Debate contribution: New Deal for Private Renters in Northern Ireland

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 24 February 2025.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

24 February 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

New Deal for Private Renters in Northern Ireland

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4813941

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move amendment No 1:

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I support today's motion, and I hope that Members can support my amendment.

For too long, Executive parties have refused to crack down on profiteering landlords, instead spending years, or even entire mandates, tinkering around the edges of reform at best. Private renters in the North are long overdue a new deal, one that starts shifting the balance of power away from landlords and towards tenants. My amendment's aim is to strengthen the motion and make the private rented sector more secure and truly affordable for tenants. The private rented sector is an under-regulated Wild West where landlords call the shots. Tenants can be evicted for no reason, for daring to ask for basic repairs, challenging legal fees or trying to challenge or negotiate an extortionate rent increase. Landlords can charge whatever rents they want, and, in Belfast, that is an average of £1,100 per month. When tenants even begin to question these extortionate rents, landlords will point to the market — some mythical figure — as though they are not the people setting the rents and driving up house prices; as though they are not the market who are driving up people's rents. The insecurity and unaffordability of the private rented sector forces people into homelessness. Loss of private rented accommodation is consistently among the top reasons for people presenting as homeless to the Housing Executive. Another common reason for homelessness is sharing breakdown, but why are people sharing in the first place? In most cases, it is because they cannot access social housing or are priced out of the private rented sector. We have debated and discussed these issues many times, and we are all in agreement that we are experiencing a housing crisis that is spiralling out of control. We all know that homelessness destroys people's physical and mental health and rips apart the social fabric of our communities. Over 42% of homeless children in this city live in my constituency of West Belfast, which is a totally shocking statistic, but what is not talked about as often is the role that landlords play in the homelessness crisis, not to mention that the Housing Executive spent £15·5 million on single let temporary accommodation in 2022-23 alone. That is £15·5 million straight in the pockets of landlords who are actively profiteering from human misery and homelessness. Some landlords consciously and knowingly send families directly into homelessness when they issue an eviction notice or give them a rent increase that they know is completely unaffordable. Giving tenants more protections, including banning no-fault evictions, would save hundreds — potentially, thousands — of families from homelessness every year. It is a no-brainer. Many private tenants are living in abject poverty. A decade or two ago, many families who are now struggling in the private rented sector would have lived in social housing, where rents are lower and tenancies are more secure, but they cannot because, year after year, the Executive fail to meet social housing building targets. According to NISRA, an average of 941 social homes have been completed every year since 2010. At that rate, it will take 50 years to build enough homes for everyone on the waiting list, and that is if the waiting list magically freezes instead of growing year-on-year. At the same time, the housing sales scheme continues to decimate the supply of social housing stock. The failure to expand the supply of social housing has forced more and more people into the private rented sector. There is one very easy solution that is staring Executive parties and the Minister in the face: bring empty homes back into use. According to Land and Property Services (LPS), there are at least 22,500 empty homes in the North, but the latest census report states that there are over 52,000 households with no usual residents. I hope that the Minister can clarify which it is. It is a disgrace that those homes lie empty while people are sofa-surfing, living in insecure, temporary accommodation or sleeping rough on the street. As well as the housing ombudsman that is proposed in the motion, which I obviously support, a well-resourced and effective rental board should be set up to enforce minimum fitness standards, a no-fault eviction ban and a system of rent controls. Those are questions that we explored during the consultation stage of my Member's Bill, the people's housing Bill, that I will, hopefully, bring through the Chamber. Currently, tenants have almost no recourse when a property is riddled with damp or mould or when a landlord steals or refuses to register a deposit. Environmental health teams have enforcement powers, but, in practice, councils are generally underfunded and under-resourced, meaning that those powers are not worth the paper that they are written on. We need to learn from that shambolic system and make sure that any new deal for private renters is backed up by a strong enforcement body. In the past year, rents in the North increased by 10%, which is higher than that in any UK region. In the same time frame, average wages increased by just 1·2%. Public-sector workers actually saw their pay decrease by 2·8%. Rents keep rising, but wages and benefits are stagnating. Furthermore, students face an acute affordability crisis. The National Union of Students - Union of Students in Ireland (NUS-USI), as part of its fix student housing campaign, showed that students are paying through the nose for poor-quality, overcrowded housing. Some 44% of students surveyed have less than £100 left each month after paying their housing costs, and half of students need to rely on a credit card or a loan to just get by. I commend NUS-USI for its work in highlighting those issues. It does not take an economist to see that that is totally unsustainable and a powder keg waiting to explode. Third-generation rent controls are a step in the right direction, but they limit rent increases only in a tenancy. There is nothing to stop a landlord massively hiking the rent once a tenant leaves and before the property goes out to let again, so there is a limitation with it. A stronger system of rent controls would begin with a freeze, followed by a gradual reduction over time to a predetermined, affordable level. It is called first-generation rent control, although, tellingly, it is not often called that when we talk about it in the Chamber; we hear of hard or extreme rent controls or versions of that. The total lack of rent control in the North and in Britain makes us outliers compared with the rest of Europe. Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, France and the South of Ireland have some form of rent control system in place, and the sky has not fallen in. Landlords have not fled the market, despite the scaremongering that is touted when rent controls are talked about. In the decade up to 2022, European countries with rent controls had a faster-growing private rented sector than countries without rent controls, which really exposes the misinformation that is spouted by some when talking about rent controls. The idea of rent control is not outlandish or unworkable. In fact, all private tenancies in the North were subject to rent controls until 1978, so it was the norm for decades upon decades. If we agree with the basic principle that the right to housing is more important than the right of landlords to make a good profit, we need to implement rent controls now. A new deal for private renters must do what the Executive and previous Executives have failed to do, and that is to challenge the scourge of landlordism in the North. Landlords do not, and should not, have unqualified rights to profiteer from a person's fundamental human right to a home or to evict a tenant from their home for no good reason. Those statements should not be controversial, but they may be to some in this place.

1,336 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:01 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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