Hastings Rental Health Group (HRH) is a local group of renters, compassionate homeowners, and ethical landlords looking for solutions to the mad housing crisis we find ourselves in. 

HRH last featured in HIP when we petitioned Hastings Borough Councillor Andy Batsford and Sally Ann Hart MP to meet with us to tackle this crisis. Despite initially agreeing, Sally Ann Hart then backed out of the meeting. 

Since then there has been a motion drafted by Cllr Andy Batsford to call on government to keep its promise of ending no-fault evictions (Section 21), and to call on the UK Public Policy Manager at Airbnb to introduce a 90-day annual limit for entire home rentals in Hastings.

We are still waiting for council to pass this motion. This may take some time due to the inverted legislative guff of ‘pecuniary prejudicial interest’. What this phrase means is that all tenants and landlords on council have to leave the room during the motion’s debate, as they may stand to benefit from the outcome. So only homeowners can make decisions on the future of renters. Bizarre. We await results. 

Immoral Auction? 

Some months later we were made aware of a property auction site unapologetically advertising a building on Claremont in Hastings town centre. The ad cited ‘room for rental increases’ as well as the freehold like many other properties in the town.being exempt from the Landlord and Tenancy Act – the very thing that protects tenants from unfair evictions. 

So, Hastings Rental Health went undercover to attend the property viewing at 20-22 Claremont. The whole building, including the framers (Sussex Framing Centre) and salon business (Vanity by Stacy), was listed for auction at £475,000 and since has been sold off. 

Some buildings on Claremont have been in a terrible state of disrepair for a number of years, despite regular rent payments by reliable tenants.

A group of five prospective buyers (including ourselves) met outside the building. What we then witnessed left us feeling deeply uncomfortable. It transpired the two business owners had not been informed of the viewing at all, resulting in the framer being left visibly shaken from the lack of masks / COVID safety precautions taken by the group; while the salon owner was pressured into allowing us in and forced to hastily erect room dividers to shield her client (mid-treatment) while five prospective buyers nosed around her place of work.

Meanwhile, the first residential tenant we met had been misinformed there would only be a single viewer that day – not the five strangers who were now swarming round her flat. Her small child, oblivious to the circumstances, cheerfully showed us her home. As we made our way down to the next flat, the first tenant felt compelled to call down the stairwell to her best friend in the lower flat, who we later learned, suffered from extreme anxiety.

While making our way to the final flat, the sales rep revealed that the tenants had informed her that today was not a convenient viewing time for them. This, however, did nothing to dissuade her from knocking repeatedly on their front door. And, when there was no answer, using her set of keys to open the door regardless. She subsequently spent several minutes negotiating with these poor people to let everyone inside. When the tenants appealed for five minutes grace to be allowed to finish hoovering, one of the prospective buyers remarked that everything in the flats would be ripped out anyway, so their hoovering was a waste of time. Two of the buyers then went on to complain about the end of Section 21 (there is currently a white paper government consultation on this) which would make it harder to get rid of these tenants. 

We were quite shaken by the experience. It was brutal for all the people in the building. And yet the prospective landlords were almost entirely unmoved. 

The Cost of Owning Extra 

We worked out that even if someone bought Claremont on a mortgage of £475,000, their mortgage repayments would be approx. £7,500 annually – being interest only on buy to let. The rent it generates even at current rates is £33,600. So if you bought it at list price you’d be making approx. £26,000 a year on rents at their current level. Of course this doesn’t cover additional costs and renovation, but that’s the price of being a landlord. Managing a home is a big responsibility. 

One community member recently remarked – “This is not a housing crisis, it’s a hoarding crisis.”

This got us thinking about the pandemic – we watched footage of people panic-buying essentials, which meant less for everyone else. There is enough to go around. Hoarding extra is not a right, it is selfish and thoughtless. It is greed, it is extractive, it is parasitic. 

To quote Abdul Sakhizada from a conversation we had in his taxi – “They want us to panic and buy more than we need, it drives prices up. We all need to step back and take only what we need.”

The tenants of Claremont are part of the community in Claremont. One tenant’s uncle owns the Scoffers takeaway opposite her flat. She knows many of the other business owners in the area, and she works locally. Stacy of Vanity is a young female business owner who put her heart and soul into setting up in the area. She won’t be able to afford a business rent increase. 

The residential tenants are in receipt of Local Housing Allowance, which has not gone up in line with the massive rents increases, so they can not afford to pay higher rent. If they have to move, where will be affordable enough? Sidley? How will they pay to get to work each day? How far will they need to travel to see family and friends who were just around the corner for a cup of tea or help with childcare? 

Increasing rents without any regard for local workers’ wages is no different to the greed of the bosses of Shell, British Gas, BT, Network Rail (the list goes on). All take no issue in giving themselves pay rises or bonuses while their staff work themselves into mental and physical sickness. All under the guise of a ‘reasonable’ entrepreneurial spirit that, in truth, is entirely unreasonable, economically destructive and morally unjustifiable. 

So, to come back to the title of the article, we feel the term parasitic is not altogether unfair. 

What Now? 

As a response to all this, we agreed to write an open letter to the new landlords of Claremont, explaining the impact these actions have on half a town feeling squeezed out of existence. Anyone can read and sign this letter at Milk & Hustle, Bullet cafe and Stooge.

We now know who the new landlords of 20-22 Claremont are, because they went into one of the local cafes displaying the open letter, and even asked the owner if she had considered selling her cafe. They admitted freely that they do indeed intend to gut out the building, which almost definitely means no one (including the businesses) will be able to cover new higher rents.

In future we’d like to ask them to meet with our group and the Cabinet housing portfolio holder, Cllr Maya Evans, to discuss our community, and how important it is to keep the sitting tenants in the building. We know plenty of supportive cafe owners in the area who would be happy to host. We wait on a response.

• You can find Hastings Rental Health www.hastingsrentalhealth.com IG: @hastingsrentalhealth  FB: facebook.com/hastingsrentalhealth Twitter: @HGSRentalHealth 

Spearheaded by three long-time local residents, Sian Lloyd, Sarah Gomes Harris and Sam Kinch, each of whom have themselves experienced problems in finding a secure home within Hastings in recent months, Rental Health contrasts the figure of 1,431 households on the council’s waiting list for public housing with a larger figure of 1,537 dwellings which, according to research conducted by national pressure group Action on Empty Homes, are standing empty, used as ‘second homes’ or rented out as commercial Airbnbs. 

Rental Health also points to the report headed Health in Coastal Communities recently issued by the government’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty. In explaining the statistics which identify Hastings as the most deprived local authority area in the South East, Prof Whitty made direct causal links between poor access to housing and poor mental health, reduced life expectancy and susceptibility to chronic disease.

Campaign meeting

Last Saturday morning the group, armed with banners, placards, and a megaphone, set up in the town centre to make their case, inviting passers-by to sign a joint letter to Cllr Andy Batsford, portfolio holder for housing on the borough council, and Mrs Hart. The letter requests that the two politicians set up a joint meeting (together with others in the community with housing interests) before the end of this month “to discuss an urgent new housing policy for Hastings”.

The policy solutions urged by Rental Health include stricter controls on Airbnbs, “genuinely affordable” housing, rent caps and housing co-ops.

With regard to Airbnbs, Ms Lloyd agreed in conversation that there was a balance to be struck. The original business model which gave opportunities to home-owners to offer informal lodgings to tourists and other visitors without bureaucratic regulation brought some economic benefits on both sides without eating into the availability of rentable homes or damaging the local hospitality industry. But its success, she argues, has spawned commercial exploitation, resulting in a loss of housing for permanent homes, fast-rising rents, and loss of employment in the regulated sector. 

There is also an increasingly obvious contrast, exposed during the Covid-19 pandemic, between low incomes earned in the local gig economy and the comparative wealth of incomers from London. Rent caps are needed, Ms Lloyd says, to halt escalation of outgoings beyond the levels that local people can afford. 

Labour party motion

Cllr Batsford himself was in attendance at the town centre rally, and is clearly in sympathy both with the Rental Health campaign and with the direction of solutions they propose. He has recently returned from the national Labour party conference in Brighton where a composite housing motion was passed, into which the local Hastings & Rye constituency party had an input, calling for immediate government action that includes: 

• Scrapping the “tax loophole” on second homes and allowing councils to charge a levy on second homes to be used to provide local social housing; 

• Giving local councils additional planning powers in the form of change of use restrictions to restrict the number of second/holiday homes in areas where they are eroding the sustainability of local communities; 

• Giving them powers to comp-ulsorily purchase development land that is being ‘land-banked’ and not developed by the landowner. 

However, according to Cllr Batsford, what Hastings Borough Council needs first and foremost, like similar authorities, is a reversal of budget cuts. He says that in recent years the council was successful in reducing a figure of 2,000 empty dwellings to 800 by bringing pressure to bear on owners – imposing higher rates of council tax and threatening action in cases of disrepair. But the refusal of the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Govern-ment to renew the council’s licensing scheme for private landlords has forced it to cut officers in the Housing Department. And identifying empty properties and their owners is a time-consuming business that the remaining staff now have little time for.  

Tory attitude

So, what points of agreement is he likely to find with Mrs Hart and, even if there are some, what chance do either of them have to change national government policy?

Mrs Hart is chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Coastal Communities and has been making speeches since the publication of Prof Whitty’s report acknowledging that poor housing is among the drivers of poor physical and mental health amongst her constituents. However, when it comes to solutions, she has been referring to prospective public investment in health, transport, education, connectivity, employment – anything but changes in housing policy – as part of the government’s forthcoming Levelling Up White Paper. She clearly opposed the council’s licensing scheme, and has never given any indication that she would favour national legislation that might cap rent levels, penalise land banking or curb Airbnb practices. 

As Rental Health puts it, “in the UK the right to own private property is sacrosanct”. Are Mrs Hart or her party willing to adapt their thinking away from this tenet of faith?