To think we should ban private renting?

How would you fund?
You can't take people's private property off them.

A lot of what you seem to want could be achieved with tighter regulation and rent controls in the private sector

I've been thinking about this randomly today and haven't come up with any negatives so far. Is it bad to monopolise housing?

Yes it's bad to monopolise housing - it's a basic human need and shouldn't be a way for wealthy people to make their millions any more than water.

(Yes we pay for water, but we don't have people paying extortionate rates to private water owners).

Unfortunately I think human greed will never allow the kind of world you are envisioning there - there are a lot of people making a lot of money from private renting. And some people who have got into situations where they 'have' to rent out a property (really there is always another way, but people have based their finances around the current situation, so change makes things very difficult and they'd never vote for losing money).

Do you really think the average foreigner who buys a house in the UK is buying the kind of property that would end up as homes for the average renter/the homeless/first time buyers?

Out of how many total homes? And how many homeless are there in the borough?

Numbers sometimes look shockingly high, but in context only show that there aren't nearly enough homes.

Take Tower Hamlets, for example. They have about 1,100 long term empty homes. But that's out of a housing stock of nearly 150,000, so less than 1%. They also have over 3,000 households who are homeless. The overall housing vacancy rate is about 2% and people frequently can get the housing they need when they're looking for it. Even if all those long term empty homes were brought back in to the market today, it would not come close to solving their housing crisis and people would still be unable to get the housing they need, when they need it.

Low vacancy rates hit lower income people and families the hardest as they have less flexibility and the costs of being inappropriately housed hit them a lot harder than the better off.

I'm very happy renting from my lovely private landlords who leave me alone, don't do inspections and only contact me when they need to send anything required by law or a gas engineer visit annually for example.

Although my current neighbours are twats on one side, I like renting in nice areas with properties that are a mix of owned and rented. The people that live on this street are as diverse in terms of heritage, income and working status as they come and I like that. I like that most of my neighbours go to work.

I've rented through housing association previously. Whilst a lot of my fellow housing association neighbours were nice, many were horrific, smoking drugs, stealing, cars getting smashed in, pissing in the lifts and just generally horrible people with no ambition. I wouldn't want to do that again.

Under the feudal system, the King owned all land and granted vast estates to barons, known as Lords of the Manor, who then let the land to tenants in exchange for labour, crops, or military service. The commercial use of the term landlord survived the decline of feudalism, evolving from a form of literal nobility into a standard legal term for anyone renting out land or property. Critics argue that retaining the term subtly preserves a psychological hierarchy, giving modern property owners a false sense of social superiority or paternalistic authority over tenants.

Self aggrandising landlords on Mumsnet often use such expressions as "I look after" my tenants, which again implies a paternalistic orientation. The phrase "looking after" tenants strongly reinforces a paternalistic orientation, subtly casting the property owner in a parental role and the tenant as a dependent child. In a standard business model, service providers do not "look after" their customers; they fulfil contractual obligations and provide value for money.

We need to dispense with this archaic term "landlord" which harks back to the feudal system and the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate. It connotes a hierarchical social system rather than a purely business relationship between a service supplier and a service user. Alternative terms like housing provider, property owner, or lessor are often suggested to replace "landlord" and reframe the dynamic as a neutral business transaction. There are some who argue that this change would achieve nothing as it is purely cosmetic. However removing hierarchical or paternalistic connotations could encourage more respectful, and equal communication. Re-framing the relationship around "customer service" positions the renter as a client with purchasing power, and the property owner as a service provider whose income depends on client satisfaction.

OK, I accept private rents are higher than Council/HA. If all privates were taken into social, who is going to pay the approx 1m+ additional homes: to buy, to keep subsidising the rents, to maintain, etc, etc.

If all private rentals were sold tomorrow where would all the renter's go? There simply aren't enough social rentals ATM. There would be millions homeless.

Heavily licensed, spoke companies on government tender could provide short term lets, student let's and so on, I think fully state owed rental wouldn't work, I think a grace period or perhaps application to rent for a certain period may be feasible eg you're going travelling so you may be allowed to rent for a year... Just spit balling but yes I think in principle OP if we largely stop private landlords renting to people things would change significantly ie people cannot purchase spare houses for themselves to profit from rent from those who cannot afford to buy a house

Do you qualify for rent at that level in some way? Is the same price from the HA available to absolutely everyone no matter their income or assets?

How would this work for me and my husband.... my husbands job comes with a house that we have to live in, and always will whilst he remains in his line of work. But at retirement we would be homeless. So we own a property that we rent out, purely to cover the mortgage, plus giving us somewhere to live in our retirement. How would we, and many in the same line of work have anywhere to live in our retirement if we were unable to rent out our own property whilst living in our tied accommodation?

Also, what about those renters who rents properties done to higher standards and pay rents accordingly. Will they need to accommodate to whatever they are given by the HA or can they pick?

So you just want to swap greedy landlords with greedy multi millionaire business owners? (Who will be mates with Farage et al and will have off shore bank accounts avoiding tax)

Sounds like a great idea!

don’t be a twat.
What about young people with jobs who aren’t eligible for state help? Where do they live? For example my son on an apprenticeship who needs a roof over his head in a town away from our home.

My first thought!

And what if a lot of these houses are poorly maintained? It would cost the HA or councils a fortune to buy and then repair them.

How would housing be allocated if everyone was charged the same market rent? How would it be fair for someone to live in a show home 5 bed with garage in the suburbs and someone else get allocated a falling apart shack in the middle of nowhere and a third a tenth story flat in a dodgy inner city area?

If even far more left leaning, socialist countries than us haven't attempted something it tends to suggest its complete pie in the sky and unfeasible.

Something like a rent cap and/or limit on air bnbs, even higher second home council taxes, etc, would be a more logical step.

Before you do that, can you make sure no foreigner who does not live in the UK or has no ties do not buy a property for investment?

Bit nasty

I’m sorry but you live in la la land … where exactly is social housing going to get the money to buy private rentals off landlords?

I really think the UK needs to teach economics in schools to all kids so people can understand how economies work. There is not a money tree growing anywhere in the UK.

Thats fine if you want to live in a socialist or communist society … but go live in one. So many people in the UK seem to think we can have it all … but we can’t there is always something that has to give.

No, why do you keep banging on about Bristol? I used to visit the uni a lot back in my late teens...

Do you live in Bristol? You still haven't answered about Bristol.

I have no idea how it could work or what would happen, but I agree there should be a limit on how many houses someone can own. I also think HMOs converted from 2/3/4 bed houses into 6/7 bedroom houses should be banned. The same goes for Air b&bs in residential areas, perfectly good homes for families just being wasted for someone’s passive income.
I realise banning all this would be difficult and no, I have no idea how, but I still think there should be strict laws around this greed!

There are up to 1500 long term empty homes in my borough alone.

Sorry to break this to you gently…. BUT this has already been tried. Lots of times. In many countries. Where private ownership is discouraged and there is lots of social housing, etc…

YES- it’s called communism and it never leads to anything good. Because once you start, where do you stop.

It's a hard no from me to communism, but thanks.