it's not often i see or hear adverts, but today i listened to Owen Jones on an LBC phone-in about homelessness and the monarchy. that was good, but one of the ads made me think...
bear with me for a bit. do you remember the kerfuffle in the tabloid press (and a bit above) about the Health and Safety Executive banning conker fights in school playgrounds? thing is: they didn't. the ban was a condition in most insurance policies (and the 'blame and claim' culture around injuries led most other schools to ban it anyway), so while it wasn't actually law, it became standard practice
anyway: on LBC there was a spot advertising insurance to landlords against rent arrears. (now there's a thought: landlords want insurance precisely because the risk of someone not paying is higher than ever, but that's another story).
so Joe Q. Landlord goes to one of the insurance companies offering these policies and wants, of course, to keep his costs down. the insurance companies want to limit their exposure to risk, regardless of the policy they're selling, and my guess is that they'll insist on a set of qualifications for tenants - the kind that the well-off don't notice and the poor will find hard to reach. the insurance companies won't let a landlord rent to people in tough financial circumstances who need a place to live: or if they do, the premiums will be higher, which the landlord will naturally pass on to the tenants
so apart from excluding some people from the rental market altogether, it introduces a dynamic where rents become higher, the poorer you get. no government policy was necessary, apart from poorly regulated rental and financial sectors
and all to protect what is mostly unearned income
