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Why Renters Reform Bill won’t stop landlords evicting poorer tenants [1]
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Date: 2023-09
Mary’s* rent has gone up by 40% in the space of 17 months.
She and her four-year-old daughter moved into their home, a two-bed in Greater Manchester, in 2019 after Mary left an abusive relationship. openDemocracy has withheld her name because she fears being identified by her partner.
Now Mary, who is registered blind with a visual impairment, says she and her daughter will be pushed out of the house altogether if the landlord seeks a further rent increase.
“I’m terrified of losing our home,” she said. “There’s only so much I can take and I’ve had to fight for the last 20 years since I lost my sight.”
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The government claims its long-delayed reforms through the Renters (Reform) Bill, currently going through Parliament, will protect tenants from unscrupulous landlords by banning them from evicting tenants with no justification.
But Mary is one of potentially millions of vulnerable renters who could still be forced onto the streets by unaffordable rent increases despite the government’s plans.
Mary’s rent was first raised in September 2021 from £675 to £750 a month. At that point, she was already paying more than £150 a month out of her benefits to cover the rent. Mary is registered blind with a visual impairment and has been deemed unable to work.
In February, the landlord raised the rent again to £950 a month. By then, Mary’s financial situation had deteriorated after her daughter’s father stopped paying child support.
Mary explained her situation to the property management company Jordan Fishwick, but it refused to reconsider the rent increase. The company also sent her notice of the increase in a letter, despite her repeatedly having told them her visual impairment meant she wasn’t able to read letters.
Her landlord, Jordan & Holland Properties Limited, has a property portfolio worth more than £5m, according to accounts filed on Companies House. A spokesperson for Jordan & Holland Properties said: “The facts of the situation is that rents have increased substantially over the last few years in the area of the property in question.”
They said they were charging Mary £150 a month below market price as “gesture of goodwill” and that it was “disappointing having done so to be criticised in this way”.
Her neighbours were also served rent rises – some as high as £400 a month – which Mary says forced them all to move, leaving her more isolated. Jordan & Holland Properties did not deny the rent increase when openDemocracy asked for comment.
But Mary had no option but to stay because the shared care arrangement with her ex-partner requires her to stay in the same area.
Instead, Mary applied to the local council for a discretionary housing payment. It took five months for the council to award the payment and the process was so difficult that she needed the help of a local disability charity to apply.
For the time being, the payments cover her rent – but if the council decides not to renew the grant in January, or her landlord increases the rent again, she could be at risk of being made homeless.
Renters have been waiting since 2019 for the government to make reforms to the private-rented sector, pledged in a Conservative election manifesto that year. The Renters (Reform) Bill was finally introduced to the Commons in May and MPs are likely to debate it again in the coming weeks.
Mary hadn’t heard of the government’s planned rental reforms, but said banning so-called ‘no-fault’ (or ‘section 21’) evictions wasn’t enough.
“There’s an entire system that needs to be addressed,” she said. “If you’re ill you don’t just address one symptom, you look at all the symptoms and address the underlying issue.”
For example, she said: “Local housing allowance has to reflect what’s going on in the market. So the rents here were pushed up to two years but housing allowance has stayed the same.”
The government has frozen local housing allowance rates since April 2020, but the rents have risen by 28% in the area Mary lives in that time, according to a BBC News calculator.
Irene O’Loughlin, also a single mum with a teenage daughter, is facing a similar struggle after being hit with a 20% rent rise last year.
The increase felt particularly unfair, she said, because the landlord has been refusing her requests to carry out repairs on the property since she moved in in 2021.
O’Loughlin showed openDemocracy photos of black mould on her walls, including in her daughter’s bedroom. She says both her and her 16-year-old daughter have a persistent cough, which she believes is because of the mould.
When her landlord raised the rent by more than £100 a month last year, O’Loughlin told her she couldn’t afford to pay because her Local Housing Allowance wouldn’t cover the increase.
Her landlord refused to reconsider and instead issued her with a section 21 eviction notice. “I was so stressed, because my daughter was doing her GCSEs and I didn’t want to put her through moving again in the middle of that,” she said.
Black mould on walls of O'Loughlin's bathroom (left) and her daughter's bedroom (right). | Irene O'Loughlin
O’Loughlin couldn’t find anywhere nearby that would be affordable for her, so she decided to challenge the increase by taking her case to a First-Tier Tribunal with the help of the Greater Manchester Law Centre.
The tribunal decided that the landlord could increase the rent despite evidence that they had refused to carry out repairs and that the property was mouldy.
Such tribunals can only consider whether the rent increase is in line with the going rate in the area and in some cases can decide that it should be higher than what the landlord asked for.
The government claims that the tribunal system offers recourse for renters to dispute rent increases, but housing campaigners say cases like O’Loughlin’s show it needs reform.
“Basing decisions on the rent in the open market will allow landlords to evict tenants by the back door by asking for unaffordable rent, knowing the tenant can’t pay,” said Generation Rent.
O’Loughlin was able to successfully apply for a discretionary housing payment from the council to cover the rent increase, but her landlord has still not carried out the repairs.
Rubbish left in garden by O'Loughlin's landlord. | Irene O'Loughlin
Meanwhile, the rent rises combined with the cost of living crisis have meant that she has had to cut back on essentials.
“We only go shopping once a fortnight now and I say to my daughter, you know, it’s just got to last,” she said, “and when I do go shopping it’s only because there is nothing in the fridge and cupboards.
“I can’t buy clothes any more or go out for meals or anything like that. I can’t even go see my friends any more because I can’t afford the petrol – I have to find the rent first. I never ever get my hair cut because I literally just cannot afford it. My daughter comes first, but she only gets a haircut once a year, because we just can’t afford any more often than that.”
O’Loughlin also hadn’t heard of the government’s planned reforms, but said she felt frustrated by lack of support for renters: “I’m making all the right noises but nobody is doing anything.”
She tried to contact the local council to apply to be added to the social housing waiting list in November 2021 but is still waiting for confirmation. She said she emailed five times since but never received a response.
Last month, she went to the council offices in person to ask for an update and was told someone would contact her, but she still has not received a reply confirming she is on the waiting list.
An investigation by openDemocracy last year found local councils are bowing under the weight of waiting lists for social housing to the point that thousands are dying each year before they make it to the front of the queue.
Kate Bradley, a Housing Caseworker and Campaigns Officer at the Greater Manchester Law Centre, said the government’s current proposals “wouldn’t be sufficient to stop rocketing rents”.
“There is very little about rent in the bill, which is leading to fears that rent rises will be used as a back-door method of evicting tenants even when section 21 no-fault evictions are ended,” she said.
“We urgently need rent controls and a rapid, publicly funded expansion of the social rented sector. Without a real shift in housing policy, we will see more evictions, more homelessness, and more unaffordable rents gouging tenants’ incomes.”
[END]
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/renters-reform-bill-no-fault-evictions-section-21-landlords-tenants-homeless/
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