Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
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Archive
Far too many Britons are at the mercy of exploitative private landlords. I have a five-point plan to fix that
Stephen Cowan The Guardian (No paywall)Sarah faces daily torment. An impending rent rise means she can no longer afford to live in the home she shares with her two children. She has to downsize. That means potentially having to split up her boys. Her youngest is doing his A-levels. Her oldest, just turned 18, is struggling with mental health issues. It is an unenviable problem. “Will I have to say that one son lives elsewhere and one lives with me,” asks Sarah (not her real name). “At best I can try to protect them and say it’s all going to be OK. But I have to say it to myself as well. But we’ve got no stability and could be thrown out in two months’ time.” Sarah’s plight is a story of modern Britain. Where once we were a nation of homeowners and those who rented from their local council, we now live in a land where a staggering 11 million people live in privately rented homes.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/15/br…
# International, Rent.Evicted grandmother now sleeping rough in park
Eleanor Lawrie BBC (No paywall)When Heidi Dodson discovered she was going to be evicted, she reached out to her local council of Thurrock in Essex for help. But it rejected her application for priority housing and said she would cope if she ended up on the streets. Two weeks after being evicted, Heidi is homeless and sleeping in a park. Every evening Heidi Dodson reads her grandchildren a bedtime story and wishes them good night.
Then she quietly packs a rucksack with a torch, biscuits and some toilet roll, and makes a flask of tea, before making her way to a local park to spend the night. “You think about what you had - the safety of your own home, key, roof over your head,” Heidi says. “It’s these things that are going through your mind when you are out in the cold and sleeping on a park bench. The 57-year-old former shop assistant was recently served a section 21 “no-fault” eviction after seven years living in a private rented property she had secured through the council.
Landlord ordered to pay tenant $9k after failing to maintain rental property
Catherine Hutton NZ Herald (No paywall)A landlord who falsely claimed her property met Healthy Homes standards has been ordered to pay the tenant more than $9000. The tenant’s complaint to the Tenancy Tribunal featured a laundry list of problems that included the toilet cistern falling off the wall, unsafe electrical reticulation, a leaking shower, excessive mould because of poor ventilation, and floors that were so uneven they were dangerous. The recently released decision is scathing of the landlord, Xin Ji, stating “in the circumstances, I can only assume the landlord’s motivation to have been to avoid the cost of having those issues properly investigated and of any resulting remediation”.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/landlord-ordered-to-pay-tenant-alm…
# Must read International, Rent, Repairs, Utilities electricity water gas.Bailiff evictions of renting households at six-year high, says MoJ
Robert Booth The Guardian (No paywall)Bailiffs are evicting more renting households than at any time in the last six years, the Ministry of Justice has said, as protesters chanted for rent controls outside the HQ of Britain’s biggest listed private landlord. More than 100 members of the London Renters Union (LRU) set off red and blue smoke canisters as they descended on the glass and steel office of the property firm Grainger, which rents out more than 10,000 homes in the UK bringing in a 28% pretax profit margin on nearly £100m a year in rent. MoJ figures released on Thursday showed county court bailiffs evicted 2,682 households in England and Wales in the first three months of this year as a result of landlords issuing section 21 “no fault” eviction notices. This was the highest level since the start of 2017 despite the government first promising to end the practice in April 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/16/bailiff-…
# Hot topic International, .New report for the Labour Party recommends vital changes to the private rented sector
Nationwide Foundation (No paywall)Last year, the Labour Party commissioned Stephen Cowan to review the private rented sector and recommend a framework for improving renters’ rights and raise standards. On Wednesday (15 May), this crucial independent report was published. The report sets out a vision for changes to the private rented sector, going beyond what is currently proposed in the Renters (Reform) Bill, and seeking to take a more holistic approach to addressing issues across the PRS. We met with Mr Cowan as he was preparing the report and shared a range of evidence from our funded partners. We’re pleased to see our insights and recommendations referenced throughout, as well as references to our funded projects, including our Affordable Housing Commission work, research completed by Julie Rugg, and the Renters Reform Coalition.
https://nationwidefoundation.org.uk/new-labour-report-recommends…
# Legal significance International, Rent.The Notting Hill slums where I grew up were replaced by social housing – but right to buy wrecked it
John Bird The Guardian (No paywall)I write in response to your article (Something is stirring in England: right to buy looks imperilled, and not a moment too soon, 12 May). Whoever wins the election will face a housing crisis that is not easy to fathom a way out of. Right to buy, along with buy-to-let mortgages, has created wealth for some at the expense of others. Social renters and “Generation Rent” are left out of the equation. I was born into the slummiest part of London’s Notting Hill. So slummy that it could not be saved for the middle-class colonisation of Notting Hill that overran the former poor housing stock and transformed it to a romcom film set. In the 1970s, the local authority pulled down not just our house but our street, and the streets around it, replacing it with a large social housing estate.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/16/the-nott…
# Hot topic, History International, Public and community housing, Rent.Landlord fails in Tenancy Tribunal bid to evict disabled car crash victim
Jeremy Wilkinson NZ Herald (No paywall)A landlord has failed in their attempt to evict a cognitively impaired car crash victim for failing to keep his rented house clean. The social housing provider, which specialises in providing accommodation for those with mental health and addiction issues, hoped to kick the man out despite not having anywhere else for him to live. The provider took the man to the Tenancy Tribunal earlier this year hoping to have him evicted after he failed multiple inspections and ignored orders to clean the house. The tenant, who had lived in the two-bedroom unit in Waikato since 2018 without incident, was involved in a car accident in 2021 and suffered a serious head injury.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/landlord-fails-in-tenancy-tribunal…
# Must read International, Discrimination.California college students experiencing homelessness speak out
CBS News (No paywall)VIDEO: California: College can be stressful with studying and meeting deadlines, but some students are struggling with a different issue: housing. Federal data shows more than 1.5 million college students in the U.S are homeless, highlighting the nations affordable housing crisis. The situation is even more dire in California, where 10% of California State University students are experiencing homelessness. Here’s how some of them are dealing with it.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/california-college-students-experi…
# Video International, Security and safety.