The government’s new planning bill looks likely to serve the interests of landlords rather than hard-up rentersAmelia* is a full-time working mother of two being forced to leave her home because she can’t afford the latest rent increase from her private landlord. On paper, Amelia’s one of the luckier ones: she has a stable job and lives in a city where rents are 35% lower than the national average. Yet for three months, Amelia has failed to find a single alternative home she could afford.Though she is theoretically eligible for social housing, joining the 1.3m households already trapped on waiting lists won’t fix her immediate crisis. Neither, it seems, will Labour’s flagship pledge to build 1.5m new homes.Abi O’Connor is an urban sociologist who researches the political economy of housing, land and regional inequality at the New Economics Foundation and the University of Liverpool Continue reading...