out internal party reports are good now.

This one appears to suggest the LibDems actually believed they were capable of winning the last election and, well

a mixture of proposals here to address this in the short & medium term, I note it was liked by the hated clive lewis

*wades into rent arguments* Whilst we need to sort a millennia of landlordism, 1st priority is to ensure those who can’t pay their rent from their income keep a decent roof over the heads, whether they’re a low paid worker, or unable to work due to their needs or the job market -

— CarolineJMolloy (@carolinejmolloy) May 15, 2020

clive lewis isn't hated so much as exasperatedly tutted at, his heart has always been in the right place despite his antics and i think most here would agree

and yeah some good/interesting ideas there, may even overlook the use of 'millennia' in the singular

Has Brendan O'Neill always been so morose? He doesn't seem to get any kind of kick out of doing this stuff at all. It feels like he's worn himself out. He should be getting more of a buzz out of it, it not working