I don’t want to be London mayor, but who else will do what needs to be done?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/15/london-mayor-housing-communities-city

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To tell you the truth, the last thing I want is to become London mayor.

My neighbours and I on the New Era estate in east London went through months of hell, because our landlord wanted to do something entirely legal to us: evict us from our homes and make as much money as they could from other people. We got sympathy from the public, the mayor of London, our council and even from government ministers. But no one proposed laws that would have protected us.

We are lucky. Because of the publicity our campaign raised, with the support of Russell Brand, we were able to embarrass our landlord into selling up to a trust with a different attitude. But so many Londoners don’t have that luck. People are facing rent hikes or keeping quiet about maintenance problems in case it leads to a rent increase. And every time a renter moves, they are forced into more cramped and degrading conditions.

One-third of Britain’s 11 million renters move each year. We’re creating a generation of people without roots in communities. A generation of children moving from school to school because their parents didn’t inherit a deposit for a mortgage. And the capital is where it is at its worst. London is where we have the most grasping agents, the craziest rents and a culture where tenants are treated as rent slaves.

Britain has a collective lunacy around land and the magical way it increases in value without you having to do any work. It is such an addiction that otherwise sensible politicians start gabbling nonsense rather than accept the clear logic that it’s unsustainable for increases in property prices to continually outstrip increases in wages. Eventually people can’t afford to live on the land.

In London we have the most grasping agents, the craziest rents and a culture where tenants are treated as rent slaves

London is dying in front of us. Culturally it’s hollowing out and leisure entertainment is getting more and more expensive. Londoners have less money while their pursuits and pastimes cost more. So people start making decisions to leave London, to get a less well-paid job outside of the rat race. And that means it costs more for employers to convince talented people to stay here. One day some of those employers will decide it’s not worth the cost and they’ll go to another global city in another country and we’ll be a poorer city because of it.

I’ve worked with the people at Something New to come up with a picture of the London I want to live in. It’s a London where people aren’t ground down by overpriced rents and mortgages; or living in fear of their landlord; and where the cultural life of the city is affordable for everyone. It’s a city where the economy thrives because it has thrown off the dead weight of the housing bubble, creating more jobs. An economy that grows in wealth shared by everyone while reducing its environmental impact.

Related: It’s not just the UK left behind by ‘booming’ London. It’s Londoners too | Aditya Chakrabortty

But it’s also a city run by its people, not by an elite dominated by the financial sector. Yes, we need an independent London on the same terms as Scotland, and we need electoral reform so councils aren’t taken for granted by political parties; and votes at 16 because this is a young city and we all deserve a say in how it is run. And there is no justification for the privileged position of the Corporation of London in a modern democracy, particularly when they have been complicit in bringing our economy to the edge of catastrophe.

I have come up with an agenda that should be acceptable to any party. It’s not a revolutionary socialist agenda but a plan for a city that is humane to its people. I’m not hungry for power, I’m hungry for change. I will vote for whoever will build me the city that I want my daughter to grow up in – and if no one else will build it then it will have to be me.