When you have stood in a freezing, damp flat with mould crawling up the walls, listening to a mother explain how her child’s asthma has worsened because the landlord refuses to fix it, or makes it clear they are worried their kids will die or be taken away by social services, politics feels very close to home. And when that landlord happens to be someone making the very laws meant to protect her, the trust between public and government shatters completely.
Right now in Britain, we have ministers, people elected to serve the public, who are also private landlords. On paper, they declare it in the register of interests, and the rules say they cannot personally profit from their ministerial role. But let’s be honest: housing policy affects millions, and it is impossible to separate the decisions made in Westminster from the financial realities of the housing market.
When ministers are landlords, every conversation about rent stabilisation, eviction bans, or landlord licensing is clouded by one simple question: whose interests are they really serving? Even if they mean well, the perception of bias alone is enough to corrode public trust. And for those of us who have lived in disrepair, faced no-fault evictions, or been priced out of our communities, the optics are not just bad, they are insulting.
The most alarming example is when a landlord minister is put in charge of tackling homelessness. Like the scandal that saw Rushanara Ali resign. Imagine the person tasked with ending rough sleeping and fixing the temporary accommodation crisis also personally profits from a rental market that has priced so many people out of a secure home. It is not just a bad look, it is a fundamental clash of interests. How can we have full faith in someone to solve homelessness when they stand to gain from the same broken system that fuels it?
Some will argue that ministers have the same rights as any citizen to own property. And that is true. But when you accept a role that gives you power over national housing or homelessness policy, you accept a higher standard of accountability. We already have rules to prevent conflicts in other sectors. Imagine a health secretary owning a chain of private hospitals, or a defence secretary with shares in a weapons manufacturer. People would rightly demand they step aside. Housing should be no different.
The reality is, Britain’s housing system is broken. Millions live in unaffordable, insecure, and often dangerous homes. It is a crisis that requires bold, tenant-focused reform. That is hard to deliver when the people in charge could be personally hit in the wallet by those reforms.
