The Green Party has voted to put forward a motion entitled “Abolish Landlords” at its conference in Bournemouth. The policy moves towards ending landlordism through taking legal steps to reduce the number of private landlords and increase the amount of social housing.

The problem with state landlordism replacing private

However, it does fail to acknowledge the issue with state landlordism. Social housing is still a form of rental income and could be considered a hefty tax on housing. That’s because social rental payments do not currently contribute to home ownership for the social tenant.

‘Right to buy’ does provide discounted home ownership for social tenants. But the neoliberal context that the ruling class delivered it within meant that social housing was depleted and not replaced. In fact, the policy means that private landlords rent out 41% of former council homes sold under right to buy.

But the Green Party’s answer to abolish right to buy leaves low income people trapped renting from the state for life. State landlordism is only better in comparison to private landlordism. It’s still extracting money from low income people who already pay council tax. Remove it from the context of private landlordism, and it’s essentially a regressive policy – an additional high housing tax on low income people who can’t afford to buy their own home. Instead, monthly payments to the state should pay towards ownership of the house on a cost-price basis.

“A vehicle for wealth extraction”

The Green Party motion was otherwise cutting:

The Private Rental Sector has failed, it is a vehicle for wealth extraction, funnelling money from Renters to the Landlord Class. This motion makes it clear Green Party policy is to seek the effective abolition of Private Landlordism.

The motion hit the nail on the head when it comes to the nature of rent:

The Green Party believes that secure, affordable Housing is a Human Right, and that a core goal for a Green Government and Green MPs is to create a fairer housing market.

The Green Party believes the existence of Private Landlords adds no positive value to the economy or society, that the relationship between Landlord and Tenant is inherently and intrinsically extractive and exploitative. That the Private Rented Sector exists to transfer wealth from the working classes to Landlords.

The Green Party believes that the Private Sector has fundamentally failed, and is continuing to fail to provide secure and affordable housing fit for working people.

To move towards abolishing landlords, the Green Party would introduce rent controls. They would also put the tenant in charge of when the tenancy ends, introduce new taxes for landlords, and end buy to let mortgages. A further step that would encourage home ownership and significantly discourage private landlordism is that the Greens would enable tenants first Right to Buy from their private landlord. And all the rent they’ve already paid would be discounted from the price. One issue with this is that it still appeals to the market value of housing-as-an-asset, rather than popping the housing bubble altogether.

The Green motion also said that social housing should be built on a “massive scale”.

“Zacktivism”

Predictably, the Daily Mail sided with the leeching landlord class, lamenting “a bizarre assault on millions of Brits” (landlords), essentially reversing reality given rent is free money taken from the largely working class.

The Green Party conference is the first since Zack Polanski became its ‘eco populist’ leader. And with motions like the abolishment of landlords passing, bring it on. The overall housing policy just needs some fine tuning.

Featured image via Unsplash/Tierra Mallorca

By James Wright

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