No fault evictions: time to put an end to this unscrupulous practice

By Dan Wilson Craw
No fault evictions allow private landlords to turf tenants out without any reason. It’s legal but its use is on the rise and it needs to stop

Joseph Rowntree research attributes 80% of the recent rise in evictions to the no fault process. Photograph: Alamy

For every school in England there are five children without a home. The Local Government Association reports that 120,000 children are living in temporary accommodation. The primary cause of this homelessness is the end of a private sector tenancy, ie eviction.

Unfortunately, there is no official explanation for this, because private landlords don’t need to give a reason when they ask tenants to leave. In a study released on Sunday, Joseph Rowntree Foundation attributes 80% of the recent rise in evictions to this “no fault” process.

This process is enshrined under section 21 of the Housing Act 1988. The other eviction route is section 8, where evidence of a breach of the tenancy is required. Section 21 evictions are therefore easier.

Section 21 was designed to encourage investors and their mortgage lenders to enter the private rented sector and provide a flexible supply of housing. But it worked too well, attracting amateurs gambling on rising prices, with no interest in providing long-term homes.

The right to evict gives landlords enormous power over their tenants. Many tenants don’t even know they exist until a two-month notice to quit arrives through the letterbox; if valid it cannot be appealed. It has also allows the worst landlords to ignore disrepair – they can simply kick out tenants who complain. The coalition government did bring in protections against these retaliatory evictions but they apply only to tenants who live in an unsafe home – an estimated 17% of the total, according to the government’s recent English Housing Survey.

That survey also found that one in six private renters moved in the past three years because the landlord asked them to leave or, raised the rent or had a “poor relationship” with them, making staying untenable.

This particularly affects those renters who don’t have a spare £1,000 for the average deposit (pdf), £400 for the average letting agent fees, and more than £900 for upfront rent and moving costs – all payable before their current landlord releases their deposit.

It also partly explains why we are seeing a huge rise in homelessness as a result of eviction – accounting for 78% of the rise in homelessness since 2011. Some 24% of private renters claim housing benefit; and the fear for these people is that a blameless eviction would leave them struggling to find an affordable replacement in the private sector. As Joseph Rowntree Foundation says, unfreezing housing benefit is critical in order to avoid the arrears that are driving some evictions and homelessness. But it is only part of the solution. According to the English Housing Survey, 66% of private renters have no savings, so, even if they can afford rent, an unwanted move could plunge them into crisis too.

While building more homes for long-term rent is important, we need a quicker solution. Ending section 21 could just be it.

Landlord groups claim their members only evict delinquent tenants and only use section 21 to do that because it’s quicker than section 8. The English Housing Survey begs to differ, finding that 63% of evictions happen when a landlord plans to sell or otherwise use the property.

The majority of landlords, who are interested in keeping reliable tenants have no need for section 21.

Landlords should be legally accountable for ending a contract early. Enforcing a penalty for this type of behaviour, which could be paid to tenants, at a high enough rate that it could pay for setting up a new tenancy, would discourage blameless evictions. There should also be limits on rent rises to prevent unscrupulous landlords pricing out tenants.

Reforming this damaging law is Generation Rent’s top priority. With a quarter of families now living in private rented housing, paying rent should, at the very least, give tenants security.

Dan Wilson Craw is the director of Generation Rent

https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2017/jul/25/no-fault-evictions-landlords-tenants