In an age of austerity landlords have made £177 billion in capital gain alone over the past five years. On top of this they have received £30-40 billion in rent a year, including about £9 billion a year in Housing Benefit.

An exclusive poll for tenants’ campaign Generation Rent published today shows that Britain overwhelmingly backs the return of rent controls. The poll by Survation of 1,009 people on 18^th and 19^th December shows that 59% of people back rent controls and only 6.8% of people oppose them. 34% had no opinion. That’s one person opposing the measure for every 9 people who support it.

Rising Rents & Increased Homelessness

Today there have been a range of statistics released on the private rented sector, mortgage lending and homelessness which confirm a fairly gloomy picture for those stuck privately renting.

The ONS has today released its Family Spending statistics up to the end of 2013. These show that families’ weekly expenditure has begun to increase, following a steady decline since 2006, although levels of spending still remain lower than those of 2006 once inflation has been taken into account. The decrease was due to families cutting back on non-essential items following the recession. This increase can be attributed to rising housing and transport costs, forcing families to find money to cover their basic needs.

On Saturday our director Alex spoke at the Trade Union Congress's Big Youth Debate, where he outlined the findings of a joint survey of 18-35 year olds that Generation Rent conducted with the TUC. We found that most young renters are living in unaffordable housing, while a third of young mortgage holders are being stretched.

The full details are below:

It will come as no surprise to many that the latest research released from Savills shows that under 35s are paying the most per household on housing.

As the latest House Price Index reveals an annual increase of 19.6% in the cost of London homes, the MIPIM property fair rolls into the capital tomorrow. MIPIM is a forum focused on international investment in housing, which brings together tens of thousands of investors, property developers, politicians and landlords to discuss how best to make huge amounts of money from housing in cities across the world.

Today was marked by the signing of a new contract at work. As well as being my first contract for a long time without a specified end date, it brings with it the promise of a modest, but extremely welcome increase in salary. Welcome since over the last five years I have noted that the combination of taking care of a family, paying for an appropriately sized privately rented house, whilst commuting by train to work has meant that the money I’ve had available after all the bills have been paid, has been shrinking year on year.

It seems I’m not the only one and indeed my situation has been much more comfortable than that of others. The Resolution Foundation recently published research which shines the spotlight on that sector of the UK population who spend over half of their disposable income on ongoing housing costs: the so-called 'housing pinched'. Their findings are significant and depressing. Data relating to 2011-12 shows that 1.6 million households were 'housing pinched'. Of those just under 1 million households (that’s 2.2 million people) were in work. To put this into perspective, in 2012 the Resolution Foundation reports that the average household spent £60 on each of the following: food, non-alcoholic drinks, transport, recreation & leisure. The ‘housing pinched’ on average had £60 a week left for absolutely everything.

The government insists that it’s doing all it can to end the housing crisis by ramping up the rate of house building. So far it’s managed a modest bump, but earlier this week, we learned that it's forecasting another dip in 2014/15.

(Source: Newsnight)

At a time when we need to double house building to keep rents and house prices affordable, to think that the government could allow a fall like this is staggering.

The Labour Party is calling a debate on the issue in Parliament next Wednesday, 9^th July, to examine what has gone wrong and what can be done to boost supply.

Earlier this year, Ed Miliband set out proposals for Labour’s housing policy when in power. On the face of it, his plans are generally positive and certainly a step forward for renters. Writing in the Evening Standard and focusing on London, he called for a national register of landlords and the regulation of letting agents – both policies that chime with Generation Rent’s belief that these sectors need minimum standards of management and more transparency for tenants. Of course, we await the exact details of these policies, which would require enforcement powers and resources to ensure that they were effective.