Stop private landlords from forcing tenants out of their homes by restricting no-fault evictions and above-inflation rent increases.
Why is this important?
Increasing numbers of us have no option but to rent from a private landlord. That shouldn’t stop us having a place we can call home.
Landlords have the legal right to evict tenants with only two months’ warning and without giving a reason. Not all landlords exercise that right, but a family has no idea if their landlord will until they get the eviction notice – and there is nothing they can do about it.
They might have been living in their home for twenty or more years, like Helen and Jason, a teacher and gardener who live with their two teenage daughters as valued members of their south London community. They have paid rent to their landlord for all that time and now face a no-fault eviction with no prospect of any security in the place they move to.
This imbalance of power is severely disrupting the lives of thousands of families and playing havoc with the education of increasing numbers of children. It’s time the law started protecting tenants from the whims of unscrupulous landlords.
Sometimes landlords need to take back their property, either to carry out refurbishment, or to sell it if they are unable to keep their business viable. In such cases, the landlord should be required to help rehouse the tenant, including a longer period of notice than two months.
But landlords don’t even need to use the eviction process to force tenants to move. They can just raise the rent to an exorbitant level. The government needs to protect tenants from this as well, and should therefore bar landlords from raising the rent by more than inflation.
There are 11 million private renters in England – and counting. None of them should have the rug pulled from under them.
