Is government policy hurting the vulnerable and driving landlords out of the market?

Many vulnerable tenants are people who need the most help and support from their landlord. There are a large number of landlords who overlook lack of bond, damage, behaviour, and freely offer emotional and monetary support to these vulnerable tenants. However, the relationship is uncomfortable.

With the abolition of Section 21 and retrospectively applying this to around 5 milion tenancies the government is creating a maelstrom.
Instead of allowing existing tenancies to run on the agreed contract, the government sees fit to prevent a landlord taking control back of a property they have bought without likely facing punitive costs and delays using Section 8.

Shelter reports less than 10,000 bailiff evictions in 2023 out of around 5 million tenancies. This is around 1 in every 500 tenancies were bailiff evicted.

This change appears extremely poor policy. Better policy would be to make step changes so new tenancies would not allow section 21 after all Assured Shorthold tenancies have been around for 30 years. Making gradual changes allows reasonable time to plan.

Thatcher did this when the housing market was completely revolutionised by allowing people to buy their council house and introducing Assured Shorthold tenancies which allowed mainstream lending in the buy to let sector. These policies changes were orderly and voluntary. Old style tenancies were not banned and you didn’t have to buy your council house! The current brutal policy is damaging because it retrospectively applies changes to around than 5m tenancies.

Any landlord who may have been unsure of his tenants will likely feel panicked into issuing a section 21. This is in part due to the many additional pressures the government is choosing to apply at the same time to landlords.

Sadly this policy will ensure that many vulnerable tenants are given section 21 as it’s the only recourse available to landlords worried about the dilemma. They will also have to do this soon.

This will likely lead to a large number of the most vulnerable without accommodation and the councils having to fund short term accommodation. Some councils are already reporting this as their biggest costs.

In many poorer areas we are seeing a growing number of empty available houses yet none available to rent. Fleetwood in Lancashire is a good example of this. Someone on the living wage could borrow enough to buy a house yet there are now many empty and for sale.

If any evidence is needed they could simply look at the figures for vulnerable needing housing on waiting lists and see a growing stock of empty for sale houses where landlords don’t want to buy.

When there is a large range of cheap empty houses for sale, yet no houses available for private rental the government should wake up and smell the coffee.

It really isn’t difficult but policies get sidetracked and evolve causing damage because of the way they are developed and the people involved in the decisions who appear to act out of emotion and not evidence.

How can the government protect tenants without pushing landlords out of the market? What does the property118 community think?

Thanks,

Paul

Share This Article