The Madness of Renting

My landlord (who’s actually a faceless company that specialises in buy to let) just informed me that my rent is increasing from £450 a month to £800. Just a letter through the door: “Your rent will be £800 per calendar month from September 1st.”

This is in Pentre, in the heart of the Rhondda Valleys. One of the most economically deprived areas in Wales, where the median household income is around £23,000 a year. Where entire streets of terraced houses stood empty for decades because nobody could afford them.

The maths is brutal. £800 a month is £9,600 a year - more than half the pre-tax income for most people here, before they’ve bought food or heated their home.

This isn’t just individual greed. It’s a system that treats housing as an investment vehicle first and homes second. Buy-to-let landlords have discovered that even in places like the Rhondda, they can extract enormous rents from people who have nowhere else to go.

Families will choose between heating and eating. Young people will leave entirely, continuing the brain drain that’s hollowed out these communities for generations. Small businesses will lose customers who can no longer afford anything beyond rent.

If this renterism continues unchecked, it will finish what deindustrialisation started. The Valleys survived the pit closures and factory shutdowns. But they won’t survive being priced out of existence by their own housing market.