<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/11/renters-labour-no-fault-evictions-reform-housing>
"The call about my eviction came on a Friday afternoon in February. The estate
agent rang me from an unknown number to let me know my housemates and I would
need to leave our home. We had only moved in the year before. “Why?” I asked,
confused, with a panicky feeling rising in my chest. “The landlord doesn’t have
to give a reason,” he said unapologetically and then hung up.
Section 21, or “no-fault”, evictions are one of the cruellest facets of the
housing sector, and they’re increasingly common: recent figures show a
staggering 52% rise in these evictions in London in the past year. The right to
evict a tenant for no reason, with almost no legal recourse, was introduced in
Margaret Thatcher’s
1988 Housing Act. It doesn’t matter how long the tenant
has lived in their home, or if they’ve always paid rent on time – a landlord
can remove them, usually with just a few months’ notice.
The Conservative party promised to ban these evictions and create “a fairer
rental market” in its 2019 manifesto. Almost five years on, it has failed to do
so. Since the pledge to scrap these evictions, households have been threatened
with homelessness at least 80,000 times. After the election was announced, the
renters (reform) bill, which had its second reading in the Lords in May, was in
effect scrapped, because parliamentary time was cut short before the bill could
reach its final stages.
The bill had promised to ban some no-fault evictions. First it was delayed,
then it was watered down by backbench Conservative MPs, who tried to defer any
section 21 ban and make it easier for landlords to evict tenants for antisocial
behaviour, weakening the legislation so much that the Renters’ Reform
Coalition, a large group of housing charities, withdrew its support for the
bill in April. Landlord lobbying groups, on the other hand, lauded the
“pragmatic” amendments.
Recent data from the Ministry of Justice suggests 11,880 evictions have taken
place in London since the first quarter of 2023. The numbers are also growing
in the rest of England and Wales, albeit not by quite as much. Yet the actual
number of no-fault evictions that landlords have served is likely to be much
higher than these numbers suggest, as MoJ data only captures those no-fault
evictions that reach court. Most do not – mine didn’t – as most tenants don’t
have the energy to engage with a system that almost always will side with
landlords, so long as they have served the eviction legally."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
