An unashamed sarcastic ODE to the success of the RRA, politicians and lobbying groups?

The government were warned that the Renters’ Rights Act (RRA) would cause damage. We are already seeing the damage, and the remedy in the form of rent caps are destined to fail. The elephant is still in the room.

There’s an elephant in the room,
But politicians look away,
They blame the landlord, write new rules,
And promise a brighter day.

They talk of rights and regulations,
Filling parliament with moans,
But miss the thing that matters most:
There aren’t enough homes.

For when rental homes disappear,
And families still must live,
The ones that remain command a price
That benefits no longer give.

More people chasing fewer homes,
The mathematics isn’t hard;
Raise the demand, reduce the stock,
And rent will climb the yard.

They sold the homes the councils built,
At discounts by the score,
But failed to build replacements—
Millions lost their social door.

The social tenants once protected
Were pushed into the private race,
To compete against the working man
For ever-costlier space.

The government pegged LHA rates
While inflation continued to soar
Expecting Landlords to fund the cost
While making claimants poor

Inflation ate the safety net,
And let the claimers struggle.
freezing help while prices rose
Creating a debt bubble

Whilst this was certain to bring fear.
The government repeated
And held LHA Rates
Year after year after year

The landlord too can know despair,
Though they refuse to see it;
One careless choice of tenant
Can make a home a place of grief.
It’s sleepless nights and years of stress,
When the tenant has become a thief.

A landlord cannot simply walk
Into the home they own;
Maintenance becomes a battleground,
But responsibility remains their own.
So fear begins to shape the choice:
“Who can I safely trust?”
And properties that might have housed
The vulnerable gather dust.

Then politicians wonder why
The supply begins to shrink,
While tenants find the market closed
And councils reach the brink.

B&Bs become the final stop,
The bill grows day by day;
The very people meant to gain
Are pushed another way.

And yet and still the elephant stands there,
Enormous, plain and clear—
But Westminster discusses everything
Except the thing that’s here.
Build more homes.
It’s such a simple thought,
Yet somehow in the corridors
Its meaning has been lost.
For imagine houses everywhere,
More homes than people can buy;
Landlords competing for a tenant,
And rents falling with the supply.

Empty houses everywhere,
Owners desperate to sell,
No shortage, no bidding wars,
No housing crisis from hell.

Then tenants would have choices,
And landlords would compete;
The market would have room to breathe,
And homes would become cheap.

But scarcity gives power
To whoever holds the key.
When there are too few doors to open,
Someone pays the price.

So write another regulation,
Create another law,
But legislation cannot manufacture
The houses that we lack.

You cannot regulate away
A shortage in the street.
You cannot punish scarcity
Until supply is complete.

And somewhere in the shadows
A preventable train rolls on—
With tenants, landlords, councils
All wondering what went wrong.
The elephant remains standing.
The evidence is there to see.
It isn’t simply landlords.
It isn’t simply tenants.
It is homes.
And until we build enough of them,
No Bill will be suffice.
Because when there aren’t enough houses,
Everyone eventually pays the price.

Thank you for reading.

Paul

An AI Poem based on an article sent to Property118 pre RRA.