Generation Rent want open ended tenancies and Landlords to cover moving costs

I’ve been happy to rent for years, loved the flexibility and ease of quickly being able to move home to follow other opportunities elsewhere, especially if moves were due to unavoidable or unplanned circumstances. If I ever wanted to put down more permanent roots I’d alter my lifestyle and buy a place. The real problem government needs to address is the ever increasing cost of owning your own home.

Perhaps landlord should have to feed and clothe their tenants and babysit their children as well!
The figures are patently misleading, a classic of lies, damned lies and statistics. The deposit is not a "cost". because the tenant gets the money back. £808 out of £1709 is 47.28%. Cleaning costs are the tenant's choice. There is absolutely nothing stopping tenants from keeping the property clean. So £24, another 1.4%. That's nearly 50% of fictitious costs. So of the £229 million quoted over £111 million is made up.
The figure of 56% having to pay more when they moved home is meaningless. Did they move to larger accommodation, to a better area or had they been paying below the market rent for some time and had their rent re-set. The Retail Prices Index has increased by 3.8% in the past 12 months so prices are going up.
There is more on Generation Rent's website explaining the £229 million figure. They say:
"According to the government’s English Housing Survey:
57,000 households moved in the private rented sector after being evicted from a private tenancy
66,000 moved due to a fixed-term tenancy ending
a further 11,000 moved due to a rent increase
That's a total of 134,000 home moves a year that are unwanted. Given the typical cost of moving for each household, these unwanted moves are costing renters £229 million a year. "
There is no breakdown of the 57,000 evicted. Some will have been evicted for non-payment of rent, damage to the property and anti-social behaviour.
PRS tenants are not obliged to move "due to a fixed-term tenancy ending". Perhaps some moved because they were no longer in contract. Without further analysis the figure is meaningless. And 11,000 moving because of a rent increase is tough for those concerned but why should landlords not put rent up when (a) their costs have been pushed up and (b) demand exceeds supply? Hard as it is to accept, it is better for tenants as a whole to pay the market rent for their properties so that they do not get trapped.
Generation Rent may think they are helping renters but misleading articles such as this do not advance their case.

Nothing is going to increase the affordability of and availability of housing like adding another £1709 to landlords costs. That'll solve all of GR's problems.
Lets break it down a little:

"The deposit on a new home, worth five weeks’ rent- £808."

So everybody they asked must have lost all of their deposits. Very rare these days but GR somehow found them. Everyone else must receive their deposit back within 10 days of tenancy ending so very short bridging loan from the bank if they don't have savings of their own

"Cleaning costs – two hours at £24"

Or tenants could clean their own mess.

"Alongside financial costs, almost half (44%) reported having to move further away from friends or family, 15% were further from a hospital, and 5% had to move their children’s school."

So tenants weren't paying market rate for the area, were getting a good deal and are upset that the gravy train came to an end. Evil landlord not charging them as much as he could have should be punished.

They've just made rents more expensive for the next lot of tenants as another so many hundred Landlords read that & think I've had enough, one extra thing on top of one another, I'm packing up. Less supply now, remaining Landlords charge what they like.
Well done Generation Rent, u got Renters shouting Ooh Baby, but now they can't get anywhere.

Is there anyway of posting these excellent points on their website?

As Generation Rent have been one of the main players in driving Landlords out of the PRS, perhaps they should consider paying these moving costs out their own funds.

If they did I suspect their calculations (as others have pointed out on this thread) would come out to be considerably lower.

Didn't Mark Alexander propose a Deed of Assurance years ago that offered to pay towards a tenants moving costs if the landlord decided to evict them so they could sell the property? In return the tenant had to fully comply with the terms of the tenancy agreement and an inflation linked annual rent increase was built in.
Good tenants shouldn't face unexpected moving costs when they have been model tenants. Landlords very rarely want to evict good tenants.
The rest only have themselves to blame.

Reply to the comment left by Jo Westlake at 01/09/2021 - 14:12
Quite agree Jo What concerns me is the compulsion. People now seem to think that the answer to every "problem" is more legislation and more compulsion. Listening on Radio 4 this morning to a tenant's representative who was complaining about a landlord wanting a tenant to leave so that a member of the landlord's family could move in. If that becomes a problem, as it will when s21 is abolished, even fewer landlords, with a property that is temporarily vacant will risk renting.

Reply to the comment left by Ian Narbeth at 01/09/2021 - 14:49
"People now seem to think that the answer to every "problem" is more legislation and more compulsion."
This is a systemic problem throughout the first world. Eliminate any possibility for the application of judgement and replace it with a process. That way the majority of individuals are not required to take responsibility for anything except paying to police the process. Landlords are obviously at the rough end of this at the moment an increasing number of people are suffering.

"Generation Rent" also believe that everybody is ENTITLED to a quality home that suits their needs perfectly whether or not they can afford one.

There's just one problem with that, which is that there are not enough properties fitting that criteria with £nil value to go around - so don't expect landlords to provide them!