Homelessness charity Shelter is calling on the government to scrap Section 21 eviction, saying losing a private tenancy is the second biggest cause of homelessness.
Almost 237,000 private renters in England have been served a Section 21 eviction notice in the past three years, a YouGov poll has suggested.
The government has already committed to ban the practice “as soon as possible”, but Shelter says people cannot wait, describing the situation as “appalling”.
Shelter CEO, Polly Neate, said: “Millions of private renters are living in limbo – never truly able to settle – in case their landlord kicks them out on a whim.”
Shelter is asking the government to use the Queen’s speech next month to honour its pledge to deliver a Renters Reform bill – including banning Section 21 no fault evictions.
But the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) has slammed Shelter for scaremongering.
Ben Beadle, chief executive of the NRLA, commented: “Shelter needs to stop its campaign of scaremongering. The vast majority of landlords do not spend their time plotting ways to get rid of their tenants for no reason.
“Official data shows that fewer than 10% of tenants who move do so because they are asked to by their landlord or letting agent. Likewise, the number of cases coming to court as a result of Section 21 notices has been falling since 2015.
“The government has committed to abolishing Section 21 possessions, but this has got to be replaced by a system that is both fair and workable for both tenants and landlords. Simply getting rid of Section 21 on its own would, for example, make it all but impossible to take action against anti-social tenants who blight the lives of neighbours and fellow tenants.
“The NRLA has published its detailed plans for a new system that strikes the right balance. We urge Shelter to work constructively with us on these.”
I do not regard Shelter as a charity that help the homeless. I would not donate a penny to them and openly discourage others from doing so in the belief and understanding the are helping people without a home and living on the streets.
It’s quite difficult to fathom out what they do but it appears to me they are an organisation that lobby parliament and identify and fund section 8 defence work for solicitors.
Effectively they appear to be helping prevent homelessness by helping to keep section 8 tenants in properties that could provide a stable home for tenants that pay the agreed rent and comply properly with the terms of their tenancy agreement.
I am cynical of the organisation, I am critical of the way they manipulate numbers to make a point and do not think keeping bad tenants in properties they do not deserve or respect is beneficial.
I give to Crisis and the Salvation Army and resent every penny I gave to Shelter.
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Unfortunately many firms and so-called stars support them, hopefully because of virtue signalling rather than conviction. I was disappointed to discover that Annie Lennox was a supporter.
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I had to go hungry one time because buying a sandwich from M&S sandwiches would have included a donation to Shelter. 🙁
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What happened to the edit button?
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Many years ago my former company tried to sponsor Shelter with a five-figure sum. They did not want any association with a landlord company and declined. We donated the monies to Crisis instead.
What is clear is the raft of legislation in recent years against landlords has resulted in severely restricted supply;
1) Making landlords responsible for council tax on empty homes
2) Section 24 Finance Act makes mortgage costs a none deductible expense thereby falsely raising taxable profits
3) Local authority licensing charges £500-£1000 for meaningless paper exercises
4) EPC ratings to move to C by 2025 (impacting half of the rental sector)
5) EICR certs now required
6) Right to Rent and Prescribed Tenancy Deposit/Gas Cert/EPC/EICR notice requirements to trip up landlords seeking possession
I have a large portfolio and based upon tenants leaving on average every 5 years, I normally get a couple of notice given requests every month. I never serve notice on tenants, except for rent arrears > 2 months. A section 21 is is hardly ever a ‘No Fault’ eviction. It is a non-contentious eviction following fault by the tenant. Using Section 8 leads to costly legal battles, and uncertainty and if implemented will take us back to the dark days of the 1977 Rent Act.
In the last five months, I have had zero tenants give notice. I’ve never witnessed anything like it. There are simply no houses available to let in the local market other than minimal space apartments in converted mills and poor parts of town. Supply has been decimated by the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ actions of government regs.
Local rents are shooting up as a result by double digits each year. What is happening now is similar to the 1977 Rent Act which destroyed the rental market.
Governments and lobby groups never learn. Supply will fall, rents will go up and homelessness increases. All of which helps Shelter and the big wigs in their London offices ‘justify’ their six-figure salaries.
It’s the tenants who lose out.
Meanwhile, every house that becomes vacant in my portfolio gets sold off, exacerbating the problem,
In 10 years when this mess is so acute, a future government will strip back all this nonsense to try and make the sector attractive again. If it wasn’t broken, why fix it?
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Of all of the legislation that has come in recently, there are only 2 bits I agree with; EICR’s and the minimum E rating for rented houses.
We have had to check gas safety for years, when that comes with it’s own warning system in the form of the smell. With wiring, there can sometimes be no warning. You turn on a plug and you die. Despite an electrician trying to convince me otherwise, these do not have to be done upon change of tenancy, although I suggest it if we suspect the tenant has been fiddling with the wiring, it’s every 5 years or when electrical work is carried out.
Having a minimum E rating is not unreasonable, although the hoops I have to jump through to get an exemption for a listed building where we cannot even change to colour of the interior window frames, let alone replace the window, is rather annoying. If it’s listed, it should be exempt, and asking me to fight through red tape covering 2 different departments, on county lines is ridiculous. And a C rating? I’ve had a new boiler, replaced all my windows and doors and mine isn’t a C!
But Shelter don’t care about anyone other than themselves. Didn’t I read that some of their own employees were having to visit food banks as they could barely afford to keep a roof over their heads?
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I have an old regulated tenancy where the 93-year-old tenant was assigned the lease from her parents who were the previous tenants 🙂
I’ve put on a new roof with insulation, new windows and an A rated boiler. It’s a Victorian cottage and after £12k of work, it’s still rated a ‘D’ for EPC. It can’t have cavity wall insulation so by 2028, it will be non-compliant under the current regs.
Utterly stupid.
When she sadly has to move on, it will be another sale.
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I agree, in the past 20 years I would say that over 90% of tenants have left rental properties to either buy or move on to another rental. The remaining 10% have been given notice of which most were to allow landlords to either sell or provide housing for family. We have very very few rent arrears or other issues and as such have never used Section 8. I can even recall tenants asking landlords to serve notice so that they could get help from the council!
Whatever government introduce, it has to be very robust, efficient effective and must not be influenced by organisations such as shelter.
Ps, I would take a look at the management structure of Salvation Army before donating. Keep charity donations locally where the money goes to cause not ceo wages and benefits!
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Shelter say losing a private tenancy is the second biggest cause of homelessness in England. Well at least it’s down from the biggest cause in 2017: https://england.shelter.org.uk/media/press_release/eviction_from_a_private_tenancy_accounts_for_78_of_the_rise_in_homelessness_since_2011 What is the new biggest cause?
Shelter’s statement is disingenuous. It’s like saying the biggest cause of unemployment is getting dismissed from a job. It overlooks the reasons for the dismissal. Shelter overlook the reasons for s21 notices being served – e.g. non-payment of rent, anti-social behaviour, landlords wanting to sell or wanting property back for a family member.
As the wise man said: “Be careful what you wish for.” If/when s21 is abolished and landlords use s8 for rent arrears cases, there will be a lot more tenants with CCJs against them who will find it increasingly difficult to rent from anyone.
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Being evicted is the biggest cause of homelessness! In other news; judges are the reason that people go to prison – therefore to stop crime we should sack all the judges, boom! no more criminals! What and idiotic rhetoric.
What REAL question is “why are people being evicted”?
Nice to see the NLRA finally starting to look after their members interests.
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It seems someone has disturbed Ben Beadle’s sleep. Lately all I have seen is ARLA fighting for landlords and agents. From the NRLA and Ben . . . crickets.
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Someone must have reminded him who pays for their membership fees…
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Great point AW – the biggest cause of people being in prison is judges sentencing them!
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Is it reasonable to call section 21 an eviction notice? (nah! it’s the reminder notice telling people the contact to occupy a property is coming to an end or is not being renewed)
4.5% of tenancies change each month so 4.5% of 4,800,000 is 216,000 tenancies that have been concluded via Section 21 each month
216k x 36 is 7.78m tenancies ended in the 3 year period. Shelter’s latest lobbying is based on 3% of tenancies, that is very close to the average tenancy with arrears 2.75%
I don’t think Shelter would get away with their antics if they were a private firm not a charity centred on such an emotive subject.
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I couldn’t agree more. Shelter and Polly Bleat are well aware that only bailiffs can evict yet they and even Government Ministers refer to eviction notices.
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a bit like the eviction notice hotels put under your dour the evening before you leave at the end of an agreed stay.
Perhaps they having trouble reading?
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