I am reading in the landlord press increasingly despairing cries from tenants’ organisations as the prospect of the Renters Reform Bill becoming law in this Parliamentary session slips away.
I can understand their despair as more and more landlords are deciding to evict their tenants and sell up.
However, passing the Renters Reform Bill is not going to improve the situation long term.
The Renters Reform Bill is the ‘nail in the coffin’ for many landlords who have seen the sector become increasingly more onerous for them with more regulation, stricter penalties and a lower income due to tax changes.
If the Renters Reform Bill were to come into force tomorrow, this might protect the tenants with existing tenancies from being evicted via the no-fault method.
However, it will discourage new landlords from entering the Private Rented Sector. And many current landlords, once their tenants decide to leave, will heave a huge sigh of relief and sell up.
So where are those who cannot afford to buy their own property going to live?
Admittedly, the buildings which are currently rental properties will still exist, but they will no longer be available to low-income families. Surely the government should be encouraging people to invest in rented property, not driving them away?
The Truth about Section 21
Most decent landlords will only use Section 21 to evict their tenants if
- The tenants are failing to pay their rent, or
- Are causing problems with anti-social behaviour, or
- Need to be evicted because they want to be re-housed by the Council – who have told them to stay in the property until the landlord evicts them.
When I did eviction work, probably about a third to a half of the evictions were effectively the landlord and tenant working together to force the council to rehouse the tenants.
The bad landlords
Admittedly, some landlords whose properties are in a shocking condition evict tenants if they dare to complain. These are the tenants which tenant organisations see most often, so naturally, they loom large in their view of the Private Rented Sector.
However, these landlords are not the norm. The reason they exist is because, with a few honourable exceptions, Councils fail to enforce the laws which exist to protect tenants.
With more and more councils going bust, this is not going to improve any time soon. To enforce the law, councils need to have well-trained staff – which many Councils simply cannot afford.
Indeed, during austerity, whole enforcement teams at Local Authorities were made redundant, leaving them with no or very few staff who understood the law and how to enforce it.
If the bad landlords were driven out, then there would be less of a problem. However, at the moment, it is the good landlords who are being driven out – leaving tenants to the mercy of the bad landlords, who never take any notice of the law and know that they can do this with impunity as Councils do not have the staff to do anything about it.
What is the solution?
1. A massive housebuilding push
Ideally, for social housing. If Local Authorities were able to house more low-income families in good energy efficient homes – what a difference that would make!
2 Stopping the ‘right to buy’
One of the reasons why Councils cannot rehouse desperate tenants is because they have been forced to sell off most of their housing stock under the right to buy.
Although it is nice that some people are able to buy their homes, I don’t see this as a justification for some people (already lucky as they have council housing) to be able to buy property built with public (i.e. our) money at an undervalue.
It is quick to sell a house but takes a long time to build one – and frankly, why would Councils go to all the bother of doing this if they are just going to be sold off again, leaving them with the same problems?
Then 40% of properties sold off under the right to buy end up in the hands of private landlords – who then charge a market rent rather than the lower rent that would have been charged by a social landlord. If their tenants are on benefit this means that all of us, through our taxes, are paying more for this.
Scotland and Wales have got rid of the right to buy – we should do this in England too. The only reason the government wants it to remain is that they want more grateful homeowners who will vote for them.
3 More power and funds for Councils for enforcement
Although really, it is funds they need as we already have laws they can use to crack down on the bad landlords.
Conclusion
If there were more rental homes available to low-income families, then it would matter less if they got evicted as they could easily find somewhere else to live. Ideally, in social housing where they would have more security.
The bad landlords would also struggle as no one would rent their properties if there were better ones available elsewhere.
And if Councils were able to crack down on the bad landlords, there would be fewer of them anyway. In fact, criminals looking for easy prey would probably leave the housing sector – the reason we have them with us now is because they can operate unchecked due to the lack of enforcement against them.
So, section 21 would be far less of a problem.
Having section 21 does actually benefit some tenants as it is the best and quickest way for landlords to evict anti-social tenants – something which helps other tenants nearby and neighbours.
My suggestions above would be a far better way of dealing with housing than making life so difficult for landlords that they sell up and invest their money elsewhere, leaving low-income families with nowhere to live.
Completely agree!
We are landlords and did have 51 buy-to-let properties. However, given the imminent changes (abolishing the Section 21 etc) coupled with the already horrendous red tape that is continually being applied to landlords along with tax changes, we have sold 42 properties and now only have 9 properties left.
We may even sell these remaining 9 properties but will await the final outcome of the bill.
It’s time someone stood up for the landlord otherwise there won’t be any private landlords left.
It’s more complicated than that, though. S21 creates a chilling effect. Even tenants in properties in relatively good condition – with potentially relatively good landlords – feel the need to choose their battles when complaining of disrepair, for fear that they will be seen as a troublesome tenant if they chase the landlord for more minor issues that aren’t fixed after being initially reported. My experience renting, and talking to friends and colleagues who rent, is that most renters assume landlords want tenants who just pay the rent on time and never interact with them beyond that – and fear straying outside that paradigm unless absolutely necessary.
I’m sure that, in many cases, that concern is unjustified – but it’s an asymmetric relationship and every tenant is well aware of that.
To the extent that some tenants fear reporting any disrepair at all, this is actually damaging to the landlord, as minor issues risk becoming more major issues if not dealt with.
Today’s news of a study that people living in rented accommodation biologically age more quickly than owner/occupiers is also potentially on topic. Of course we should take these findings with a pinch of salt until/unless they are confirmed by other researchers, but the implications are clear.
Put simply, we all know that prolonged stress is unhealthy, and living without security of tenure is clearly stressful for many.
I fully accept that most landlords are good landlords, and that good landlords don’t misuse the S21 process – that has certainly been my experience of renting. But the flip side is that you have no way of knowing whether you really have a good landlord – so the anxiety about a landlord ending the tenancy is always there, creating a constant level of low-level stress. That has also been my experience of renting.