But what needs to happen urgently (and could happen virtually overnight if politicians wanted it to) is that renting needs to be made slightly less awful.
Renting a home is no longer something that people do for a few years while they're young. Many will be doing it for life, and the rules need to change accordingly.
Some ideas:
- A total ban on any agent's fees being charged to the tenant (already happened in Scotland, and been promised to the rest of the UK for months now).
- A year's notice before you can evict someone from a home. (unless they are not paying rent / trashing the place)
- A year's notice before increasing the rent.
- Some sort of government body that forces landlords to conduct repairs to a high standard, and obliges them to pay for alternative accommodation if the property isn't fixed.