[nomadking]

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

call me silly with all this talk of aerial bombing and atom bombs over London and how serious the danger is but surely as this is for people with three year tenancies and over all that'll happen is landlords won't dish out three year tenancies any more, no apocalypse just people private renting having a more insecure future, you think that'd be enough to make political capital but as said with all the talk of meltdown I can't help but think I've got it wrong and there's something far more reaching going on

---------- Post added at 15:56 ---------- Previous post was at 15:53 ----------



Plenty wrong with those beliefs if they blind you to the inadequacies of the side you support

It is some on the Left that are criticising rent controls.

Gordon Brown’s favourite economist Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize-winner, has warned that attempts to control rent always fail, writing: ‘Almost every freshman-level textbook contains a case study on rent control, using its known adverse side-effects to illustrate the principles of supply and demand.’
The socialist Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck once said: ‘Next to bombing, rent control seems in many cases to be the most efficient technique for destroying cities.’

Rent controls have already proved a disaster in Britain after they were introduced in the First World War.
The measure was supposed to be temporary – but was only dismantled by Margaret Thatcher in the Eighties.
During this time the private rented sector collapsed from 90 per cent of the country’s housing stock to less than 10 per cent.
By the Seventies, rent controls were widely blamed for the slum conditions in much of Britain’s remaining private rented stock.
Landlords, unable to make a sustainable return, neglected homes and dragged their feet over the most basic repairs.

Sounds great doesn't it.