 When the government announced its first lockdown in 2020, they recognized that people who were unable to go to work might struggle to pay their rent. Now to that end, they implemented an eviction ban. Communities Minister Robert Jenrick promised that no one would lose their home because of the pandemic. It was all very good rhetoric, the ban was of course welcome. However, now that ban has come to an end and according to the Joseph Roundtree Foundation, 400,000 renters have already had eviction notices or been told to expect them. So the government in their traditional fashion, they implemented an eviction ban, but they didn't sort out the underlying problem, which means at the moment they remove that ban. There are lots of people now at risk of becoming homeless. This, of course, could be catastrophic for private renters. It could also be catastrophic for local authorities who have to work out how to house so many people who are being kicked out of their privately rented homes. However, despite the social catastrophe that could be about to befall on us, some of the noisiest voices on our airwaves have been from landlords complaining about people who haven't paid rent and who they haven't been able to kick out for the past 12 months. We've had many of them call into radio stations, have their quotes in the newspapers or on the evening bulletins. They're all very, very annoyed that there was an interruption to their passive income, the income they get for essentially doing nothing. Here's one calling into LBC. I'll fed up the back teeth hearing about these poor, hard-done-buy tenants. What about hard-done-buy landlords? Some tenants are very good. A lot of tenants are playing the system for all it's worth. Now, I went to Housetown. I'm actually in the process of evicting the tenants. I've actually got a call date, but these tenants have been playing the system for the past year plus. What does playing the system mean, Michael, to the uninitiated? They can't be evicted. You can't be evicted, yeah, but what does playing the system mean? They know they can't. Whatever they do, they can't be evicted. Right, so you've got people in properties and they're not paying their rent and you can't get... They are paying their rent, but they'll have a personal reason why they urgently need to sell their house. So, I'm actually using the section 21 notice, but the fact to make is, what tenants seem to not understand and what people like Shelter don't seem to understand is, this is the landlord's house. It's up to him what happens with it. This was a landlord whose tenants were paying their rent, but he's still calling in to a national radio station, really upset because even though throughout a pandemic, his tenants were paying their rent, he couldn't kick them out onto the street anyway, right? So, he, for whatever reason, wanted to sell his house and he thought, look, it's the middle of a pandemic, nothing to do with me, whether or not my tenants will end up homeless in the middle of a pandemic. I want to kick them out. It's my house. I can dispose of it how I want to. I always think becoming a landlord has the tendency to turn people's brain into mush, right? And I think that was really an example of it. Let's watch a little bit more of that call. I'm truly appalled at the way the toys have carried on over this. They have made it difficult beyond belief to get more landlords. Once I sell up, and I'm sure I won't be the only one, there'd be less houses to rent because it's just not worth the egg roll. And you don't make a fortune over it. People think if you rent houses out, you're rich. You're really, really not. OK. Once you've paid out all the exceptions, I've had tenants who've phoned me up to complain about the batteries and the smoke alarm they've been placing. Well, can't they get up and charge it themselves? Isn't that your job, as a matter of fact? Or does that fall down to you or to them? Well, I would say it's down to there. It's a battery. It's like batting the torch going. But I mean, I'm a good landlord. I've done everything that's ever been asked for me to be done. These tenants, a lot of tenants, there are some good tenants about. Don't get me wrong, Andrew. There are some good tenants about. But there's an awful lot who aren't. This is what I mean by becoming a landlord. Now, I want to get rid of all our landlordism. I don't necessarily think every landlord's a bad person. I don't like to cast aspersions like that, but I don't think the job was not a job. I don't think they should exist. But they all think universally, they're a good landlord. Now, this guy is saying, look, I'm a good landlord. I'm not like the other ones. You'd previously heard he wanted to kick out his tenants who were paying their rent in the middle of a pandemic, right? He's not a good landlord. I'm sorry. That guy is not a good landlord. And he also said, I'm not rich. People assume I'm rich. Now, lots of private landlords aren't rich. You know, they're not super rich at least 45% of private landlords own just one property, which means, you know, they're not necessarily going to be in the realms of the super rich. However, even though they might not be super rich, they're probably going to be richer than their tenants. And that's because they're taking half of their tenants' income without doing anything, right? That's what they call passive income. Passive income means you get to sit on your ass while someone else goes out to work and then pays you a third of their income, a half of their income every month. Then you're complaining that you can't kick them out on the street in the middle of a pandemic. He's also like, I have to change their batteries. I change the batteries for someone's fucking fire alarm if I got too grand a month to do it. You know, I'll change batteries for every device if I get some nice passive income that I can sit on for my pension pot. It's just phenomenal how you can have people who they're just receiving a third of someone else's income and they still feel sorry for themselves. I mean, look, this guy is obviously so obnoxious and lacking in self-awareness that I'm astonished that he can get out of bed every day without just simply falling over under the weight of his own delusions. You know, what he's saying is patently ridiculous. One is the idea that you can be a good landlord when you want to kick out rent paying tenants. And two is this idea of, oh, what's the landlord's house? He can do what he wants with it. Well, if that was the case, you should have kept it empty because when you do have sitting tenants, there are rights that they have because it would be completely absurd to have a society in which people could rent and have zero rights to remain in that place when they're fulfilling all their obligations. So what he's saying is just completely wrong. But the third thing, which is, oh, well, if there were no landlords, then there'd be fewer properties to rent. It is the existence of a buy-to-rent market which contributes to the value of his asset going up and up every year, right? Where the value of housing is outstripping increases in wages to the extent that we have this completely absurd situation where by virtue of having a house, you essentially have a hand on financial stability for the rest of your life. Whereas if you're a tenant, every month you pay rent, you're further and further away from achieving that kind of buy-in to the economy and a sense of stability for your own future. It's the existence of the buy-to-let market which drives the value of his property. So that's the thing that I kind of also want to bring up is that you're talking about, well, not every landlord is going to be rolling in it. Of course, that's true. The majority of landlords own an individual property, not huge portfolios. But the fact is, is that whether or not the income that they generate from owning this property and renting it out is a huge amount. Whether or not they have to carry on another form of work in addition to being a landlord, they've still got a whole asset at the end of it. If they're already a homeowner, an owner-occupier, then it's a second asset. And when you have a situation like ours where people are seeing the value of their pensions decrease as the state pension age goes up, where you've got huge problems in terms of the availability of social care for the elderly, having that extra asset at the end of your working life is a huge deal, right? It is a huge deal. So even if you're not filthy rich, even if you're not cocaine champagne every weekend, you know, you are significantly better off in terms of your future if you are a landlord. And I think maybe the third thing that I sort of want to add to this, you know, sort of taking a step back and thinking about what it is the existence of landlordism has done as well as generating really fucking annoying phonins to LBC. What landlordism has done is that it has shifted power in quite a profound way away from working class people, right? What social housing did was that it operated as this wonderful engine of class consciousness. It sort of generated in its own way radicalism, political organization, but also the availability of cheap social housing meant that you could have working class people participating in the arts and creative endeavors without thinking like, okay, I've got to work three jobs just to pay for the rent on this terrible fucking flat, right? It made society better in all sorts of ways to have available social housing. It's not just the fact that that social housing is no longer being built to the extent that it was. It's not only that the social housing was sold off under thatcher. It's that the manner of it being sold off under right to buy, then consolidated a huge amount of economic power in the hands of landlords themselves. So four in 10 of every property that was purchased under right to buy is now a buy to let. So you had this huge transfer of power away from social tenants, a huge, I think erosion of the social safety net for working class people and an increase in housing precarity because of it. And yeah, it was essentially fertilizer for the social disease of landlordism. The social disease of landlordism where working class people work all day to pay someone else's mortgage. You always hear like, oh, look, no, it's not easy being a landlord. The rent and the rent barely covers the mortgage. So yes, but then you get to keep the house at the end of it, right? I'd be less bitter about the rent I paid if I got to keep the house, right? I wouldn't mind paying the rent I pay if I got to keep the house at the end, but the landlord gets to keep the house. I cover the mortgage. He keeps the house and then they're phoning in feeling sorry for themselves. So I always get especially bitter when we talk about landlordism because I just think it is the most unjust feudal relationship we have in society. I don't think there's any justification whatsoever for it. There's no economic benefit to having working people pay the mortgage of people who were lucky enough or rich enough to buy an asset in the first place. No social good comes of it whatsoever. Abolish landlordism, build council homes and that crybaby calling into LBC can get a real job.