So, back in January, I put forward a motion on rent controls in the Siambr. The Conservatives, as expected, voted against it, while the Labour Party abstained, largely because of a promise that the Government had commissioned a paper to look into the idea that would feed into the White Paper on housing. But the White Paper continues to be some time off, while this motion looks to respond to an immediate crisis.

So, this Senedd has already accepted the principle that we need to see intervention in the rental market in order to defend tenants, many of whom are the most vulnerable people in our society. Contrary to noises from the Tories opposite, who believe in hoarding wealth and who claim that this proposal is anti-landlord, this proposal in front of us today, if it’s anti-anything, is anti-homelessness and is pro ensuring that everybody has a roof above their heads. Because here today we have a proposal to at least do something to help many of those threatened with homelessness this winter, as opposed to doing nothing. A rent freeze, as the name suggests, is merely a temporary action to tackle an immediate crisis. The same applies to a ban on evictions similar to the actions taken by this Government during the height of the COVID pandemic. Now, I understand the concerns about unintended consequences of taking these actions. There are concerns that rents will increase significantly at the end of the period, and that people will be made homeless. I get those concerns. But there are consequences to doing nothing, which are that many people will be made homeless this winter because of their inability to pay their rents. It stands to reason, therefore, that knowing that people will become homeless is an entirely intentional consequence of doing nothing. 

Only this Monday we marked World Homelessness Day, and the Minister was cutting ribbons to open the Crisis Skylight building in Swansea, which will help people at risk of homelessness. Well, I’m sorry to say that there’s a very real prospect that that centre will be inundated over the coming months with tenants that have been turned out because they can’t afford the rents on their homes. We’re in the midst of both a housing crisis and one of the worst cost-of-living crises in living memory. Like every financial crisis in the modern era, this crisis also has its roots in housing. In the case of private renters, all they do is work hard—sometimes more than one job—in order to transfer their hard-earned money to a private landlord.

Now, the Tories will argue that the housing crisis is the result of a dearth of supply. That’s correct, to a point. There is a chronic lack of social housing, which is the result of decades of underinvestment. But the irony of this argument seems to be lost on the Tories, because it completely undermines the most fundamental tenet of the open market dogma that they so fervently believe in, that of supply and demand. There’s plenty of demand but the supply side is falling woefully short. Supply and demand, just like trickle-down economics, just doesn’t work, and it’s a free market myth. This scarcity of available housing means that there’s a fierce competition for houses, with landlords able to increase rents knowing that people are desperate.

Now, of course, this isn’t true of all landlords, by any means. But consider this quote from an article by Rebecca Wilks for Voice.Wales this week, after she attended the Cardiff property investors event last week. She said: