Many people will never own a home. So let’s make renting better
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Version 0 of 1. Most of us know that Britain’s houses are not actually homes to enjoy, but piggy banks. However, every house-price bubble or crash is irrelevant to tenants living in a UK blighted by the threat of growing homelessness rates. Meanwhile, the troubling and underwhelming response from all parties to a broken housing sector is silence, or yet more confused blue-sky thinking and a few glib policy proposals. One such solution, “buy as you go”, is controversial and assumes growing equity, even though many properties will not race ever-upwards in value. It also somewhat misses the point. “Let them buy homes” is up there with the apocryphal “let them eat cake” for high-minded impractical irrelevance. What’s really needed is to make life better for ordinary, everyday people living in precarious and poor-quality private rented sector (PRS) accommodation. I question society’s fixation with owning when tenants do not have enough money to buy, because in England they are obliged to spend on average 47% of their income renting draughty, insecure houses. Wouldn’t it be wiser to improve the private rented sector and banish forever certain easily solved iniquities? Theresa May is supposedly keen to improve the lot of private tenants. When the biggest single cause of the UK’s rising homelessness is a PRS tenancy ending, there are some basic ways to make renting if not great again, then at least endurable. First, there must be an end to the need for guarantors. This relatively new requirement is growing and wrong. Even long-term gainfully employed, responsible adults without the merest hint of a late-paid bill are infantilised by needing to bother their parents to underwrite tenancies. What if your parents are dead or elderly, or you are on poor terms with them and cannot ask? It is impossible for workers on zero-hour contracts to ask employers, and effectively rules out housing for freelancers. Worse, it’s ineffective. Has anyone ever heard of a guarantor being pursued for tenants who do not pay? Tenants must not be given notice without an excellent reason – one taken from a list of statutory acceptable reasons Here’s another popular suggestion: end greedy and baffling letting-agent fees charged to tenants. It’s worked in Scotland, where I live in, since 1981, and yes it’s still chock full of agents, who charge fees to owners instead, because, well these admin costs should be in their business plan (and yes, letting houses is a business). Rising house prices are accompanied by an inevitable tide of notices and evictions issued as owners (either buy to let or “reluctant rentiers”, such as those previously unable to sell their property due to negative equity), sell up and decide empty houses sell better. So bring back sitting tenants with the right to remain in situ, a notion ended by John Major’s housing act of 1988. Why, especially when the mortgage is a buy-to-let one, should the tenant be forced to move out if their home is sold? Or struggle when their rent is ramped up so that they might be allowed to remain, in what is their home? Despite what you might have seen on Channel 4’s latest poverty porn sideshow Britain’s Benefit Tenants, the biggest single cause of homelessness in the UK isn’t rent arrears, or trashing the place. It’s a private tenancy ended for no discernible reason: because the owner feels like it and because they can. No misbehaviour on the part of tenants is needed to turf them out. One simple and effective improvement would be ending no-fault notice and eviction. Tenants must not be given notice without an excellent reason – one taken from a list of statutory acceptable reasons, such as the need for the owner to live in it themselves (unless it’s a buy-to-let mortgage). This must be properly policed and funded, so naughty rentiers can’t sneakily repossess and relet property. This will happen in Scotland later next year under new legislation, so no more “just in case notices” as landlords go fishing for new tenants who might pay higher rent (and the occupying tenant gets to stay if they pay up). I would also suggest a new policy of no evictions in winter, as enacted in France, after a woman, evicted and consequently roofless, froze to death on the streets. Finally, in the spirit of what’s sauce for the social housing goose, bring in right to buy for the private rented sector’s gander. If housing associations and councils are compelled to sell to tenants, then do the same to private rentiers. Certain provisos would be necessary to avoid unintended consequences, such as having longer tenancies voided or notice being given when any qualifying period approached. I can hear owners squealing as I write this, but it would be better than people having their homes sold beneath them with no control, as happens now. These entirely reasonable solutions are practical and achievable. So let’s make renting better, for those who will never own a home. |