The popular press would have us believe that landlords all over the country are ruthlessly evicting tenants left, right and centre. In fact this is not true at all. Figures released by the English Housing Survey have show that tenant evictions have fallen from 9 per cent to just 7 per cent since 2011/12, which makes a mockery of repeated claims by housing charity, Shelter, that evil landlords are engaging in so-called ‘revenge evictions’ on a regular basis.
Most Evictions are Legitimate says RLA
According to research carried out by the Residential Landlords Association, most evictions happen because a landlord needs to sell the property or move back in, the property needs extensive repairs, or because the tenant has not paid the rent, all of which are perfectly legitimate reasons.
RLA Accuses Shelter of Scaremongering
Richard Jones, Policy Director at the Residential Landlords Association, has called Shelter’s recent campaign to highlight revenge evictions as ‘scaremongering’.
“The official figures show quite clearly a fall in the number of tenants having their tenancies terminated and by far most of these are for perfectly good reasons,” he says.
“Shelter’s campaign on so called revenge evictions is totally inaccurate and irresponsible. To severely restrict landlords’ right to regain possession as Shelter advocates would severely damage confidence in the sector. This would reduce supply at a time of high demand causing more people to be homeless and we thought Shelter is all about reducing the number of homeless. In the past, Shelter have put out highly questionable statistics, which bare little resemblance to reality which we again see today.”
