Extending the Housing Eviction Ban
By Calum Muir
On the 25th of March, the Queen enacted the Coronavirus 2020 Act on behalf of the UK government. Schedule 29 of this act put a halt to all possession hearings in English and Welsh courts, in effect putting a ban on all court evictions until the 24th of August. The aim of this moratorium was to mitigate the socioeconomic damage which Covid-19 could inflict upon the lives of UK tenants - many of whom were already finding they were unable to afford rent as a direct result of the outbreak and the subsequent lockdown. Furthermore, a large number of tenants moving or being made homeless in the early, crucial stages of the health crisis, could have acted as a catalyst for virus transmission. As such, the eviction ban represented a key policy in the UK government's legislative response to the pandemic - attempting to curtail its spread and impact within the UK.
However, on the 21st of August, in what the Labour leader Kier Starmer described as an "11th-hour u-turn", the Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick announced that the moratorium on evictions would be extended for a further 4 weeks - until the 20th of September. While the timing of this decision will inevitably increase uncertainty for tenants and landlords alike, the actual policy should offer a temporary extension to the security offered to tenants by the initial ban. The question that UK policy makers should be asking is will this short extension be enough to protect renters?
While the danger of tenants spreading Covid-19 by moving from one property to another has been greatly reduced by the decreased prevalence of the virus, for many businesses and workers, the scale of the economic impact of coronavirus is only just starting to be felt. Between March and July, UK unemployment doubled to 2.7 million and average earnings fell. According to estimates from the homeless charity Shelter, 227,000 UK tenants have fallen into arrears since the initial outbreak - all of whom are at risk of losing their home come the 20th of September. While these figures could have been far worse without the safety net provided by the furlough scheme, as employer contributions increase and the scheme wraps up at the end of October, there is real potential for unemployment - and thus those who are unable to afford rent - to rise. As such, opposition politicians, charities and health bodies are concerned that the end of the furlough scheme, coupled with the end of the eviction moratorium, could lead to a significant increase in homelessness and those living in overcrowded accommodation. Given that the R rate continues to creep up, and new local lockdowns are announced on a weekly basis, such a climate could enable a resurgence of Covid-19.
That being said, any extension to the scheme will have obvious and significant ramifications for the landlords which the policy effects – many of whom are dissatisfied with the government response and the extension which has been announced. Court evictions are an important tool which help landlords to protect their properties and their income from problematic tenants. Everyday which passes under the eviction ban represents a days’ worth of lost income for those landlords whose tenants are in arrears. Furthermore, in the most extreme cases, landlords are unable to evict those tenants who are neglecting their properties, disturbing neighbours through anti-social behaviour, or those committing acts of domestic abuse.
A potential solution could be found in a more nuanced approach which strikes a balance between protecting the socioeconomic welfare of tenants and landlords. Rather than extending a blanket ban against all court evictions, a more long-term extension could be given specifically to those tenants which are unable to afford rent in full as a result of redundancy or a significant reduction in income – related to Covid-19. Said extension would not be extended to court eviction cases where the tenant is responsible for anti-social behaviour, domestic abuse or neglecting the property – cases which the government already intends courts to fast track come 20th of September. This would ensure that tenants struggling due to the economic climate created by Covid-19 are given some security as they attempt to find new employment – potentially preventing a homelessness crisis and minimising the potential for a resurgence of coronavirus – while protecting landlords properties and neighbours from problematic tenants.
However, such a policy would mean that some landlords would continue to receive a significantly reduced income from their properties. As such, a long-term extension to the eviction ban would likely have to be accompanied by some form of compensation for landlords – be it in the form of a scheme to pay unemployed tenants rents, subsidies paid directly to landlords or tax breaks. While this has the potential to be a rather costly policy for the UK taxpayer, if the rate of Covid-19 transmission continues to increase, such a policy may be critical to any legislative attempts to prevent a second peak.
At this time, it is unclear whether the UK government will bow to pressure from opposition parties and charities to implement a significant extension to the blanket ban, stand by the new date created by the four-week extension, or adopt an approach which seeks more of a balance between these two policies. However, what is certain, is that the eviction ban will remain a contentious policy among politicians, policy makers, tenants and landlords alike as the 20th of September approaches.