Private Rented Housing

This is one of the reasons why the private rented sector may not offer the solution to too few places to live in rural villages and small towns. It’s a desperately sad thing to lose your home in these circumstances.

Hundreds of families are being made homeless as landlords seek to benefit from rising property prices or increase rents, new data has revealed.

Eviction figures analysed by pressure group Generation Rent suggested 216 households were becoming homeless in England every week because of so-called “no fault” evictions.

A no fault clause allows landlords to close a tenancy – generally at the end of a contract – without needing a reason such as rent arrears or property damage.

Generation Rent said the end of a private tenancy was now the biggest cause of homelessness across the country, with the number of cases more than trebling from 4,580 to 16,320 between 2009 and 2017.

The analysis, reported in The Observer, claimed that 94 per cent of the rise could be blamed on no-fault evictions, which have more than doubled since 2009.

The findings came after the government launched a £100m strategy to end rough sleeping by 2027 earlier this month.

More than 50,000 people have signed a petition launched by Generation Rent to scrap no fault clauses, which fall under section 21 of the 1988 Housing Act.