The government has extended the ban on evictions during the pandemic twice now. But, there is a limit on how many times this issue can be kicked into the long grass. Do they have a long term plan? If so, it’s not yet known.
According to housing charity Shelter, 227,000 people have self reportedly fallen into rent arrears since the start of the pandemic. This means that three of private renters are at risk of a Section 8 eviction (rent arrears evictions) in the coming months.
“44 per cent of landlords use rent to contribute to their pension”
The government needs to set out how they intend to prevent a ‘self made homelessness crisis’, as furlough winds down and we approach a likely second peak this winter, says Shadow Housing Secretary Thangam Debbonaire.
The National Residential Landlord Association have recently said that 44 per cent of landlords use rent to contribute to their pension, and 39 per cent of landlords receive a gross non-rental income of less than £20,000 a year.
Working people in the midst of this pandemic have been constantly lectured about ‘personal responsibility’ – having to swallow pay cuts, pick up second and sometimes even third jobs, and take out savings or loans to get by. More than a million people were left unprotected entirely by furlough or similar schemes.
“it does seem unfair that landlords are facing little risk, whilst still keeping the reward, often at the expense of struggling communities?”
Why, then, don’t landlords go out and get a real job? Surely, relying so heavily on extracting profits from renting their assets is not fiscally responsible? Surely, they should’ve saved some profits for a rainy day? Surely, they should’ve diversified their income stream if they didn’t want to be left so vulnerable to the tumults of a singular market?
Under capitalism, we’re told that those with capital deserve to keep profits as a reward for risking it. So, now, it does seem unfair that landlords are facing little risk, whilst still keeping the reward, often at the expense of struggling communities?
Many buy-to-let landlords took a mortgage holiday and some have refused to accept reduced payments from tenants despite this. Some are in fact even trying to surreptitiously or illegally evict tenants.
It’s worth pointing out here that the rentier class are infamously, generous Conservative Party donors and this may explain why many vulnerable renters face being left out in the cold, both metaphorically and literally. It may also explain why many workers are also being forced back to offices to help out commercial landlords and city center shops, despite productively working from home.
If the government want to prevent an eviction wave, what are the options when the eviction ban runs out? Here’s five, from least to most radical:
- Extend the length of notice given on Section 8 eviction orders to six months, and pause Section 21 evictions (commonly known as ‘no fault’ evictions). The Labour-led Welsh government and SNP-led Scottish government have already done this with reasonable success.
- Cap rent comparative to either the individual or average household income, as has been the case in European nations such as Germany for years now.
- Convert old office and retail spaces into both temporary and affordable council housing for the most vulnerable. This would free up smaller private rental properties too, enabling others who’ve taken a big economic hit to downsize also.
- A minimum income guarantee, a ‘safety net’, throughout the pandemic. This could take many forms; from substantially increasing payments to welfare recipients, to a Basic Income as argued for by the New Economics Foundation. All variations of this would stimulate our economy through a trickle up model and ensure landlords still got paid.
- Covid debt forgiveness. Again, there are many different extents to which you could implement this; it could apply solely to housing, or to debts incurred during the pandemic more generally. By freeing up so much liquid capital for so many, the argument is that we could boost our economic recovery vastly.
Covid offers us a unique opportunity to fundamentally re-balance and restructure our economy. The question is, in whose interest we do so.
Dayna Latham
Featured image courtesy of Ethan Wilkinson via Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
