Imagine living in nine different homes before the age of eight. Then picture attending two different schools in the first three years of your education with another school move looming because your landlord has defaulted on his mortgage and there is nowhere else to rent by your school. This is the reality for the daughter of one family Shelter has spoken to and this isn’t out of choice.

A new survey of 4,000 private renters, out today, shows quite starkly how the rental market is affecting family life. One in five families now rent and government research shows that renting families are nine times as likely to have moved in the last year as families who own their homes.

The results show that not only is moving expensive but it has a negative impact on children’s education and well-being:

The survey has also highlighted that families are struggling financially and that constant moves push families further into debt. More than one in five families have been forced to borrow money to pay their deposit and/or rent in advance. Thirty per cent of families in our survey had paid fees on top of this. The average amount paid out was £2316 – equivalent of around the average monthly income of private renters. A study by the Resolution Foundation found that even on one bed properties average fees, deposits and rent in advance came to £2166 in London.

One of the most striking findings is about why families rent. Sixty per cent of families rent because they cannot afford a home of their own. A persistent myth used to support the status quo – and one that refuses to die – is that renters won’t be there for long and like the freedom and choice renting gives them. Yet only 9 per cent of families stated they like the ‘freedom and flexibility’ renting brings – and this is only 14 per cent among households with no children.

With 43 per cent of families expecting to be renting for the next ten years and nearly one in four renters saying they do not or would not feel comfortable bringing their children up in private rented home, something needs to change. Families need a better deal from renting. Which is why Shelter is proposing the Stable Rental contract. This would give renters the option to stay in their tenancy for up to five years and guarantee that rents would rise by no more than CPI during this time – and 62 per cent of families support this.

It’s high time politicians improved life for the growing number of families who rent. This May, as part of its 9 million renters campaign, Shelter is calling for changes to the way renting works -www.shelter.org.uk/9millionrenters. The government must make renting better for the 1.3 million renting families in England.

No one applauds real commitment to help renting families more loudly than us. Labour’s proposal yesterday for a housing bill to tackle rip-off fees and poor standards and give renters more security ticks a lot of Shelter boxes. Coming on top of last year’s government pledges to clamp down on rogue landlords and this month’s new legislation on letting agents it’s more welcome evidence of an emerging political consensus  on the need to tackle problems in the private rented sector.

This week’s housing pledges are part of a package of ‘economic bills’ forming Labour’s ‘alternative Queen’s Speech’ to rebuild the economy. But sadly Labour has missed the opportunity to show the kind of radical leadership on housing that business leaders, economists, and even the Business Secretary have been crying out for over recent months.

There’s no doubt that housing one of the keys to economic recovery: what’s needed is bold action to deliver new homes, and lots of them. This would put the construction industry back on its feet, bring people back into work, get the housing market moving again, and provide young families with the homes they want and need.

Aside from the height of the credit crunch, house building starts are now at their lowest level since records began 30 years ago. Home ownership is down and dropping while private rents are high and rising. Millions of young people and families are priced out of a home of their own.

A bold commitment on housing would be a sure-fire way for the Opposition to show voters they are on their side. How about pipping Clegg to the post and running with his idea of a new generation of Garden Cities? The Olympic development shows that with political will it’s possible to deliver big construction projects quickly and well, and even to make them a point of national pride. You can even do it off the government balance sheet through development corporations.

Or what about letting local authorities borrow to build again? This has wide support, with advocates ranging from former Thatcher cabinet member Lord Jenkin to the Local Government Association. It can be done without increasing public debt significantly, and without undue risk, as councils would still be subject to the usual strict prudential borrowing limits.

The Comprehensive Spending Review in June is the perfect chance for both Labour and the Government to provide bigger and bolder alternatives for action on housing to get the economy moving. Meeting young families’ aspirations would have obvious political benefits for whichever side gets there first. And what’s more, the solutions are there, set out by everyone from Shelter to the CBI for all to see. The CSR is an opportunity for the Government to get on the front foot; it needs to show leadership.

When the UK fell into double dip recession last year, we argued that we must tackle our housing crisis and economic crisis together and build homes to get us back to growth. Today, the economy is still weak with construction the major drag on recovery. We’re still not building nearly enough homes.There is a difference this year though. In the 2013 budget George Osborne announced a major intervention into the housing market called Help to Buy. It seems that the government has woken up to the idea that without a recovery in housing, wider recovery will be hard to achieve.

So, is ‘Help to Buy’ the answer to both our housing and economic crises? Not really.

The aim of Help to Buy (as the name suggests) is a Thatcher style home-ownership revolution, not a Macmillan style house building boom.

The bulk of the new policy is a ‘mortgage guarantee’ open to all buyers – not just first timers – and available on all property purchases up to the value of £600,000. The government estimates that its guarantees could support £130 billion of home loans:  equivalent to a year’s worth of mortgage lending injected over just three years.

As the Office for Budget Responsibility has noted, this is more likely to lead to rising prices than new homes. But that’s the point.

The policy is a gamble on two things for the Chancellor. First, that rising house prices and a jump-started housing market will get British consumers spending again, leading to a spurt in growth and confidence from its launch in January 2014

Second, by underwriting mortgages and providing equity loans, some of Generation Rent will be able to get a foot on the property ladder. This eases the perception of a housing crisis among an important voter demographic, even if the schemes are not widely accessible to those on ordinary incomes. This can all be achieved ‘off balance sheet’, meaning that there is no impact on the deficit.

There may be some extra house building as a result of Help to Buy but it is unlikely to be a return to 2007 levels, let alone what we need to meet population growth. As Brian Green of Brickonomics has noted, there is a historic correlation between transaction levels in the market and house building. So if people start buying and selling, developers may start to invest in new stock. But it won’t be a game-changer.

So the policy is unlikely to resolve our housing shortage – but it wasn’t intended to do that. The intention is clearly to get the market moving, banks lending, people spending – and hence the economy growing. 

But ramping up borrowing and house prices will at best take us back to the status quo ante: the housing fuelled consumption boom of the early 2000s. That wasn’t sustainable then because house prices had to rise faster than wages in order to release growth, meaning that houses rapidly became speculative financial assets out of the reach of ordinary families. It won’t be sustainable this time round either, because more and more families will be priced out of home ownership as the cost rises.

The government has spotted the housing element of our growth problem, but is not yet willing to face up to the real long term solution: investing in decent, affordable homes for the next generation.

It’s now six months since Shelter set out its proposals for a more family-friendly private rented sector with the Stable Rental Contract. Our perspective was very much about improving the stability and predictability of renting for England’s 1.3 million private renting families who’ll be living under the shadow of short tenancies for many years to come.

But recent developments show quite clearly that stable renting has wider benefits.

The major housing association Genesis just announced an expansion of its private renting portfolio, and right up there in its press release is the offer of longer term tenancies of up to five years, promising tenants predictable rent increases and the peace of mind to put their roots down in the community.

While there is a clear reputational imperative for social housing providers to ensure their market offer has social benefits, there are strong commercial reasons for associations to make their income stream as secure as possible. By allowing people to really settle into the home and the community with a longer tenancy, they know that people are more likely to stay, look after the place and keep paying the rent – lest they jeopardise their home. And there you have a stable income.

There are community benefits for longer term private tenancies too, and this is why local councils are increasingly interested in stable private renting in major regeneration projects. Olympic borough Newham recommended in its evidence to the CLG Select Committee on Private Renting that landlords be incentivised to offer longer term tenancies.

Think about it: transience costs money, and renters are 11 times more likely to move home in a year than people with a mortgage. Children who move more do less well in school, private tenancies ending are – for the first time – the main cause of homelessness, while it follows that actual transience leads to a transient feel on the streets, which leads to more transience as neighbourhoods slip into decline and long-standing residents want to move on. That’s why the marker of success in regenerating Malmo in Sweden was a decrease in the turnover of tenancies.

The much vaunted Private Rented Sector Task Force overseeing the £1bn Build to Rent fund launched last week, and a number of big players in regeneration are in the running. As many as 10,000 new private rented homes may be built – and stable renting should be offered in many of these.

It’s a small dent for the 1.3 million families renting now, but here’s hoping that the success of the schemes – not just for renters, but for communities and investors – could give politicians confidence that a wider roll out of stable renting is worth pursuing.

The private rented sector is not fit for purpose. This much has long been obvious to those working on the front line in Shelter’s advice services, and to our supporters.

Thankfully, it seems this is a reality increasingly dawning on our politicians too, with a growing number from all parties sharing our view that the sector simply doesn’t meet the needs of the 9 million people who now live there.

And on Tuesday, after much campaigning by Shelter and others, the Government finally joined that chorus. In an amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, the Government introduced measures which will make it compulsory for letting agents to be members of a redress scheme.  This was effectively a compromise to an amendment tabled by Labour’s Baroness Hayter – who has pursued this issue doggedly down the years – which the Government opposed but were defeated on by 5 votes in the Lords in March.

So what does this all mean? At present, around 40% of letting agents are totally unregulated, operating outside of existing voluntary schemes. They have no obligation to provide renters with the basic consumer protections already required of estate agents, such as the right to redress should things go wrong.

The day to day reality of this is that the worst agents are effectively free to leave homes in disrepair, or to run off with people’s money, without facing meaningful repercussions. Even industry bodies describe much of the lettings market as akin to the ‘wild west’.

The Government’s amendment looks to address this by requiring all agents to be members of an ombudsman scheme, such as the TPO (The Property Ombudsman). This will provide the 66% of renters who use letting agents with guaranteed access to accountability in the event of poor service, giving them someone independent to take their complaint to.

It is unambiguously a good thing – and made possible by the nearly 800 Shelter supporters who wrote to Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, to voice their support.

Of course, the letting market is just a part of what is wrong with the rented sector. And this amendment will not solve all its ills, of which the lack of guaranteed independent redress is just one of many. For one thing, we would like the Government to have gone further and accepted Baroness Hayter’s amendment in full (which would have provided additional protections such as measures to prevent agents absconding with deposits or money that should be passed on to the landlord).

Nevertheless, it is a welcome start on which the Government deserves credit for seeing sense. And a vital acknowledgement that things have to change in the sector.

More importantly it is something to build on for the many remaining challenges ahead.

Renters may soon have guaranteed means through which to air their complaints – but we urgently need further action to tackle the root cause of those grievances.

The biggest of which, from the point of view of the renters we hear from, is undoubtedly the high, unexpected and unfair fees which letting agents often charge.

As far as Shelter is concerned, Tuesday’s welcome announcement was not the end of the matter. We will be working hard to ensure it is just the first step down a long road to making the private rented sector a better, more secure place to live.