Mayor of West Yorkshire blasts landlords for raising rents

The mayor of West Yorkshire has launched a scathing attack on landlords, in a new interview.

Labour mayor Tracy Brabin has criticised landlords who raise rents in a cost-of-living crisis.

However, she does not advocate for the use of rent controls and instead wants to focus on building more affordable homes. 

Avaricious and greedy

Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, told Inside Housing magazine: “People are becoming homeless because landlords are putting rents up in order to be in line with market prices, when actually they don’t need it because they’re in a fixed mortgage themselves.

“It just avaricious, and it’s greedy. I would say to landlords that do that, you’re not really welcome in West Yorkshire because it’s not fair. Particularly when the cost of living is squeezing people’s incomes.”

Ms Brabin, whose combined authority covers Bradford, Wakefield, Huddersfield, Halifax and Leeds, added: “A third of all children in West Yorkshire are living in poverty. 200,000 families are using food banks. This is fuelled not just by the cost of living but also rising rents.”

Not thought about rent controls

This year many labour mayors including Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham have called for an immediate rent freeze to help renters deal with the cost-of-living crisis.

Labour’s Lisa Nandy slapped down the calls for rent controls in June, saying: “Rent controls that cut rents for some will almost certainly leave others homeless.”

Ms Brabin stopped short of joining her fellow mayors in directly calling for rent control powers. She said: “I’ve not thought about rent controls currently, it’s not in the forefront of my mind.”

A spokesperson for Ms Brabin later told Inside Housing magazine that building affordable homes was more important to the mayor.

Retrofit social homes

In Leeds last year at the Holtdale estate, 190 social homes were retrofitted with heat pumps, solar panels and insulation by Leeds City Council and low carbon equipment provider, Equans, at a cost of £9.6m.

Ms Brabin praised the work at the housing estate and said more needs to be done.

She said: “There are 680,000 social homes across West Yorkshire and we have to retrofit them all. So while this programme is really fantastic, and the outcomes are really spectacular, we’ve got to turbocharge that delivery.”

The full interview can be read here (for some readers this may be behind a paywall).

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