Oct

NEW: Shelter and NRLA ‘find common ground’ during joint podcast

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Shelter and the NRLA have found common ground in their desire for ending the freeze on Local Housing Allowance and the urgent need for more social housing.

Speaking on the NRLA’s Listen Up Landlords podcast compared by Richard Blanco, Ben Beadle and Shelter chief executive Polly Neate agreed that the PRS was hosting many tenants who would be better off in the social sector.

“The growth of the PRS is a symptom of the neglect of the social housing sector and that’s part of the reason why there are a considerable number of tenants in the PRS who really are struggling to afford their rent,” said Neate.

“We really need the government to look urgently at housing benefits and local housing allowance because otherwise, we are going to see people falling out from the private rented sector into homelessness, and that certainly isn’t what I want to see and I am confident it isn’t what landlords want to see either.”

Better served

Beadle agreed there were probably people in the PRS that would be better served in the social housing sector, but he added: “That doesn’t mean that the private rented sector needs to shrink as a result.

“We are in the midst of a supply crisis entirely of the government’s own making, because they recognise that the private rented sector is picking up the slack and rather than to provide alternative accommodation, they’ve chosen to tax the pants off it.”

Listen to the podcast.

The groups also shared the wish for a better-resourced court system to deal with legitimate evictions, but the consensus did not stretch to the abolition of Section 21.

Neate maintained that the abolition of no-fault evictions in Scotland had not negatively impacted tenants while Beadle explained: “Section 21 is simply a tool for getting your property back. Why would we evict a good tenant?”

Read more about Section 21 notices being abolished.

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