Aug 19, 2020
#HousingIsHealth — Keep the Eviction Ban!
Thousands of students turned out on the streets, made some noise, demanded action on the appalling algorithm that denied so many their futures and the government caved. We are many, they are few proven to be effective. Trouble is there’s always another issue to jump straight onto and the one that needs highlighting next, that needs direct action next, is the impending lifting of the eviction ban.
The eviction ban brought in to prevent people losing their homes during the coronavirus crisis, a crisis we’re still in the middle of, is due to be lifted on August 23rd, this coming Sunday, how very Christian of them. From Monday courts will again start considering applications from Landlords and according to Citizens Advice, 2.6m renters have either missed or are expected to miss a rent payment as a direct consequence of the pandemic. The housing charity Shelter have estimated that 227,000 adult renters have fallen into rent arrears since the start of the pandemic and a YouGov poll showed that 174,000 private tenants have already been threatened with eviction.
Now I know it’s a statement of the obvious at this point but government planning for this pandemic was risible. The Commons Public Accounts Committee who scrutinise government spending absolutely rinsed the Tories over their sheer lack of economic planning in the event of a major disease outbreak. They instructed the Cabinet Office and Treasury to report back to them next month with an economic plan to deal with a potential second wave, but, with the continued lifting of coronavirus measures, you have to wonder if they’ve bothered, especially when there are signs of a second wave already.
If the government insists on lifting the ban on Sunday, then all of a sudden a tsunami of eviction applications will hit the courts. Anyone who has accrued more than 8 weeks of arrears can be automatically evicted, how many of those 227,000 does this apply to? It’ll all come at once and housing support services will be inundated. There is no plan in place to help deal with this, it’ll be a catastrophe again of the governments own making as they again fail a large section of society, the renters.
Robert Jenrick said earlier in the year that nobody would lose their homes due to coronavirus and if he wants to make good on that promise, he needs to extend the ban, but his record on trust this year has not been a particularly good one, we’ve seen him behaving decidedly dodgy in fact, so the pressure needs to be kept up.
Labour have called for an extension on the ban, they’ve demanded that the Tories respect their manifesto pledge to scrap section 21 evictions, which allow a landlord to evict a tenant for no reason and reform section 8 so that nobody can be evicted as a direct result of coronavirus. John McDonnell has gone further by saying that the eviction ban should be extended by up to another year and rent arrears to be cancelled. This is good, but we know from the student protests, that people power carries a lot more weight. Demand the government deal with this. Saturday will be a day of action. Acorn, the renters union have launched a campaign called Housing is Health, where they make 6 demands of the government, scrap section 21 evictions, a rent waiver for the duration of the crisis, cancel all current evictions, equality for lodgers and an extension of the current ban. Scotland as per usual are leading Westminster as they’ve already extended the ban for a further 6 months. Having so many people homeless as we head towards winter, with insufficient alternative housing to go around will make the existing housing crisis even worse. The lack of social housing and the lack of will on the part of government to change that over the last decade will bite them on the arse, but it won’t be them suffering. This is an avoidable mess, help force the government to rethink and act.
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