Increase in Homelessness

[Alex50]

This isn’t going to end well, AIBU the government should still block evictions for non rent payments

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53797657

I'm unsure tbh, a lot depends on the circumstances.

You have people in SH and council tenancies with bailiffs coming after them for CT issues having to temporarily rob Peter to pay Paul - no shouldn't be being evicted.
Then you have CF's, refusing to pay rent out of choice rather than need to private landlords who can't pay their mortgage without it - yes should be being evicted.

So you think private landlords should have some kind of obligation to pay rent for their tenants indefinitely? You think that people should have the right to live in other people’s properties for free? Seriously?

@NailsNeedDoing, no, but I would be in favour of of LLs being able to get rent paid direct from benefits or earnings where tenants don't pay.

The whole buying extra homes and getting a tennant to pay your mortgage is always going to be risky and it's no replacement for decently regulated social housing.

Maybe, but who’s going to pay for all the time and extra expense involved in organising that? What if there are no earnings or the tenant isn’t entitled to HB, or enough HB?

Landlords need more protection from the law when it comes to people who don’t pay the rent, not less. Its theft.

Landlords play a vital part in housing people. More and more will cease to be one if they can’t evict etc for non payment. The finances of their tenants are not their responsibility.

Too many already expect everything in life to be free or provided for them.

@SnuggyBuggy

Exactly and professional landlords should have assessed business risks and have a contingency plan in place, like other businesses do. They always claim to be running a professional business until something happens, then they are suddenly accidental landlords.

Of course landlords should assess business risk, and there’s always a risk of a tenant not paying that should be considered. That’s not the same as being told by the government that the usual methods that you can use to protect your business are no longer effective. No landlord could have reasonably assessed for the risk that there was going to be a pandemic and the government would block evictions.

Plenty of very professional businesses have been shut down because of the pandemic, but they aren’t expected to keep providing their services to customers when they have no income.

Snuggy Buggy I don't disagree, but SH is pretty bad a lot of the time now many are running as businesses, and increasingly try to force tenants to be benefit reliant so they can hike rents.

You have to also agree then that the government should block repossessions by the banks if people cannot repay their mortgages. Also, 'the whole buying extra homes and getting a tennant to pay your mortgage is always going to be risky' is also no replacement for simple, transparent pensions that do not discriminate heavily against women.

So what happens to people like our landlord. Our rent (for her mother's house) paid her mother's care fees.

So they can't afford to pay care fees, so the care home gets less money?

Presumably, according to some, the care home, being a private business, should have thought about providing its services for free as part of its risk assessment, and they shouldn’t change anything about what they provide for their residents/tenants even if they stop paying.

I'm not landlord so have no skin in that game. But I have lived next door to anti social tenants who made everyone's lives her a misery. The record for a party was 58 hours. 58 hours of thumping loud bass music during the lockdown so no council officer would come out.

Should they just be allowed to carry on living there? Even if they paid no rent?

What will happen when landlords default on their mortgage as they don't have the rent coming in? It is likely the tenant will end up homeless eventually after the bank repossess.

People need to take responsibility for themselves and pay their bloody rent and bills. If they are on benefits they get most of their rent paid anyway if entitled to housing benefit.

Your way is basically people can live rent free if they can't pay it. That ain't never going to work.

I suppose in that case the mother’s house will have to be sold to pay the fees.

@stairway

The house wouldn’t be allowed to be sold if the government blocks evictions, which is what the OP wants.

This is why I have an empty inner city property in the U.K....it's not worth having tenants. More hassle than it's worth imo.

If you can't pay then why should the landlord let them stay? We rent out a flat - it's not a business, just a property we have that is sitting doing nothing so might as well make it useful. If the tenant can't afford to pay rent, why should they stay indefinitely? It impacts the landlord too!

I don’t know what’s going to happen, I can see 1000’s of people homeless if the government don’t do something, furlough ends in October, millions unemployed, I don’t know how people are going to manage.

It is worrying, but it’s up to government, councils, and the tenants themselves to solve the problem. The problem and the expense is not the responsibility of individual landlords.

@Alex50

I don’t know what’s happening either. I’m seeing reports of high unemployment, predicted to get even higher when furlough ends. But I’m also seeing reports of a house price boom - which doesn’t make any sense if people are losing their jobs and lenders aren’t lending to people on furlough.

I would counter that landlordism is theft.

The thing with privatisation and running things like a business is there are good and bad parts.

The reason more people rent now is because house prices are so high, driven up in part by landlords.

Maybe, but who’s going to pay for all the time and extra expense involved in organising that?

It's a business expense. All businesses have some degree of risk, this is one of the risks that come with the territory for landlords.

What if there are no earnings or the tenant isn’t entitled to HB, or enough HB?

Blame the government for the ludicrous situation where LHA rates were frozen for years, and capped at the bottom 30% of the average, and where the benefit cap has failed to keep pace with rents so that a single person renting a one-bed flat and getting basic JSA or UC in this area (50-odd miles from London) is capped. A family on benefits in a 3-bed house here will be left with £108 a week to live after paying rent at the LHA rate, every £1 over that will reduce their income still further. And £10 a week will have to go on their council tax!

Cutting benefits has made it impossible for people who can't work or can't find work to sustain tenancies in a huge swathe of the country.

There are going to be a lot more of those people as the recession bites, and I'd rather make sure that they got enough money to cover their rent than step over them every time I go to town once they've been evicted. The LHA rates need to go back to being based on average rents, like they were before the Welfare Reform Act came in and the benefit cap needs to vary by region.

Plus it's the ethical thing to do imo.

This is why I have an empty inner city property in the U.K....it's not worth having tenants. More hassle than it's worth imo

I'd change the law to give councils the right to take possession of empty properties too (with safeguards to protect those waiting for probate or where it's run as a holiday let with a reasonable occupancy rate etc).

In a country with a housing crisis, any empty property is an appalling waste of an essential resource, imo.