“We don’t need you, you need us,” tenant activists tells landlords
Acorn rubbishes claims that a sell-out would hurt tenants saying it has happened before and wasn’t a problem.
Controversial tenant pressure group Acorn has ramped up its attacks on the private rented sector questioning whether landlords selling up would really be a disaster and whether landlords are even needed.
In a video released on X an unnamed Acorn spokesperson claims that tenants shouldn’t worry about a landlord sell-off.
Scare stories
She suggests that tenants should ignore scare stories in the press because they are nothing more than “a cut and paste of a press release sent to journalists by the landlord lobby”.
And she advises that its sole purpose is to make tenants: “Think that we need landlords when the reality is its landlords who need us.
Homes don’t just disappear when landlords sell up they just change hands.”
“The truth is,” she adds, “homes don’t just disappear when landlords sell up they just change hands”.
To further reassure worried tenants, she then goes on to explain that large-scale landlord selloffs have happened before. In the period after the first world war, she claims, 90% of tenants rented in the PRS, but by the end of the 70s, that figure had fallen to less than 10%.
What she doesn’t say, though, is that it coincided with wholesale societal changes and two post-war building booms that resulted in around two million new social homes.
And, even though the Government is proposing to build 1.5 million new homes, there are doubts it will ever hit its target and social housing is just one part of the mix.
The self-styled union for the community, Acorn, is becoming increasingly vocal about tenants’ rights.
As was reported by The Neg, it has regularly organised protests outside lettings agencies and is leading calls for rent controls.
Landlords are generally investors and if the investment doesn’t work you sell it and reinvest elsewhere. Lets just call them ‘investors’. So yes, investors do need Tenants to make the investment work just like you need people buying gold to make investing in gold work. But no, investors are not reliant on tenants to get the best out of their hard earned money. They need the right market.
We agree with the health and safety aspects of the RRB, some of the lease aspects too but some is likely to be extremely damaging to student and professional rental supply. Acorn and other pressure groups lobbying Govt for more and more extreme measures is simply making the PRS less attractive and other markets more attractive like a gold, crypto, the stock market, even just a savings account.
Keep it up guys and we will have a housing disaster rather than the usual crisis.
The real elephant in the room is and for a long time has been the complete and utter lack of social housing. Both Tory and Labour Govts have overseen that.
WAKE UP!!!
I’d love to meet and debate one of these know-it-all loonies just for pure entertainment.
The difference between the immediately post WW1 world and now is so stark they could be different planets and bears no relevance what so ever.
The government will not build 1.5 million homes in the next 4 years. But, even if they did they also predict net migration of 500,000 a year during the course of this parliament Ie 2 million extra people. Their figures not mine.
Demand will continue to grow, the supply will be limited and will be exacerbated by landlords leaving the market.
The problem with the likes of Acorn and other self appointed political pressure groups is that they are ideologues and have no interest in real life and the facts on the ground as long as their ‘political agenda’ is followed.
It will end badly. Watch this space….
More utter rubbish from another tree hugger! At the “coal face” I can confirm that landlords are selling up, and, that the properties they are selling are, in general not going to tenants.