The Green party has admitted it doesn’t want to get rid of private landlords - just make life more difficult for them.

Delegates at the party’s national conference in Bournemouth in October voted to abolish private landlords, which makes it official party policy within England and Wales.

They were told that, “the private rental sector has failed [and is] a vehicle for wealth extraction funnelling money from renters to the landlord class. This motion makes it clear Green Party policy is to seek the effective abolition of private landlordism and our support for building council housing.”

Interview

However, in an interview with Epigram, Bristol’s Green MP Carla Denyer admitted this could be misleading, and explained that the motion did not literally seek to abolish landlords, but rather to put in more regulations and taxes on private rentals through measures such as rent controls and expanded social housing.

“The title gets mixed reviews,” she says. “It grabs attention, but a more accurate name would be ‘Shrink the Private Housing Sector’.” The ultimate goal, Denyer explains, is to empower tenants and create a fairer, more sustainable housing system.

Pleased

Denyer is particularly pleased with the abolition of Section 21 evictions but acknowledges that without rent controls, landlords could still raise rent to force tenants out and is working to make rent tribunals more effective to combat this. Overall, she is confident the new rental reforms will significantly strengthen tenants’ protections and hopefully represent progress in improving the housing crisis.

The Greens are pushing for a Land Value Tax on rental properties including for short and holiday lets, ending Right-to-Buy, abolishing buy-to-let mortgages and giving councils the power to borrow in order to fund affordable council housing. They also want to give councils 'first dibs' powers to buy properties from landlords who are selling up or whose homes are not been insulated to a minimum EPC ‘C’ band, do not meet the Decent Homes Standard or are left empty for more than six months.

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