‘No-Fault’ Evictions Add To The Burden Of Homelessness
Unscrupulous landlords are evicting hundreds of families every week without giving a reason – and it’s completely legal!
New figures from campaign group Generation Rent show that more than eleven thousand households were made homeless in 2017 through so-called ‘no-fault’ eviction. Most tenants are on assured tenancies of six or twelve months. Once this period is up, Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 allows landlords to evict them with just two months’ notice without giving any reason. According to Generation Rent, “evictions are the number one cause of homelessness” in England, and eight out of ten of evictions are no-fault.
Recently, Kent landlord Fergus Wilson used Section 21 to evict four women with young children. He claimed he was forced to take the action because of council rules requiring boilers to be fixed immediately in homes with young children. And in February this year, a BBC Panorama documentary ‘Evicted For No Reason’ featured several cases of people who had been evicted under Section 21.
However, the law changed in 2015 to make ‘revenge evictions’ (also known as ‘retaliatory evictions’) – where landlords evict tenants who complain about poor conditions – illegal. But this protection only covers tenants who have complained both to their landlord and to the council. It does not apply if the council has not then told the landlord to make improvements. Generation Rent says that the protection is a “postcode lottery”.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing told the Observer: “We have introduced new measures to stop so-called retaliatory evictions, but we know we need to do more and we are consulting on three-year minimum tenancies.”
But Dan Wilson Craw of Generation Rent said: “The ability of landlords to evict tenants without grounds allows them to cash in their assets and leave society to pick up the tab in the form of expensive temporary accommodation and misery for the people affected. Councils have new responsibilities to prevent homelessness, and the government has just launched a strategy to end rough sleeping, but they have no chance of success if landlords can continue to kick out tenants with impunity.”
Labour, the Green Party, and the London Assembly all support the campaign to scrap section 21. According to the Resolution Foundation, a third of millennials will never own their own home, so scrapping Section 21 would give them a little more protection from rogue landlords.
