Abdi-Wali puts Camden housing pressures at centre of Labour’s by-election campaign

Sagal Abdi-Wali, Labour’s candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, is putting her local record and the area’s housing pressures at the centre of her campaign against a Green challenge. The Camden Council leader told the Guardian she wants to be a member of parliament who is ‘visible and local and committed every single day.’ Residents interviewed separately by North West Londoner described scarce homes, rising rents and mortgage costs ahead of the 8 October vote.

The contest will choose a successor to Keir Starmer in his former seat. Camden Council’s notice confirms that Abdi-Wali and Green Party leader Zack Polanski are among the nominated candidates, alongside candidates from other parties. Polling is scheduled for Thursday 8 October, from 7am to 10pm.

A local campaign with national stakes

Abdi-Wali, 42, became Camden Council leader in May. She told the Guardian that her experience in local government had shown her that housing and the climate emergency also need national policy and advocacy. Her pitch is grounded in work in the constituency: she said a rise in homelessness around King’s Cross after she returned from university helped prompt her to join Labour in 2015.

She has resisted presenting rent controls as a complete answer. In the Guardian interview, Abdi-Wali said they could help people already in housing but might reduce the stock available to others. She said options should be examined as part of addressing the housing crisis. Her comments set out a caution about one proposed tool, rather than a detailed housing programme or a timetable for change.

What residents say about housing

North West Londoner’s interviews illustrate several pressures facing individual residents; they are not a survey of the constituency. In Somers Town, Andy, 64, told the outlet that none of his six children or seven grandchildren could get a house in Camden. He said he was disillusioned with Labour and was considering voting Reform. His account describes one family’s circumstances and political choice.

Patsy, a 79-year-old retired library worker, told the same outlet she worried that sales of council homes left fewer affordable options for local families. A lifelong Labour voter, she said she was considering the Greens, citing their environmental focus. Student Louis, 23, described rent increases, poor landlord maintenance and the difficulty of paying for food alongside rent. He said he favoured Green policies because he had not seen tangible change under Labour.

Another resident, Kathryn, described the cost of buying a home alone despite having a job she considered reasonably paid. She told North West Londoner she did not intend to vote, saying she saw no party offering a different answer to her situation. The differing accounts show why housing is part of the campaign conversation, while leaving open how widely each view is shared among voters.

The scale of the borough’s housing pressure appears in figures cited by North West Londoner. It reported Office for National Statistics data putting Camden’s average monthly private rent at £2,819 in August 2026. Citing Camden’s 2026 State of the Borough report, it said 8,380 households were on the social-housing waiting list in March 2025, up 9.5% from the previous year. Roughly two-thirds of social properties becoming available were studios or one-bedroom flats, the outlet reported.

Those figures describe Camden borough, rather than the precise boundaries of the parliamentary constituency; the waiting-list count also predates this campaign. North West Londoner cited the same borough report for an average Camden house price of £876,065 in 2025. Taken together, the measures give context to residents’ accounts of difficulty renting, finding a larger home or buying, without measuring how voters as a whole will respond in October.

The choice ahead

Candidate identity matters to some residents alongside policy. Georgia, identified by North West Londoner as a former constituency Labour Party secretary, praised Abdi-Wali’s local experience and said she preferred a locally engaged backbench MP to a national party leader. That is one voter’s assessment of the candidates, not evidence of the constituency’s overall preference.

For eligible voters already registered, Camden Council says applications for a proxy vote and a free Voter Authority Certificate remain open until 5pm on 30 September. Registration and postal-vote application deadlines have passed. The result, turnout and any eventual policy changes remain unknown until voters have their say and the next MP takes office.