Hundreds of families are being made homeless for no reason

Hundreds of families are being made homeless each week by landlords who don’t need a reason to evict them.

Pressure group Generation Rent has blamed housing law for contributing to the homeless crisis, citing a rise in the number of ‘no-fault’ evictions in the past eight years.

Currently, the group says around 216 households each week are becoming homeless under section 21 of the 1988 Housing Act.

These have been dubbed ‘no-fault’ evictions because under this law landlords don’t need a reason to kick out tenants.

The Guardian suggests that many who evict tenants under this act are doing so to either increase the rent or sell the property to take advantage of rising prices..

Numbers of rough sleepers have increased by a whopping 168% in the past decade.

Laura Johnstone, her husband and two young sons are being evicted from her rented home under section 21 for the second time in two years.

Laura, from Wandsworth, south London, told the newspaper: ‘With young children it is a nightmare. It is awful to live like this, where every year you’ve got to move.

‘We’ve got boxes that we haven’t unpacked. Everything is so temporary. It is ruining my children’s lives. They have no stability.’

The number of cases where homelesness has been caused by the end of a private tenancy has reportedly trebled from 4,580 to 16,320 between 2009 and 2017.

Generation Rent pointed the finger at no-fault evictions, saying 94% of the jump can be blamed on section 21 evictions.

Nearly 50,000 people have signed a petition urging the government to scrap section 21, calling the law ‘unfair and perfectly legal.’

The petition statement reads: ‘England is one of the only countries in Europe that allows people to be evicted without private landlords having to give a reason.

‘The threat of being kicked out without doing anything wrong causes insecurity and stress for millions of families, and makes people suffering shoddy housing scared to complain.

‘The government is looking at how they can make renting more secure in England. They could change the law, so people who rent can only be evicted if there’s a valid reason.

‘It’d mean millions of families will have the security of knowing they won’t be forced to move at a moments notice.’

The Ministry of Housing told Metro.co.uk: ‘We recognise that everyone deserves a decent, and secure place to live which is why we have increased protection for people living in rented homes.

‘We have introduced new measures to stop so-called retaliatory evictions but we know we need to do more and we are consulting on three-year minimum tenancies.

‘Under our new homelessness law, councils have a duty to intervene at earlier stages to prevent homelessness in their areas.’

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