Against Landlords

A powerful weapon against those who think that building is the answer to everything -- Rowan Moore * Observer * A devastating, forensic, careful, considered attack on the bustard landlords and every lie, nastiness and evil that they represent. -- Danny Dorling, author of <i>Shattered Nation</i> One of the best and most rigorous explanations of how the current system is rigged in favour of landlords and why that needs to change. -- Vicky Spratt, author of <i>Tenants</i> Incisive and righteously indignant. With the experience of a barrister and the sensibility of an activist, Nick Bano helps us imagine an alternative social and economic order: a world without landlordism. -- David Madden, author of <i>In Defense of Housing</i> This is a really important contribution to the debate and a vital corrective. Nick Bano lays out in clear and succinct language the real cause of the housing crisis, which is that it is, above all, a crisis of price caused by high rents. -- Anna Minton, author of <i>Big Capital</i> Essential reading for everyone in the housing movement, and anyone else who wants to understand the central role of housing-wealth generation and exploitation in the British economy. Debunking conventional thinking about the housing system, Against Landlords offers a clear and convincing explanation of how we got into the current crisis, and, most importantly, how we can begin to get out of it. -- Alva Gotby, author of <i>They Call It Love</i> So much more than 'another book about the housing crisis', Against Landlords is a book which takes aim at lazy thinking on all sides of the housing debate. Rooted in a deep knowledge of housing law - and its effects on those whose lives are made miserable by Britain's housing system - Bano combines histories from both below and above. He describes with controlled anger how the British state consciously created a landlord's paradise, and how easily things could be otherwise. Indeed, as he makes clear against fashionable fatalism, we've solved this problem before, and could so again. -- Owen Hatherley, author of <i>Clean Living in Difficult Circumstances</i> Against Landlords is an incisive and engaging take on the housing crisis, with some crucial commentary that anyone interested in housing would benefit from reading. -- Kate Bradley * rs21 * Uncomfortably relevant ... reading Against Landlords right now is rather like flipping through Peter Benchley's Jaws while sitting in a rapidly deflating rubber dingy and being circled by some very pointy fins ... Bano has proven he has the courage to show some much-needed imagination, while most commentary and debate around housing in the UK is typified by a depressing lack thereof. -- Sean Bell * Heckle * We are in a total mess. We stole the future prospects, security, health and mental wellbeing of an entire generation in order to create an extractive paradise for a handful of rentiers. Bano paints this bleak, bleak, bleak picture with admirable clarity. -- Keiran Goddard * Representology *