Ministers are being urged to spend up to £300m helping tenants pay rent arrears to help prevent mass evictions, MPs recommend today.
The all-party Housing Communities and Local Government Committee, led by Labour MP Clive Betts, says providing funds to easing debt now would save money from supporting people who face being evicted from their homes.
Publishing a 53-page report today, it says: “Helping tenants pay their rent arrears is the simplest and most straightforward way to avoid evictions and help landlords receive income.
“The committee received an estimate that such a rent arrears relief package could potentially cost between £200m and £300m, however given the number of potential evictions it could prevent it would likely save significant expenditure on homelessness assistance.”
A ban on evictions imposed at the start of the pandemic in March last year just is due to be lifted in May.
Experts, including Paul Shamplina of Landlord Action, fear it could trigger a sharp rise in tenants who have been unable to afford their housing costs since the start of the crisis being given notice to vacate their homes.
MPs also raise concerns for landlords, some of whom have been unable to collect rent due for more than 13 months.
The National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) has welcomed the report published today by MPs on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the private rented sector.
Ben Beadle, chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association, said: “We welcome today’s report which calls for a proper exit plan for the private rented sector from current restrictions.
“At the heart of that plan needs to be action to tackle rent debts built as a result of the pandemic. The Committee is right to express disappointment at the lack of a clear strategy from the Government to deal with this pressing issue.
“We whole heartedly support the Committee’s call for action to support tenants to repay rent arrears to be a top priority, including consideration of making payments direct to landlords. As the report notes, this would be the best way to sustain tenancies and help landlords receive income.”
Why on earth hasn’t this been done already.
It’s a paltry amount of money that will make a huge difference to tenants who have found themselves in an impossible situation due to COVID. It will also give landlords some comfort that they are not simply being viewed as a cashpoint.
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Tenancy Loan schemes are available in Wales and Scotland. Why not in England and N.Ireland? I don’t know how successful they’ve been. These schemes offer a maximum of only 9 months arrears support, which isn’t much help when so many already have 12 months’ arrears, and haven’t even reached court yet. They then face an indeterminate amount of time before eviction due to the scale of the backlog [which is increasing] and the lack of bailiffs. Great for tenants, but disastrous for so many landlords who rely on this small income but don’t have a large portfolio to mitigate the loss. If I was a cynic, I would suspect this is a deliberate plan by government to supplement their existing anti-[small] landlord policies and finally force many landlords out of the sector.
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Surely even if the tenants are helped with the rent arrears they will just be kicked out anyway once the ban is lifted?
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Not surprisingly, the civil servants who create these schemes have no clue about the PRS, the state and scale of the problem, and the various nuances of landlord/tenant situations. I suspect they simply assumed [or were advised by shelter] that all tenants are usually good payers and are struggling to pay due to Covid, but hoped the pandemic would be over after 9 months and tenants would be back at work and paying their rent, avoiding eviction. Simple, when you have an idealised view of the problem… or listen to those with an agenda.
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I think the ‘civil servants’ who are pulling the strings in the background know only too well what they are doing. There is the problem.
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The article could have provided a link to the All party report ?
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