One of the joys of being a second year at St Edmund Hall is making your first foray into the private rental sector. This year, as the bulk of the cohort ‘lives out’ in private accommodation, stories about the shoddiness of student houses have become a staple of college small talk. Tales of rats, mould, and leaking roofs are mixed in with the usual recruitment for Thursday nights in Bridge, complaints about deadlines and competitive comparisons of how little sleep everyone got. Taking the cake was the story from one group who moved into their home for the year to find a mural of naked presidents Trump and Putin painted on their living room wall. The response of their landlord when they asked what on earth it was doing there? “Oh yeah, I was going to cover that up, but I couldn’t be bothered”.
But behind these comedic anecdotes is the much less funny reality: the state of the Oxford rental market is atrocious. The most pressing issue is the sheer cost – the University estimates that students will be expected to pay between £745 and £945 in rent each month. This rapidly depletes maintenance loans, making the expectation that students avoid employment during term entirely unrealistic for those without financial support from their parents. The massive demand and short supply also means private tenants have no bargaining power and are forced to accept the dodgiest of accommodations. Nor are these issues confined to the 2,500 Oxford University students who live out. As those at Wadham found out when it was announced last year that their rent would be going up by 10% over the summer vacation, enormous endowments do not insulate students from eye-watering costs.
However, after fifteen years of business as usual, 2025 could be a year of change for Britain’s broken rental system. On the 15th of January, the House of Commons passed the new government’s Renters’ Rights Bill, expected to take effect this summer. It contains some substantial reforms supposed to provide safeguards for tenants. The key change is the abolition of Section 21 evictions, preventing landlords from reclaiming their property without justification. Instead, if they wish to repossess it for personal use or sale, they must provide tenants with four months’ notice. Perhaps more importantly, landlords have been restricted to raising rent once a year, and renters are given greater powers to challenge above ‘market rate’ rises in tribunals, without the fear of rent being backdated if the courts do not rule in their favour.
So what does this do for student renters in Oxford? The answer, unfortunately, is not much. True to Starmer’s style as a diligent details man, it outlaws some of the worst practices and obvious legal shortcomings of the rental sector. The ban of Section 21 evictions is very welcome, on the mere principle that renters should not have to live with the constant fear of losing their shelter with little notice. But for students with reasonably secure yearlong contracts, however, this is not the principal issue. What Labour fails to recognise is that, even when landlords are on their best behaviour, the situation is untenable. There’s little use to courts that make sure rental increases are in line with market rates if those rates are themselves astronomical.
To put it simply, things won’t improve until there is more housing in Oxford. So, what are Labour’s plans for homebuilding, and will it be able to solve the issue? The government certainly seems to have big aspirations, promising 1.5 million new homes by the next parliament. Their ideas focus on reforming planning permission to increase approvals, which are at a record low, by permitting development on ‘grey’ sections of lower-quality land within the green belt.
There’s only one small issue – virtually everyone is in agreement that Labour’s commitment is a fantasy. Reforming planning permission may in theory allow for more projects to be approved, but the applications are simply not forthcoming. The handful of companies that dominate the market in the UK are keener to sit on the vast amounts of land that they have bought up than to take on the costly construction. This is because, as Barratt Developments explained whilst announcing it would reduce the number of homes it would build this year, a “combination of cost of living pressures, much higher mortgage rates and limited consumer confidence” had knocked out demand. Another jewel in the crown of Liz Truss’ impeccable legacy.
Nor do things look set to improve once inflation calms down. The homes being built are not necessarily designed for first-time buyers, whose numbers are dwindling as young couples remain trapped in costly rental agreements that hinder their ability to save. Whilst the government has committed to building more social housing, which used to make up the bulk of affordable accommodation in the UK, there are serious concerns about whether councils have the skills to do so after forty years of ‘Right to Buy’ preventing them from engaging in significant construction.
This lack of serious solutions point to Labour’s biggest problem: its worrying lack of intellectual capital. In their time in opposition, Starmer and Co spent too long pointing out obvious Tory transgressions and not nearly long enough thinking about what they would do differently. The grand reveal of what fantastic policies lay behind the impenetrable promise of ‘change’ has been thoroughly fumbled. as the government contents itself with reheating many of the same policies which have been in place for well more than a decade.
There are radical options out there which could improve the rental market for students – from measures to break up the oligarchic home building industry to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s proposal for councils to purchase rental units from landlords to rent out at below market rates. Assessing all the pros and cons of all of these is beyond me; I haven’t deluded myself into thinking I can fix the rental market in a thousand words. But you know who should be thoroughly examining these options? Our government. Until Labour starts thinking big, it looks like it will be more soaring prices, mould, and artistic depictions of naked authoritarians for Oxford’s student renters.
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