Activists and tenants in England have called for a nationwide, pro-rent control demonstration, taking place next month on April 18. More than 40 organizations, including the London Renters Union and Greater Manchester Tenants Union, are organizing the action. Like many other countries in Europe, tenants in England have been dealing with outrageous rent hikes and the prospect of homelessness.
“Sky-high housing costs mean we work two jobs, and cut back on essentials to get by,” the demonstration’s organizers wrote in a statement. “We fear being pushed out by a rent rise, too scared to complain about conditions that make our kids sick. All the while, developers hollow out our communities, demolishing homes and building luxury flats we can never afford.”
The event will call on politicians to put people first, not the profit-driven agenda of the real estate industry.
“Another housing system is possible,” organizers added. “When we had rent controls, tenants spent much less of our income on rent. When we built council housing at scale, working-class people could access affordable and secure housing. We can end the housing crisis if we stop this system of profit and pain, but the government must act now.”
Organizers are working to have demonstrations take place throughout England, and it’s something that tenants and activists in the United States and other countries can learn from.
As we pointed out a few months ago, a strong, people-power movement is needed to effectively counter the predatory business practices and big-money political influence of the real estate industry.
“Only a global people-power movement will successfully push back against billionaire corporate landlords who have the vast economic resources and political connections to run roughshod over tenants,” we wrote. “Tenants and activists don’t have their billions, and they don’t have their political connections, but tenants and activists do have something that corporate landlords don’t: the power of hundreds of millions of people unifying for more safe, affordable, and stable housing.”
Interestingly, a nationwide rent-control movement has been rising up in the U.S., but it has yet to unify through the kind of demonstration and networking that are taking place in England right now. That needs to change.
News stories in the U.S. constantly report about seniors being forced out of their homes due to sky-high rents; working-class families facing the decision to either pay excessive rents or buy food and medications; and hard-working tenants dealing with predatory business practices by the real estate industry to jack up rents. These are life-altering issues that millions of Americans face, regardless of their political affiliations.
The RealPage scandal is a prime example of Big Real Estate’s relentless drive to push rents higher and higher no matter who gets hurt and no matter what’s happening in the rental housing market.
In 2022, a ProPublica investigation found that many of the largest corporate landlords in the U.S. used a RealPage software program to collude and wildly inflate rents in cities across the nation. That exposé resulted in numerous investigations and antitrust lawsuits filed by tenants, state attorneys general, and the Department of Justice. Rent regulations, however, would have prevented the scandal – corporate landlords would not have been able to charge exorbitant rent hikes.
In fact, Brian Callaci and Sandeep Vaheesan, of the Open Markets Institute, wrote in white paper published at the Harvard Business Review that rent regulations are crucial in protecting tenants against predatory landlords.
“Recent research shows that the market itself needs to be fixed,” wrote Callaci and Vaheesan. “Any plan to overhaul the housing market needs to, first, confront the power of landlords to raise rents. Second, it requires rethinking public governance of housing markets behind simplistic prescriptions to just free the housing market from government regulation, assuming lower rents will follow. And third, it needs to provide more muscular government involvement in housing, through price regulation, more robust planning, and even direct public provision.”
American politicians, though, won’t act urgently unless pushed by a unified people-power movement. A nationwide, pro-rent control demonstration would not only put elected officials on notice, but would start the process of bringing together tenants and activists from across the U.S.
Follow Housing Is A Human Right on Facebook, X, Instagram, and Bluesky.