World beating, yes. But what an indictment of 14 years of Conservative misrule in just one chart: Possibly the UK treats its data in a slightly different way to some others, but as it includes so many families in emergency and inadequate accommodation with children, I think we can safely assume that it retains its... Read more

I’ve just published Chapter 8 of my open access textbook. This new chapter focuses on women’s homelessness.

An English summary of the new chapter can be found here: https://nickfalvo.ca/womens-homelessness/

A French summary of the new chapter is here: https://nickfalvo.ca/litinerance-chez-les-femmes/

All material related to the textbook can be found here: https://nickfalvo.ca/book/

Sulejman Kamara has been trapped in a hotel for two years. The builder, his wife and two autistic children lost their home of eight years in Kilburn, north-west London, after their landlord served them a no-fault eviction. 

They never got back their deposit, and lost several possessions in the eventual bailiff-enforced eviction in 2022.

“It was shocking to have to leave like that with our two kids,” he told Byline Times. "Imagine having to leave so suddenly with a one year old."

They were also left homeless as local estate agents refused to show them family homes because they did not meet financial requirements, which Sulejman says included having an external guarantor and being able to pay several months rent upfront.

After asking Brent Council for help, the family were moved to a nearby hotel where they shared one mould-ridden room. That was supposed to last just a few weeks as it is unlawful for councils to accommodate families in temporary accommodation that is a privately-owned B&B for more than 6 weeks. But, two year later the family is still living in that same, single, room and things have got worse.

Campaigners from the charity Shelter line Parliament Square with boxes of household items while calling on the government to end 'no-fault' eviction in July 2023. Photo: Zuma Press / Alamy

The council stopped giving the family housing duty a year ago after they rejected a permanent property it offered that their doctor and school said was unsafe for their children. The council classed the family as making themselves ‘intentionally homeless’, a council-determined category that strips people of access to support. It means someone is homeless because of something they did, or failed to do.

Sulejman and his wife now pay £1,500 a month for a room, are unable to get a new home from the council and can't access the private rental market, despite both working. Brent Council told Byline Times it can't "reopen the housing duty" to the family.

The family is just one of almost 105,000 households living in temporary accommodation in the UK and struggling to get out of it, and one of thousands of victims of no-fault evictions. In March, The Guardian reported that some children are now spending their entire childhoods in temporary accommodation and that thousands of families had been housed in it for more than a decade. The publication said the homelessness crisis is "spiralling out of control".

Last week marks five years since the Conservative Government first pledged to outlaw the practice. On March 1, London Mayor Sadiq Khan demanded the Government finally act on its promise to protect renters as City Hall analysis found that more than 30,000 renting households in the capital have faced a Section 21 ‘no-fault eviction’ claim since 2019.

But despite a formal Renters (Reform) Bill finally entering Parliament in May 2023 pledging to end no-fault evictions, extensive lobbying by landlords and Conservative MPs has seen it heavily watered down, and the proposed ban on no-fault evictions at best being delayed, potentially indefinitely.

In the meantime, the number of no-fault eviction notices served in England increased by almost a third (28%) in 2023, the highest rate since 2016 - 30,230 landlords started court proceedings against their tenants.

Byline Times spoke to those forced out through the practice to gauge what the impact of the delay would have.

Nico had lived in the same Brighton flat for eight years before their landlord told them they had to move out. They planned to sell the building to a new owner, and last month Nico received a notice ordering them to leave. 

"I'm disabled and don’t work so I'm reliant on benefits system, which obviously is difficult enough in itself. But almost impossible when it comes to trying to find somewhere to live,” they told Byline Times.

“And I've never actually been in this situation before when I haven't been working.”

Research in 2022 by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism of tens of thousands of rental properties, found 98% of those advertised over a single month were beyond the means of people received universal credit or housing benefit. Analysis by the Financial Times suggested that the last time house prices were this expensive relative to incomes was in the 1870s. The average house price in the 12 months to January 2024 in England was £299,000, according to Government figures.  The average salary, across all industry sectors in the UK, was £34,900 pre-tax, according to figures published in March.

Nico’s landlord has been talking about the eviction for months, but has not given any firm timeline as to when they need to leave by, leaving them "in a constant state of stress and anxiety".

"To not know – it makes you feel insecure and vulnerable,” Nico said. 

"The possibility of becoming homeless is very real, and it's terrifying one. I've been homeless before many years ago and it was horrible. My health right now is very different to what it used to be then and I wouldn’t be able to cope with it now.

“It feels like you’re in a bog and can’t quite get out. It’s suffocating, and it’s terrifying,” they add.

Journalist Ruby Lott-Lavigna has covered the housing crisis for the likes of openDemocracy and Vice, so stories like Nico's are all too familiar. But she's also has first-hand experience, having been served a no-fault eviction notice in February - her second in two years.

"It's bonkers when your own reporting suddenly becomes your life,” she told Byline Times. 

“Being constantly evicted, or constantly at risk of eviction, leaves you in this permanent state of insecurity. It means I can’t put roots down wherever I live. 

"It means I can’t build that relationship with the local cafe that I was going to, or no longer contribute to the community garden that I wanted to get involved in. It creates this permanent instability in a societal sense. It also is just emotionally very uprooting.

“You can’t think about trying out a new career, or even dating someone new. So many of those decisions are so tied to your housing that you're stuck in a way.”

What made Ruby's latest eviction all the worse is that it was done, she claims, in retaliation, after she pushed back against constant, often unaccounted visits from her landlord or people working for them.

Most tenants have a legal right to “quiet enjoyment” of their home which entitles them to be left alone by the landlord or those working for them unless necessary – and even then they should give a day’s warning before visiting.

But as the name suggests, a no-fault eviction means a landlord doesn’t have to give a reason to evict a tenant. It also means they can, and frequently do, use the power to evict tenants for making complaints about them failing to make repairs and breaking the law.

A report by Citizens Advice in 2018 found that renters in England who formally complain about issues such as damp and mould have an almost one-in-two (46%) chance of being issued an eviction notice within six months.

"It's infuriating that something as petty as this can result in a complete change of mine and my housemates’ lives,” Ruby said. “It's even more maddening that this was legislation that was promised to be banned five years ago.”

She continued: "The Conservatives for too long have played politics like it's a game, not peoples’ lives. And that is exactly what you see with the Renter's Reform Bill, because every day more people get made redundant, or like me are gonna get evicted."

A huge rise in service fees for leasehold and shared ownership properties – sometimes of tens of thousands of pounds – has led to a record rise in tenants choosing to withhold payment and go on ‘rent strike’, Byline Times can reveal.

The Social Housing Action Campaign told this newspaper that, in the first quarter of 2024, it had seen a fourfold increase in tenants – around 700 people – choosing to download a template letter that can be used to notify landlords of their intention to strike.

A report the group conducted late last year also found that a huge rise in the number of people choosing to withhold rent or service fees for the first time – over 90% of those it polled.

While some of those recorded by SHAC were unable or refusing to pay rent – rises in even social rents has outstripped wages for several years, leaving a growing number of tenants unable to pay.

But the vast majority were those withholding service fees. Usually amounting to a few thousand pounds a year at most to cover communal cleaning and upkeep costs, service fees for leasehold and shared ownership flats have skyrocketed in recent years. 

The Last Resort

While freeholders and managing agents are supposed to be transparent about the things that money will be spent on, growing numbers of tenants have reported being unable to get copies of invoices or end of year accounts from their building owners.

Many of these buildings are run or owned by housing associations – after the government pushed them to move into building private housing stock – to help fund the cost of the formerly council-run social housing they manage across the country.

José Mellado’s South London shared ownership flat was supposed to be an affordable way onto the housing ladder. But just a year after moving in his service charges have started rising rapidly. 

Now he has to pay £469 a month to cover ‘communal costs’ – in a building which doesn’t have the amenities like security or communal areas that normally lead to such costs.

“We’ve only been there for one year so we were shocked, and angry as well. We have no control over it,” he explains.

That cost has come on top of rising council taxes and mortgages that mean between the three costs he is now set to be spending just under £20,000 a year on the flat.

The rising fees (which weren’t disclosed when he bought the property) mean the flat is less attractive to sellers, leaving José feeling “trapped” in the building.

“We need to do something about all this. We can’t just sit there being polite,” he added.

“So we started to strike over the rise – we will pay the original amount but not the increase, and try to raise our voices in another way.”

But even then he knows there are some blocks much worse off than his. In one block in King’s Cross, tenants have been asked to pay £16,000 a year each to cover communal costs, almost triple what it was before.

“People are driven to withhold payment as a last resort. No one wants to be in this position,” said Suzanne Muna, secretary of the social housing action campaign.

"Undoubtedly the financial squeeze is having an impact, and households have to account for every penny. This, together with the unjustified and extortionate charges that we are seeing has left people without a choice.”

She went on: “The problem is also structural – access to justice through other means is closed off. Neither the Housing Ombudsman nor the Regulator of Social Housing addresses complaints relating to service charge levels. 

“Taking your landlord to court can mean having to make a payment and landlords consistently threaten tenants and residents that they will seek to recover their own legal costs from you if you lose.”

She adds that the morning we spoke two tenants reached out in need of help after skyrocketing service fees that left them dreading letters from their landlord and feeling like they “can't see any light at the end of the tunnel”.

The National Housing Federation, the trade body for housing associations, declined to comment.