Growing numbers of private sector tenants are turning to Citizens Advice after facing eviction despite being up to date with their rent, the national charity claims.
Citizens Advice says it’s seen a 37% increase in issues caused by people without rent arrears being threatened with “eviction” from a private sector rented home. People approached the bureaux for help with more than 5,000 issues caused by the problem in 2013/14, up from 3,750 the year before.
The CAB says people who struggle to find the money can face serious problems. It claims eviction by private landlords is the most common cause of homelessness for CAB clients, causing one in 10 of the 80,000 problems with homelessness which Citizens Advice Bureaux saw in the last year.
The CAB says problems in London and the South East are particularly acute, as twice as many people approached Citizens Advice Bureaux with the problem in the first three months of 2014. Bureaux in the regions dealt with 900 problems caused by people being evicted without having run up arrears in January to March 2014, compared to 400 issues during the same period in 2013.
People report that they are being evicted because:
• the landlord wants to sell their home
• rents are hiked to unaffordable levels
• they have asked their landlord to carry out repairs.
The CAB says some people are being given notice when they inform their landlord that their circumstances have changed and they have moved on to housing benefit, even if they have not fallen behind with their rent.
Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, says: “Tenants are being treated as cash cows as a chronic housing shortage pushes up prices and forces renters out of their homes. Competition for properties means that tenants are easy to replace, increasing insecurity for people trying to create a home in the private rented sector.
“We see people who will be forced to move away from work, school or family and friends, which can ramp up commuting and childcare costs or disrupt children’s education.
“We desperately need more new homes to tackle Britain’s woefully inadequate housing supply. Until this happens, we’ll continue seeing evictions rocket as tenants are left at the mercy of rising rents and insecure tenancies.”
Comments
I agree with the comments below, makes you wonder why all this landlord and agent hating press makes its way onto here. Rarely a positive story nowadays.
Totally biased report. Why is it always the landlord that is the problem? Why cant a landlord take possession of their own property to sell. Ridiculous statement.
It's a shame there are so many of these public bodies issuing naive statements giving one sided views about private landlords, putting them in a bad light. Do they think it's what people want to hear or are they being asked to say it politically?
Truth is the same number of tenants or more break contracts by leaving early because they have reconsidered their personal position (pregnancy or schooling or break up or new job abroad) and want to relocate and landlords are expected to be reasonable, release them from contracts in some cases. Many tenants request/insist on break clauses in their agreements so they have the chance to terminate early.
It goes both ways, the flexibility is required by both parties. Why isn't this said?
I just wanted to say how i agree with Pamela. It is a condition of some lenders and many insurers that the tenants are working. It has been my misfortune to have had dealings with both shelter and cab. Both of these were non paying individuals one of which left the house trashed. How dare they use the word cash cows. Letting property responsibly is not something a landlord gets for free it is often a huge financial risk which carry's an amount of worry and aggravation.
Headline grabbing, pejorative phrases mentioning "eviction despite being up to date..." by shelter and CAB need to learn the definition of an AST. They should turn their socialist agenda onto the building of more social housing and support the private sector for using their resources to fund the housing gap.
I would hazard a guess that an overwhelming number of these cases are the legal termination of the contract in accordance with the law in that the landlord is giving 2 months notice in the same manner that the tenant can give one month's notice. No-one hears of nasty tenants giving a month's notice on what was a nice property leaving the poor landlord to face additional costs of the whole administrative process!
There are a whole host of completely legitimate and reasonable reasons for the termination by a landlord of an AST - many will be for poor tenancy situations but with a significant improvement in the market there are many landlords looking to release property that has hitherto not been the right time to sell.
Nothing new hear... Same old bad landlord story and as usual a one sided one at that...
Love this bit..
People report that they are being evicted because:
• the landlord wants to sell their home
• rents are hiked to unaffordable levels
• they have asked their landlord to carry out repairs.
So a landlord is now not allowed to sell their home??
I have yet to meet a landlord that wakes up and "hikes rent up" potentially creating a void period....
And I forgot that by asking me to carry out a repair would mean that I would evict you... Because that means the repair goes away and I now have a void period.... GET A GRIP!!
Tenants tell CAB and the great Shelter what they want to tell them and they forget that its only 50% of the story.
Lets face it, there would be no one going to cab or shelter who is being evicted for not paying rent? Nor for antisocial behaviour or paying rent continuously late, creating a risk for the landlord. That just does not happen in the UK...
CAB and Shelter either don't have the understanding or the commitment to balanced information, frequently neglecting to mention that insurance and lenders' restrictions force landlords to end a tenancy a s the tenant type changes.
we always hear these things from CAB and Shelter and others, always bleating about the bad old landlors, what they all fail to mention is the hassle and unnecessary costs caused by bad tenants, these organisations would gain more credibility if they reported in a balanced fashion.