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• #227
Better than nothing though, I suppose…
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• #228
That's what I meant. It's definitely not a lot, but in the current absurd climate ...
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• #229
Yeah, agreed. I wonder if a 'light touch' policy like this might get some backing from the Labour right crowd though. Might soften their ideas on rent control a little I guess?
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• #230
No idea. I'd be very surprised if the current Government did anything useful in that respect. They're only placeholders until the next Tory government.
It’s nice to see rent control on the agenda, despite it being for such a small selection of buildings and fairly mediocre terms. The Mayor has limited power for deep change, but it could be much fairer than this:
Affordable rents tend to be understood as less than a third of take-home pay, not 40%.
And if the increases will behave similarly to market rents anyway (wage increases get transferred into rents as it stands), this won’t really improve things dramatically. Public sector rents should be at, or close to, the cost of provision, with allowances for inflation on maintenance work. Defining rules for future wage theft on a percentage basis seems rather arbitrary.