Section 21 Evictions

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Lyn Brown

Thursday 6th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Wera Hobhouse]

On a point of order, Mr Hollobone. I failed to draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests, and I do so now. I apologise that I failed to do so.

[Lyn Brown]

This might be the time to do mine, too. Thank you, Mr Hollobone.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am always delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), who always makes pertinent and important remarks. To carry on from where he left off, let me say that I hope the Minister hears the plea from my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) and ensures that when his council asks for powers to improve housing stock and stop tenants being exploited, it will receive the same powers that have been extended to my council. That would be a jolly good thing for the Minister to offer this afternoon. I realise that the civil servants behind her might suggest that she should not act so radically and precipitately, but I genuinely believe that it would be very welcome. It would show that she had listened to the debate, understood it and taken positive action.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for securing the debate. She has already accomplished a huge amount in the fight to secure safe and affordable homes for all, and the debate is an important continuation of that campaign. I think that I can say without fear of contradiction that the housing crisis is more severe in Newham than almost anywhere in the country. We have an enormous shortage of affordable homes, with almost 26,000 households on the council’s waiting list. The average time for a family to wait for a three-bedroom home in Newham at the moment is 13 years, and it has been higher.

I want to deviate slightly from what I was going to say to talk about my family, which was cleared from a slum in West Silvertown in 1963. I was born a little earlier. We moved into a beautiful two-bedroom flat overlooking the dying docks. It was that flat—that secure accommodation —that everything else stemmed from. My mum and dad had stability. They both worked locally, to provide for us. That home, however small and inadequate it was, gave me the ability to study, to build community support and to continue with my education in just two schools. So many children in my constituency do not have those privileges now. They have to move from school to school, or face journeys of more than an hour a day, which their families can ill afford, in order to continue having the same friends and teachers and some stability in their lives.

Instability is creating enormous difficulties for such families, and that will go on for years. Often it means that they are not registered with doctors. Often it means that the children are not fulfilling their potential in education. Often the implications of what has happened to them go on into the future. I could try a Conservative argument: there will be a cost effect for the families and for the state in years to come. Children who do not fulfil their potential at school will not fulfil their potential in a functioning economy. The children and parents who are not getting the primary healthcare they need often go on to cost the NHS more in years to come. It is a false economy not to invest in our families, and if that investment had not been made for me, I would not be here today and my little sister would not be a solicitor. It would not have happened and we would not have been able to accomplish what we have. I want the same for my constituents as was given to me.

In Newham, like many other places, the social housing stock has declined massively because of right to buy. The council did not see the return from that—the Treasury did—and it has not been able to borrow as cheaply in order to replace the stock. Half of the local homes bought under right to buy are owner-occupied, but the other half—5,000 in Newham—have made their way into the private rented sector, where rents have shot up. Rents in Newham increased by 47% in just five years between 2011 and 2016.

[Wera Hobhouse]

The lack of social housing is at the root of this huge problem. We should not play a blame game here, because the problem has increased under successive Governments. Does the hon. Lady not agree that it is now for all of us to work together to massively rebuild our social housing stock? Otherwise, we will not solve the crisis.

[Lyn Brown]

I am absolutely fully committed to building social housing and ensuring that the people I represent have proper access to it and to stability, because a single mum in my constituency, working full time on low pay with two children, living over a chicken shop, will spend 73% or more of her income on the private sector rent on even a cheap flat like that—73% or more of income, before paying for food, heating, travel or clothes.

Evictions from the private sector are now by far the biggest cause of homelessness in Newham, and homelessness is increasing rapidly. Some 14,611 people are now homeless in Newham, which is one in every 24 residents—the highest rate in the country. I genuinely believe that section 21 is one of the reasons behind the rising rents that have led to such a horrifying level of homelessness in my constituency.

I want to mention one story—I should have taken up the offer from my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and nipped back to the office to get a few more. I want to tell hon. Members about Martin, who lives with his wife and two children in a rental property in Newham. The property had not been properly maintained and is not fit for a family to live in. The bathroom had tiles falling off the walls when they used the shower, and the ceiling was at risk of falling in under the weight of water that was sitting in the plaster. In his son’s bedroom, water streamed down the walls and through the ceiling, damaging the laptop that he needed to do his schoolwork. The landlord promised to act because Martin had repeatedly gone back to him in desperation, but the repairs were never done. Instead, Martin and his family were served with a section 21 eviction notice in August this year. He was given absolutely no reason why the family needed to move.

Martin is still in the property, resisting the eviction, with support from the London Renters Union. I pay tribute to the work that that organisation does in supporting many of my constituents who find themselves in similar situations. The family have been faced with illegal tactics from the landlord. He regularly sends his family members and agents to the house to try to make them leave—they try to bully them into leaving. Frankly, if it had been other constituents of mine who I am in regular contact with, that tactic would have worked by now and I would be arguing with my council over intentionality.

Martin believes, as I do, that this is a revenge eviction. By demanding their right to live in a home fit for human habitation, Martin and his family have simply made themselves more trouble than they were worth. The landlord knows that he can rent the property to someone else, probably for a higher figure, and can just sit it out and wait until they start to complain about the conditions, and then he will go through the same cycle again.

It is so distressing for a working family who are on a low income. They have had to fill out a homelessness application to the council. Given their financial circumstances, they may not be able to access any other private accommodation in Newham, because letting agent fees, deposits and rents are quite simply extortionate. Vulnerable and poor families are paying the price for a housing system that unfairly empowers landlords to carry out no-fault evictions. Our councils and our council tax payers are paying the price too. We desperately need to bring homelessness down and improve housing conditions in the private rented sector. For that to happen, section 21 just has to go.