While wages in the city have grown, they are still not keeping up with rising private rents, new figures from Sian Berry show.
The Green candidate for Brighton Pavilion MP promises to stand up for new laws to put limits on the spiralling rent costs faced by thousands in the city.
Comparing rent rises with wages over the past 12 years since 2011, Sian’s analysis shows renters in Brighton and Hove have paid £530 million more to landlords than if their housing costs had matched wages in that time.
The difference has increased by more than £56 million in just the past year. Wages are up 7.4 per cent in the latest estimates for the city, while rents jumped by a staggering 13.6 per cent in the past year.
- Since 2011 rents have gone up by 47 per cent, but wages have only risen 35 per cent, leaving a huge gap.
- The total ‘overcharged’ to residents in the city due to rents outstripping wages since 2011 is £530 million.
- There are now around 44,000 privately rented homes in the city
- In Brighton and Hove, private renters currently pay an average of £1,250 a month
Sian Berry rents a home in Brighton and has been a private renter for 25 years. She said:
“The renting market is a rigged game – as a private renter for more than 25 years I have felt the squeeze of expensive, insecure, substandard housing when your wages can’t keep up. I won’t let any Government off the hook for abandoning renters.
“Even in the last year an extra £56 million was added to the unfair, overcharged rent bill for renters in Brighton and Hove. These unfair living costs have been racking up in the city ever since the Coalition and Conservative governments came to power.
“Renters face a threefold problem – they can’t challenge unfair rent rises, they have no real power to challenge bad landlords and they can’t force landlords to improve dangerous, leaky or expensive to run homes.
“As a Green, and a candidate for MP, I know where my priorities are – they’re controls on rent rises, strengthening renters rights and bringing in legislation to improve our damp and mouldy homes.
“Ministers are even now still delaying the Renters Reform Bill which would finally ban unfair, no-fault and ‘revenge’ evictions. I won’t let this Government or the next Government off the hook if they abandon renters when there is so much that can be done.”
Last year Green MP Caroline Lucas tabled an Early Day Motion calling for urgent action to fix cold, damp and leaky homes, a freeze on rents and evictions and for rent controls.