Renters in the capital are being urged to join a fresh campaign pushing for rent controls.

London Renters Union is calling on its members and other renters to “push back exploitative wealthy private and corporate landlords” and “take back the power from the 1%”.

The tenant group is launching a pamphlet explaining the new push next week as part of its Cut the Rent campaign. It believes that the “rich and powerful” have turned homes into a profit machine. Its promotional literature explains: “Rent controls are absolutely central to breaking the exploitation at the heart of this system. By winning rent controls, we can make our home more affordable our lives more secure and our communities stronger. In doing so we would be taking vital ground in the class struggle, empowering working-class tenants, pushing back exploitative, wealthy private and corporate landlords and their ability to control us.”

Power

It adds: “If we can start to beat landlords, we can start to take back power from the 1%. If we can fight financialization in the housing system, then we can challenge it in the economy as well. If we can win more tenant power, then we can stand up to a racist exploitative system that traps migrants in dangerous overcrowded housing while funnelling money to militarisation and genocide.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan is a long-standing supporter of rent controls; however the Labour government has repeatedly rejected proposals.

London Renters Union’s pamphlet - written through workshops with union members and interviews with activists who have won rent controls - sets out a “transformational vision of a housing system which brings us all closer to freedom”.

Speakers at the launch in Kings Cross include Friends of the Earth, Palestinian Youth Movement and National Education Union.

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