Housing Minister considers limiting landlords to one rent increase a year in Jersey

Jersey's Housing Minister says he is considering plans to limit landlords to only one rent increase a year.

Speaking to more than a hundred social housing tenants at an event on Monday evening (March 20), Deputy David Warr said a set of fresh proposals to help tenants in both the social and private sector will be published in an upcoming whitepaper.

Depty Warr said: "We're going to be bringing out our ideas around rent stabilisation, making sure that rents only go up in line with inflation, and any increase is maybe done on an annual basis.

"But these are issues that we will flesh out in the whitepaper in a few weeks' time."

This comes a few days after Jersey Homes Trust announced its intention to hike rents for the vast majority of its tenants by 5-9%.

The increase will come into effect from 1 May, but many residents, speaking at Monday's event, say they are worried about the change.

One tenant, Patricia McKenna, said: "It's taking food out of our kids mouth, it's taking clothes off their backs, it's making them lose their enjoyable activities that they used to have, we're all mortified, we love our community."

Another resident, Lynne Howgate, added: "It's just upsetting, I'm upset for a lot of other people, it's not just me, it's hundreds and hundreds of families that are being affected and we've got to do something."

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