The construction here seems a little forced:

The problem is that the people largely affected by suboptimal housing have little power to change it. Notably, damp is five times more common in private rentals than in owner-occupied homes. Roughly 20% of people live in private rented homes, with 520,000 of these properties in England posing serious health problems including cold, damp and mould. Even when these problems are raised with landlords, action doesn’t follow. Renters don’t have the ability to force landlords to improve living conditions, and instead fear an eviction notice or a higher rent being imposed.

Hmm, OK, that’s not good. But as we say, the construction seems forced there. We should really be comparing council and social rented with private rented, no? So we thought we’d have a look.

Social:

While the picture is incomplete, our best estimate from the initial survey was that fewer than 0.2% of social homes have the most serious damp and mould problems, 1-2% have serious damp and mould problems, and a further 3-4% have notable damp and mould.

Private:

On average, 3.6% of private rented sector properties were estimated to have category 1 damp and mould hazards. The lowest estimate was 0% and the highest estimate was 27%. 33% or 83 local authorities (of the 251 who provided estimates that could be included in the analysis in this report) estimated 1-2%. The median estimate was 1.2%.

Now those are not exactly the same measures nor classifications. But they are both government numbers.

Depending upon how you’d like to spin those classifications you could say that either is worse than the other. It is, perhaps, the lack of control on the part of the tenants from it being rental housing which is the problem, not dastardly landlordism nor state slummery.

Which might explain the forced construction there in that first quote from The Guardian. Comparing rental to owned shows a difference, showing social rented to private rented perhaps does not - but that wouldn’t advance the project, would it?

On that, on the project, there is good news though. Sir Keir has just announced that Labour will work so that everyone will be able to buy their own home. We have to admit that we’re not quite sure about that, there are stages of life where a rental is the better solution. However, think of it this way, as of how far the Overton Window has shifted over the decades. It’s now the leader of the Labour Party insisting on fulfilling Maggie’s dream of the property owning democracy.

Which is fun, no?