The adverts encouraged landlords to ditch their tenants for short-term lettings.
A campaign led by Generation Rent has pressured a holiday lets company into removing its “anti-tenant” adverts from the London Undergound.
The adverts for Hostmaker said: “My long-term let is ticking along terribly. But with our dynamic mix of short and mid-term lets, your property could earn 30% more over the year.”
Over 8,000 people signed a petition calling for the adverts removal and Hostmaker quickly bowed to the pressure.
Dan Wilson Craw, Director of Generation Rent, said:
“The growing short term lets market is taking homes away from ordinary Londoners, pushing up rents and eroding the capital’s local communities. These adverts were an attack on the city and we are glad that Hostmaker is now doing the right thing and taking them down.
“But it is still far too easy for landlords to take homes out of the long term rental market in pursuit of higher profits. We need much stronger regulation of the holiday lets market so that we can give all Londoners an affordable home.”
The campaign had been suppported by Labour London Assembly member Tom Copley and the Labour MP for Westminster North Karen Buck.
Joe Lo is a freelance journalist and a reporter for Left Foot Forward
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10 Responses to “London renters get “anti-tenant” adverts removed from tube”
Tom Sacold
There’s lot to agree with in this article. But the root cause of the housing crisis is uncontrolled immigration.
Martyn
The root cause of the housing crisis is that housing has become the driver of the UK’s capitalist economy – houses are bought and sold as investments, not as places to live.
john hardman
THE route cause is tory policies since thatcher.uncontrolled greed over peoples needs. nothing to do with immigration.
Dave Roberts
Could it not be that there are a number of factors which have brought about the present situation and no simply one? Firstly the basis of the problem is that amongst most commentators who can’t remember a UK before Margaret Thatcher’s first election victory in 1979 and, and this is very clear from most of the commentary, assume that there was an abundance of council housing. That most certainly was not the case as is highlighted by the film ” Cathy Come Home” which led to the organisation Shelter being formed. The 1970’s were the decade of a massive squatting campaign which saw at least 30,000 people taking over largely council owned premises in London alone.
Homelessness isn’t new and there is a very good series The Secret History of Our Streets which can be seen on You Tube which shows historical homelessness. Episode 6 is about East London and particularly good. The factors that have led to the present situation are,
1) The sale of council owned property since 1980.
2) The lack of social house building since.
3) A free market in land and the belief that markets are the solution to everything.
4) The acceptance of the mainstream parties of all of the above.
5) The rise in population which in London is reaching pre WW2 levels.
6) Immigration which is pushing that population increase and is by far the biggest factor as family sizes have been falling for years.
7) As has been pointed out above another contributory factor is speculation, buy to leave. I can confirm that my company, I’m a chartered surveyor, is regularly approached by foreign investors or their representatives to buy properties to be left empty. The theory is that these things are like shares and unit trusts or commodities not a certain architect’s ” Machines for Living In”.
What is then the answer? The answer is that there isn’t one except, at the moment more of the same, including the claims of politicians that they are going to solve the housing problem which as we know they can’t which makes them all liars. Hence the old saying, ” Don’t tell Mama I’m a politician, she thinks I play the piano in a whorehouse!”
Patrick Newman
Yes there is an answer that will deal with the bulk of the problem – stop RTB, build more council dwellings. We are currently building less than 2000 a year (England) but selling over 10,000 per annum. At one point in pre-Thatcher age, we built 93,000 in one year. At least 50,000 is needed each year. Tackle the private rented market by greater security of tenure and rent controls. Where landlords decide to exit the market the property has to be offered first to the council or the tenant at market value.