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MANCHESTER, England (CN) — The U.K. minister for homelessness, Rushanara Ali, has resigned after it emerged she evicted four tenants from one of her properties before relisting it for $940 more per month.
The Labour lawmaker gave her tenants four months’ notice as she was putting the east London property up for sale.
After it failed to sell, the house was then returned to the market with the monthly rent bumped up from $4,430 to $5,370 per month.
In a statement, Ali said she resigned “to avoid any further distraction for the government.” In a letter to the prime minister, she thanked Keir Starmer for his support and reiterated that “at all times I have followed all relevant legal requirements.”
Ali’s resignation followed criticism from housing organizations and charities.
Ben Twomey, the head of the campaign group Generation Rent, called these actions “shocking” and “a wake-up call to government on the need to push ahead as quickly as possible to improve protections for renters.”
Twomey said that it is bad enough when landlords remove tenants to hike up rent, “but the minister responsible for homelessness knows only too well about the harm caused” by this behavior.
As a minister, Ali was responsible for policy on homelessness and rough sleeping as well as housing delivery. She had previously spoken out against “private renters being exploited” and promised to strengthen protections for renters.
The Labour government’s Renters’ Rights Bill, which is set to come into force next year, is designed to prevent exploitation in the private rental market.
It will ban no-fault evictions and end fixed-term contracts, with renters moving to ongoing contracts.
It will also ban the actions of Ali. If a landlord ends a tenancy claiming they want to sell the property, they cannot relet it within six months. This aims to prevent landlords from evicting tenants under false pretenses to hike rent for the next tenants.
“It beggars belief that after months of dither and delay, the government’s own homelessness minister has profited from the underhand tactics the Renters’ Rights Bill is meant to outlaw,” said Mairi MacRae, director at a national housing charity called Shelter.
MacRae added that renters “cannot wait any longer for meaningful change.”
Ali’s resignation is another blow to the Labour government, which now has an approval rating of 13% — the lowest for the current government.
Dissatisfaction among Labour lawmakers and voters have also dragged down Starmer’s personal approval ratings, with one poll finding that 69% of participants say he is doing badly as prime minister.
There are around 11 million private renters in England and 2.3 million landlords, according to government figures. The fallout from Ali’s resignation highlights the growing public pressure to regulate a rental market many say is skewed in favor of landlords.
With homeownership increasingly out of reach for many — the average house now costs more than nine times the typical salary — millions are kept in a private rental sector where security is weak and prices keep rising.
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