Building new homes and tackling rogue landlords in Mitcham & Morden

Mitcham & Morden

The whole of London is in the grips of a housing crisis. House prices and market rents across the capital – including in Mitcham – are completely unaffordable for many local residents. And the lack of good quality housing has allowed rogue landlords to take advantage of the situation by charging people an arm and a leg to live in shoddy, cramped accommodation. We’re taking action to help.

We have allocated £29 million to build 400 brand new, genuinely affordable, high-quality homes on council-owned land over the next four years. This will be the first time that Merton has built any council homes in more than 40 years, and it can’t come soon enough!

We are also setting up a landlord licensing scheme in the private rented sector, to crack down on dodgy landlords and to make sure that nobody who rents their home has to live in poor quality conditions.

As well, we will stop the spread of family homes being turned into poor quality Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMOs). This is where a 4-bed family home gets rented out to multiple different households, many of them paying extortionate rents to live in just one room with a shared kitchen or bathroom. We think there are far too many cases of this happening and want to keep family homes for the families who need them. We are working to require these conversions to obtain planning permission first, which will ensure they become decent homes with proper room sizes and amenities.

We are holding Clarion (and other Housing Associations) to account by ensuring they address outstanding repair issues. If you have any outstanding issues with your property that we can help with, please contact us using the details at the top of this letter. We are also regularly out knocking on doors in the area, so if you see us, please make sure to say hello.