Homelessness minister Rushanara Ali has resigned after reportedly hiking the rent on a property she owns by hundreds of pounds – something described by one of her tenants as “extortion”.
That was just weeks after the previous tenants’ contract ended, the i Paper said.
Four tenants who rented a house in east London from Ms Ali were sent an email last November saying their lease would not be renewed, and which also gave them four months’ notice to leave, the newspaper reported.
The property was then re-listed with a £700 rent increase within weeks, the publication added.
Laura Jackson, one of Ms Ali’s former tenants, said she and three others collectively paid £3,300 in rent.
Weeks after she and her fellow tenants had left, the self-employed restaurant owner said she saw the house re-listed with a rent of around £4,000.
“It’s an absolute joke,” she said. “Trying to get that much money from renters is extortion.”
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The government’s Renters’ Rights Bill includes measures to ban landlords who end a tenancy to sell a property from re-listing it for six months.
The Bill, which is nearing its end stages of scrutiny in Parliament, will also abolish fixed-term tenancies and ensure landlords give four months’ notice if they want to sell their property.
In a letter to the prime minister, Ms Ali said that remaining in her role would be “a distraction from the ambitious work of this government”.
She added: “Further to recent reporting, I wanted to make it clear that at all times I have followed all relevant legal requirements.
“I believe I took my responsibilities and duties seriously, and the facts demonstrate this.”
Previously, a spokesperson for Ms Ali said the tenants “stayed for the entirety of their fixed term contract, and were informed they could stay beyond the expiration of the fixed term, while the property remained on the market, but this was not taken up, and they decided to leave the property”.
The prime minister thanked Ms Ali for her “diligent work” and for helping to “deliver this government’s ambitious agenda”.
Sir Keir Starmer said her work in putting in measures to repeal the Vagrancy Act would have a “significant impact”.
And he said she had been trying to encourage “more people to engage and participate in our democracy”, something that would leave a “lasting legacy”.
