The Rent Trap

Deregulation, revenge evictions, parliamentary corruption and day-to-day instability: these are the realities for the eleven million people currently renting privately in the UK. At the same time, house prices are skyrocketing and the generational promise of home ownership is now an impossible dream for many. This is the rent-trap: an inescapable consequence of market-induced inequality.

Rosie Walker and Samir Jeraj offer the first critical account of what is really going on in the private rented sector and expose the powers conspiring to oppose regulation. A quarter of British MPs are landlords, rent strike is almost impossible and snap evictions are growing, but in the light of these hurdles The Rent Trap shows how to fight back.

Drawing on inspiration from movements in the UK, Europe and further afield, The Rent Trap coheres current experiences of those fighting the financial burdens, health risks and vicious behaviour of landlords in an attempt to put an end to the dominant narratives that normalise rent extraction and undermine our fundamental rights.

Published in partnership with the Left Book Club.

Author Biography

Rosie Walker the co-author of The Rent Trap (Pluto, 2016), is a social policy writer and researcher interested in housing, inequality, employment rights and debt. She writes for the Guardian, Observer, Independent, Inside Housing and Third Sector. As a researcher she has worked for London School of Economics, University of Bristol and University of Brighton. She was once evicted by her landlord for asking for a new chest of drawers.