Shelter – the campaigning charity that had been low profile since the departure of chief executive Polly Neate – is back in the headlines.
It’s now made a call to cap in-tenancy rent rises, claiming they can lead to homelessness.
It says “alarming” figures from the English Housing Survey show that private renters in the lowest income bracket face the heaviest housing cost burden of any tenure in England.
Low-income private renters are spending almost two thirds (63%) of their income on housing, up from 56% in 2019/20.
Low-income private renters spend 9% more of their income on housing than mortgage holders, and 27% more than social renters in the same income bracket.
Across all income levels, private renters are shelling out more than a third (34%) of their household income on housing costs every month, up from 32% in 2019/20.
Shelter goes on to claim that Section 21 evictions have been the leading cause of instability in private renting and it quotes a separate set of figures, released by the Ministry of Justice today and covering January to March, showing 2,931 households in England were removed from their homes by bailiffs because of a S21 in the first three months of the year – an increase of 9% in a year.
Alicia Walker, Assistant Director of Advocacy & Activism at Shelter, says: “Thousands of renters are being marched out of their homes because of an unjust policy that should already be history. No fault evictions must be scrapped by summer, but landlords can’t be allowed to continue using colossal rent hikes as a loophole to unfairly force tenants out.
“Rents and living costs are spiralling across England and tenants on the lowest pay are keeping hold of their homes by the skin of their teeth. Every day our frontline teams hear from families who’ve been hit with rent increases they just cannot afford – forced to pay up or ship out, with little standing between them and the nightmare of homelessness.
“With the Renters’ Rights Bill making its way through the House of Lords, this is the last chance to guarantee renters real security. If the government wants the Bill to be truly transformative, it must cap rent increases in line with inflation or wage growth to make renting genuinely safe, secure, and more affordable.”
Walker says average monthly rents are now £1,386 across England – up 7.8% in a year – and warns that “unless action is taken to limit huge jumps in rent, unaffordable rent increases will simply replace Section 21 as a form of no-fault eviction.”
This article is taken from Landlord Today