24th
Feb 2021
A week doesn’t go by without Generation Rent criticising landlords and this time chose to use the platform of the popular BBC show ‘Homes Under The Hammer’, where it condemned the the aspirations of some landlords in the program.
The campaign group (charity) posted on Twitter: “The regular inclusion of landlords turning family homes into Houses of Multiple Occupancy on the show is troubling”.
And continued: “Cramming in as many people into houses as you can is not only bad for renters' mental health but also removes a family home from the market.”
The criticism appeared after The Guardian mentioned the activist group in one of its stories which wrote about how popular the BBC show was with the general public since its launch in 2003, with a viewing average of around 1.3 million.
There are some notable celebrity fans that include, actors Meryl Streep and Mark Wahlberg as well as Sir Paul McCartney.
But leading at the fore of Generation Rent its director, Baroness Alicia Kennedy was far from enthusiastic.
The group’s spokesman Dan Wilson Craw is quoted in the Guardian story when commenting on landlords featured on the show: “In most of these cases, you’re taking a family home and cramming as many people in there as you can, to maximise the profit you can get out of it. That’s a big problem.”
He also commented on the mental health effects from what he described as tenants having to live in “pokey flats without communal living areas.”
He adds: “Property prices have risen as a result of the demand for investment properties, and that drives further investment … Buy to let developed a reputation in the 1990s and 2000s as being a good place to put your money. But of course the source of all this money is renters who may have been in a position to buy a home, were it not for all these landlords driving up the prices.”
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