14th
Feb 2022
The government’s intention of scrapping agents and landlords Section 21 powers has been described as “the worst form of gesture politics in practice,” according to a leading Tory writing on the Conservate Home website.
The author of the highly critical piece on the website, Ryan Bourne, is the Chair in Public Understanding of Economics at the Cato Institute in Washington DC, and says that this will create the impression that MPs really do care about private tenants’ circumstances. However it is really taking the onus away from the housing crisis caused by successive governments failure to provide or ‘encourage’ sufficient home building over decades.
In his piece Bourne says that increasingly PRS tenants have turned into a louder vocal lobbying group as there are now so many groups and ‘organisations’ champing at the bit to get stuck in.
In the article he warns of the perils for tenants when Section 21 is ended which will certainly entail far more ‘draconian’ and tougher referencing measures that landlords will undertake, to simply protect themselves from the rogue and career rent criminal tenants. Consequently renters benefit recipients will find it tougher if not impossible as landlords will raise their rents, like any other business, because of demand and supply market forces.
However Bourne forecasts that less and less people will be attracted to invest in the sector and many landlords are increasingly opting for the Airbnb, which is so more profitable.
He said in the piece: “Those harmed most by limited rental options will be the poorest, those without deposits for owner-occupied housing, and those for whom accessing new private rental accommodation is a route to a better job or life.
“The beneficiaries will be those who want to stay in a property for years and years.”
Richard Merrick of PIMS,said:” No landlord will evict tenants who have paid their monthly rent on time year in and year out unless they are selling up.
“No doubt politicians have ‘veiled’ the truth of the pathetic lack of house builds for all these years by making private landlords the nation’s ‘pariahs’ which is infantile. The PRS if ‘warmed to’, can help the crisis and get some councils out of their own …. , which many are doing at the moment.”
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