C21 UK Rentier Land Grab: What’s REALLY Behind The War On Home Ownership?

Becoming a “Nation of Renters” is clearly a big part of the New Normal

What’s REALLY behind the war on home ownership?

Kit Knightly

The incipient “Great Reset” is a multi-faceted beast. We talk a lot about vaccine passports and lockdowns and the Covid-realated aspects – and we should – but there’s more to it than that.

Remember, they want you to “own nothing and be happy”. And right at the top of the list of things you definitely shouldn’t own, is your own home.

The headlines about this have been steady for the last few years, but it has picked up pace in the wake of the “pandemic” (as has so much else). An agenda hidden on back pages, behind by Covid’s meaningless big red numbers, but perhaps no less sinister.

You can find articles all over the net talking up renting over owning.

Last month, for example, Bloomberg ran an article headlined:

America Should Become a Nation of Renters”

Which praises what they call “the liquefaction of the housing market” and gleefully expounds on the idea that “The very features that made home buying an affordable and stable investment are coming to an end.”

The Atlantic published “Why Its Better To Rent Than Own” in March.

Financial pages from Business Insider to Forbes to Yahoo and Bloomberg again are filled with lists titled “9 Ways Renting is Better Than Buying”or similar.

Other publications go more personal with it, with anecdotal columns about ignoring financial advice and refusing to buy your home. Vox, never one to sell their agenda with any kind of subtlety, have a piece titled:

Homeownership can bring out the worst in you

Which literally argues that buying a house can make you a bad person:

It’s the biggest thing you might ever buy. And it could be turning you into a bad person.

So what exactly is the narrative here? What’s the story behind the story?

The short answer is fairly simple: It’s about greed, and it’s about control.

It almost always is, in the end.

The longer answer is rather more complicated. Major investment firms such as Vanguard and Blackrock, along with rental companies such as American Homes 4 Rent, are buying up single-family homes in record numbers – sometimes entire neighbourhoods at a time.

They pay well over market value, pricing families who want to own those homes out of the market, which forces the housing market up whilst the Lockdown-created recession is lowering wages and creating millions of newly unemployed.

Of course, this is motivating people to sell the houses they already own.

People all across America have been saddled with houses worth less than they bought them for since the 2008 economic crash, and are eager to take the cash from private investment firms paying 10-20% over market value. Combine an economic recession with a created housing boom and you have a huge population of motivated sellers.

Of course, many of these sellers don’t realise, until it’s too late, that even if they attempt to downsize or move to a cheaper area, they may be priced out of the market completely, and forced to rent.

As such, in the last year, the private investment share of single-family home purchases is estimated to have increased ten-fold, going from 2% in 2018 to over 20% this year.

As more and more people are forced to rent, of course, rental properties will be in higher and higher demand. This in turn will drive the cost of renting up.

Market Watch has already reported that, in the last year, rent has increased over 3x faster than the government predicted.

This problem is likely to get worse in the near future.

Last night, Congress “accidentally failed” to extend the Covid-related eviction ban.

Which means, this weekend, while Senators adjourn to the summer homes they probably don’t rent, the ban will officially end and a lot of people are likely to have their houses foreclosed or their landlords kick them out.

The newly empty buildings will be a feeding frenzy for the massive corporate landlords. Who will descend on the banks like starving hyenas to snap up the foreclosed properties for pennies on the dollar. Just like they did in 2008.

None of this is any secret, it’s been covered in the mainstream. Tucker Carlson even did a segment on it in early June.

The Wall Street Journal headlined, back in April, “If You Sell a House These Days, the Buyer Might Be a Pension Fund”, and reported:

Yield-chasing investors are snapping up single-family homes, competing with ordinary Americans and driving up prices

However, since then, something has clearly changed. The propaganda machine has kicked into gear to defend Wall Street from any backlash.

No better example of this shift can be found than The Atlantic, which ran this story in 2019:

WHEN WALL STREET IS YOUR LANDLORD
With help from the federal government, institutional investors became major players in the rental market. They promised to return profits to their investors and convenience to their tenants. Investors are happy. Tenants are not.

…and this story last month:

BLACKROCK IS NOT RUINING THE US HOUSING MARKET
The real villain isn’t a faceless Wall Street Goliath; it’s your neighbors and local governments stopping the construction of new units.

Going back to the Vox well we have:

Wall Street isn’t to blame for the chaotic housing market

Which ran just a few days after the Atlantic article, and is practically identical.

Both these (oddly similar) articles argue that Wall Street and private equity firms can’t be blamed for buying up houses, and that the real problem is the lack of supply to meet demand.

You see, all the “selfish” people who already own homes (they did say it makes you a bad person) are blocking the construction of new houses, and thus driving up the cost of property through scarcity.

This has been a logically flawed argument around the housing market for decades.

That there aren’t enough houses for people to buy is patently absurd when the US census data says that there are over 15 million houses currently standing empty. That’s enough to house all of America’s roughly 500,000 homeless people 30x over.

There’s plenty of houses, there’s just not enough money to buy them.

The reason for that is the same reason the California has massive “homeless camps” in its major cities, and that so many people are having to become renters instead of owners: wage stagnation.

For decades now, wage increases have lagged behind increases in the cost of living. In the 1960s one full-time job could afford a decent standard of living for a family of four or more. These days both parents work, sometimes multiple jobs each.

It was huge amounts of financial de-regulation which created this situation. So, whether you believe Vox’s BlackRock apologia or not, one way or another Wall Street very definitely is to blame.

But this isn’t just about money. It never is. Just as the war on cash isn’t just about efficiency, and the environmental push isn’t just about climate change. Ditto veganism. It’s about control. Just like vaccines, lockdowns and masks.

It always comes down to control.

It’s an oft-used cliche, but no less true for that, that homeowning “gives people a stake in society”. A family-owned house is a source of security for the future and something to leave your children. It is also sovereignty and privacy. Your own space that no one else can control or take away.

In short: A homeowner is independent. A renter is not. A renter can be controlled. A homeowner can not.

It’s the same reasoning behind the way working people were encouraged to take out loans and become debt slaves. If you limit people’s options, if you make them rely on you for a roof over their heads, you have control over them.

There’s a great article about this situation called “Your New Feudal Overlords”.

Under Feudalism, land wasn’t owned by the working class, but provided to them by landed barons, hence the term “Land Lord”. If you disrespected your Lord, or broke his rules, or he perceived another peasant/farm animal/crop would be a better use of the land, he could take it back.

Essentially, the behaviour of serfs was kept in check by their reliance on the nobility for a place to live. That’s very much the dynamic they’re going for here.

Rental agreements can be full of any terms and conditions the landlord wants, and the more desperate people get the more of their consumer rights they will sign over.

Maybe you’ll agree to smart meters which monitor your internet or power-usage habits, and then sell the data to behavioural modellers and viral marketers.

Maybe you’ll have to agree to certain power limitations or water shortages in order to “fight climate change”.

Maybe it will get worse than that.

Maybe they’ll go full Black Mirror style corporate dystopia. Maybe, through affiliation programs, the mega-equity firm which owns your rental house has ties to McDonald’s, and as such will require you to not eat at any competing fast-food franchises, or demand you observe at least ninety seconds of Disney advertisements per day.

Maybe it will be as simple as including vaccine status in the tenancy agreement, making it impossible for the unvaxxed to find a home.

Maybe they just want to make poor people miserable.

After all, the super-wealthy have got all the money they could ever need, and all the luxury they could ever use. Their living standards are as high as physically possible. So maybe the only way they can keep “winning”, is to start driving the living standards of us proles down.

No air travel. No vacations. No going out at all. Live in a tiny house, or a pod. Eat bugs. Get rid of your car. Rent your clothes. Or your furniture. Pay taxes on sugar. And alcohol. And red meat.

They’ve been very clear about this. They’ve told you about the Great Reset and the Internet of Things. That’s the plan.

You won’t own a house. And you’ll be happy…or else the mega-corporation you’re forced to rent from will kick you out.

Mobile Home Owners In Court, Forced From Site Under New Rule Banning Caravans Over 15 Years Old

‘Totally unfair’ Caravan owners go to court as they’re forced from site under new rules

CARAVAN owners near Skegness are taking their local council to court after they were told their vehicles were too old to be on the site.

By FELIX REEVES Thu, Jul 29, 2021

The residents of the Kingfisher Caravan Park in Ingoldmells claim that in October 2019 the council informed people on the site of changes to contracts. This meant that there could be no caravans that were more than 15-years-old on the premises.

As a result of this, more than 100 residents will be taking legal action against East Lindsey District Council.

The council extended the date that the caravans needed to be moved due to the coronavirus pandemic.

But, the group says that the council has now set a deadline of the end of the year for certain caravans to be removed.

Steve Wakefield and his wife Kim bought their caravan in 2001 and will be massively affected if the changes go ahead.

The Kingfisher Caravan Park in Ingoldmells.

Speaking to Lincolnshire Live, he said: “It’s totally unfair. I just can’t understand the council’s position at all, and I sometimes wonder if they understand it themselves.

“I don’t think they thought through the implications of it because there’s bits of this site that look like a ghost town now because of the number of people who have left.

“The council didn’t seem to realise how many people would be leaving so quickly because at the end of the 2019 season it looked like a flood of caravans leaving the site – just one after the other.”

The residents say they have been left with “no option” but to take the council to court.

An aerial view of the caravan park, which has already seen caravan owners leave.

The most recent attempt at mediation between the two sides came during a meeting on July 21, but it failed to resolve any issues.

Stuart Allen is representing the residents and says that more than 300 owners and caravans have been removed since being told about the contract change.

He says that some residents felt they had no choice but to sell their vans for scrap, given that they were only informed of the change just three weeks before the end of the 2019 season.

Peter Blackburn, 66, stays on the site with his wife for most of the season, but is considering his future.

He said: “We first came here in 2009 but the current caravan we’re in is one that we bought in 2013 and so it’s eight years old now.

“So we’re a few years off the age limit yet, if it still goes ahead, but another rule the council has is that you can’t sell the caravan privately after ten years so I’m already thinking about what we’ll do.

“All these rules that they have, and the new age limit one that they’re trying to bring in, is all just stress that you don’t need.

“My wife and I bought our caravan as a retirement thing for life that would be our forever home, and now it’s looking as if it might not be.

“She’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer and so I will not be moving the caravan in the immediate future because she loves it down here and I want her to be able to enjoy it.

“If the council was really bothered about the age of the caravans, then they should have done it through a process of natural wastage – where they told residents that they couldn’t pass the caravan on to their kids or whatever.

“But when you’re seeing old couples driving off the site in tears, you know that this can’t be the right way to go about things.”

It could take up to two years for the case to be heard, according to Stuart Allen, as he will be submitting papers against the council soon.

He added that the cost of the court action could rise up to £60,000, with the group having already spent £30,000.

Lloyds Bank sets out new plans to buy 50,000 homes to become UK’s biggest private landlord by 2030

Lloyds Bank sets out new plans to buy 50,000 homes to become UK’s biggest private landlord by 2030

Linda Howard 01 Sep 2021

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/lloyds-bank-sets-out-new-plans-to-buy-50000-homes-to-become-uk-e2-80-99s-biggest-private-landlord-by-2030/ar-AANZ5TI

Lloyds Banking Group is reportedly planning to become one of the UK’s biggest landlords, according to the Financial Times.

The banking giant is aiming to buy 50,000 homes in the next 10 years and charge tenants rent as a private landlord. The Financial Times said that Lloyds Banking Group has launched the ‘Citra Living’ brand in an attempt to move into new streams of making money.

Lloyds is the biggest mortgage lender in the UK, providing nearly one in four home loans to prospective buyers, but, with interest rates at historic lows for more than a decade, returns have been squeezed.

The newspaper said an internal job advertisement has set a “strategic challenge” of reaching 10,000 properties by the end of 2025, with a further aim to hit 50,000 by 2030.

Based on current property prices and rental estimates, this would create a portfolio worth £4 billion, generating pre-tax profits of around £300 million.

If the targets are hit, Citra Living will overtake the UK’s current largest private landlord, Grainger, which has 9,100 properties worth around £2.1 billion.

Citra may consider “M&A (mergers and acquisitions) opportunities and/or strategic alliances” to help it reach the targets, the advert added.

Previously, the bank has been cautious on the potential for the new division, with finance chief William Chalmers saying expansion into the private rental market would be “on a limited basis while we explore the area”.

Several big name fund management groups and insurers have entered the private rental market in recent years, including Legal & General and M&G.

And retailer John Lewis recently announced plans to convert unused floor space in its department stores into rental homes.

The switch from small-scale private landlords follows changes in tax rules which mean buy-to-let mortgage payments are no longer tax deductible.

A Lloyds spokesperson said: “As highlighted at launch, Citra Living will initially start small, with a focus on buying and renting good-quality, newly-built properties. This will be achieved by working alongside leading house builders to address the increasing demand for rental properties.

“The aim is to gradually provide incremental stock to the UK rental market over the coming years.”

UK Romany Gypsies: We will not go quietly into the history books

On Romany Holocaust Memorial Day, JAKE BOWERS warns that the new laws now being levelled at Britain’s Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities by the Police Bill once again threaten an entire people’s way of life

Romani prisoners at Belzec camp, 1940

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/we-will-not-go-quietly-into-the-history-books

TODAY is Romany Holocaust Memorial Day ­ yet ask most lifelong anti-racists what the significance of August 2 is and they will be puzzled.

For our history, just like our plight, remains one of Europe’s dirty secrets.

So come with me, if you will, on a journey into the past of Europe’s 12 million Romany people because we desperately need your help to secure a better future. Because history does not always exactly repeat itself, but in 2021 it is starting to rhyme.

On this day, in 1944, 4,300 Romanies were murdered at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

They were taken during the night from their barracks to the gas chamber by SS guards.

The mass killing was a reprisal on the community who led a desperate uprising at the death camp.

Just months earlier, on May 16, Romany prisoners of the so-called Zigeunerlager (Gypsy camp), having heard of the imminent liquidation of the camp, stood up against the Nazi guards armed with only hammers, pickaxes and shovels.

As a result of their defiance, no Roma died in the gas chambers on that day. The Romany revolt against the Nazis is the only recorded uprising in Auschwitz and is now commemorated as Romani Resistance Day.

We still do not know how many of us died in the Holocaust. Unlike the Jewish community, many of our ancestors could not read or write, so few independent records were kept.

Estimates range from 500,000 to 1.5 million people, their lives and stories are often lost within German statistics of those “remaining to be liquidated.”

We were the only other racial minority alongside the Jewish community specifically subjected to the Nazi “final solution” ­ and a similar percentage of the Romany and Jewish community was eradicated.

But there the parallels end, because what the intervening decades have taught us is that some inequalities are sadly far more equal than others.

So today we will weep for those we lost, but tomorrow we must again pick up the shovels.

Across Europe a mudslide of racist violence is once again engulfing our people. From Hungary to Britain, right-wing governments are once again scapegoating our people ­ and the results can be lethal.

In the Czech Republic, Romany man Stanislav Tomas died in Teplice on June 19 2021, after a Czech police officer knelt on his neck for six minutes.

In images comparable to the murder of George Floyd in the US, the video went viral, prompting Romanies across Europe to protest police violence.

The Czech Republic authorities deny any wrongdoing and the police were praised by the interior minister for their good work.

After the Council of Europe called for an independent investigation, the Czech president said he had no reason to doubt the results of the internal investigation, which found the police officers’ behaviour to be correct.

In New York, Berlin, Brussels, Glasgow, London, Vienna and in countless cities across eastern Europe where Romany populations are big and growing, Romanies are demanding justice for Stanislav and themselves.

Directly inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, a Roma Lives Matter movement has seen thousands of Romany people demand better treatment on the streets.

For many of us the end of the Holocaust did not lead to turning point in our treatment and life chances. Those who had survived the Nazis were soon forcibly settled and assimilated into urban deprivation by Stalinist regimes.

In recent decades, the forced sterilisation of Romany women, poverty and over-representation in state care and special schools for Romany kids and deeply ingrained prejudice have kept us moving.

Such racism has led to a huge wave of Romany migration to western Europe. This has led to a doubling of the British Gypsy, Roma and Traveller population to at least 600,000 people.

But Britain is no safe haven. The hostile environment experienced by Britain’s Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community for over 500 years has recently been cranked up.

Priti Patel’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill not only limits the right to protest, but also seeks to completely outlaw nomadic Gypsy and Traveller culture.

If passed it will entirely eradicate nomadic life in Britain, giving police the power to seize Gypsy and Traveller homes and fine Gypsies and Travellers up to £2,500 ­ and imprison those needing to follow a nomadic way of life because of a lack of safe, legal stopping places.

On July 7 over 1,000 community members gathered in the shadow of the statues of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and suffragette Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square to kick-start the Drive 2 Survive campaign that will roll from Westminster to the Appleby Fair (the world’s largest Gypsy horse fair) in August in Cumbria, to the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester in October 2021.

Much as Gandhi, Mandela and Fawcett used direct action to fight for equality, Gypsy and Traveller community members will resist the outlawing of our cultures. Our communities have unified to fight the Bill, but we desperately need your help to stop it.

“As nomadic people that have roamed the lands we have lived on for our whole recorded history, to suddenly be told our way of life has no place in society is totally wrong and hurtful,” says Irish Traveller activist Chris McDonagh.

“We all live in a country that is supposedly proud of its acceptance and equality for all ethnicities and minorities, but we now see this is a lie. We are people and we deserve to live our lives as we always have. We deserve to exist.”

The Drive 2 Survive Campaign’s first aim is the scrapping of part four of the Bill that creates a criminal law of trespass and dramatically increases police powers over anyone residing on land that they do not have permission to be on.

We believe that the draconian powers within the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act that already lock nomadic Gypsies and Travellers into a cycle of trespass and eviction and do not need strengthening but repealing.

Patel cannot ignore the fact that police powers are already too excessive. It’s not just Gypsies, Roma and Travellers who are resisting these new powers, but representatives from the National Police Chiefs Council.

In evidence to the committee stage of the Police Bill, the community and the police were united in calling for a better way of resolving the conflict around a lack of stopping places.

The community takes the threat of the new legislation so seriously that it has organised the first Romani Kris (council of elders) in decades to debate and decide a unified response to Patel’s Bill at Appleby.

Hereditary Appleby Fair organiser Billy Welch sees a direct parallel with the state violence that Romany populations were subjected to before the Holocaust, because before the death camps came the outlawing of nomadic life across the Third Reich.

“The people I represent are anxious about these proposals and with good reason. They are reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and the start of the process of ethnic cleansing in which Gypsies were forced off the road by fines and imprisonment.

“Their horses and vehicles were confiscated, which eventually led to them being sent to death camps or murdered on the side of the road.

“There are still many Gypsies alive who lost their families in that Holocaust and they have not forgotten ­ this is how it began.

“All of what was done then was legal in the eyes of the Nazis, but history teaches us clearly that just because something is legal, doesn’t make it right.”

This summer we will show the Conservative Party that we will not go quietly into the history books ­ in fact we will not be going at all.

To show your solidarity with the Drive 2 Survive Campaign, come to Appleby Horse Fair in Cumbria between August 12 and 15

attend the National Drive 2 Survive Rally at the time of the Tory Conference in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, at 1pm on Saturday October 2 2021.

Jake Bowers is a Romany journalist. For more information see www.drive2survive.org.uk and www.proudroma.org