Scrapping ‘no fault evictions’ doesn’t address the problem of spiralling UK rents

theguardian.com:

If it felt like a long time coming, that’s because it has been. Amid the gaudy pomp and ceremony, the Queen’s speech contained a series of pledges that could substantially improve life for millions of renters across the UK. Sitting against an almost comically gilded backdrop, Prince Charles spoke of a government ready to “improve the regulation of social housing, strengthen the rights of tenants and ensure better quality safer homes”.

The proposed renters’ reform bill contains one particularly eye-catching commitment. For years, housing activists and charities have fought for the abolition of section 21 of the Housing Act (1988), an insidious piece of Thatcherite legislation that became better known as “no-fault evictions”. The premise is simple enough. Under the terms of section 21, private landlords have been able to evict tenants without a reason, and giving just two months notice.

This isn’t the first time such a promise has been made. In the spring of 2019, Theresa May’s government sounded its intention to scrap no-fault evictions, after the then housing minister, James Brokenshire, apparently experienced a Damascene moment of clarity during a visit to a homeless people’s shelter in Bristol. But the following three years have only seen the practice intensify, despite the brief lull occasioned by the temporary pandemic eviction ban. According to research by Shelter, the UK’s largest housing charity, an extra 200,000 private renters in England were served with no-fault evictions since the first commitment to scrap them was issued, at a rate of one every seven minutes. Change was supposed to arrive finally in 2021, before being shelved until last week.

Though the latest pledge has been broadly welcomed by campaigners and