My Lords, I declare my position as vice-chair of the Local Government Association. I begin by agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, regarding Small Business Saturday and the importance of doing whatever we can to support small independent businesses. In her speech, she referred to unsatisfactory tenants who are not paying the rent, but some of those people will be one and the same. Many small business owners and self-employed people have, in Covid-related circumstances, found themselves in situations where they are unable to pay the rent through no fault of their own. As the Minister set out in her introduction, what we are talking about here is a “winter pause”.
Of course, it is welcome that people will not be thrown out on to the streets until, effectively, 25 January, but, eventually, many of these people who face eviction now are still going to be facing eviction in January. Based on the campaigning group Shelter’s figures, there were already 442,000 adults in rent arrears in
July—double the figure from last year. Many of those people will eventually have to go to their local council seeking emergency accommodation. In 2019-20, local authorities spent £1.2 billion on temporary housing for homeless people.
Looking beyond 25 January, my question to the Minister is: what will the Government do to ensure both that people are not evicted and, for those who are inevitably evicted, that local authorities can afford to pay for their accommodation? We should think about where that money is going because, last year, 87% of it went to private landlords. This is taking public money and pumping it into private hands.
The Huffington Post today notes that a company is advertising that home owners can get
“‘exceptional returns’ by turning their properties into HMOs (houses of multiple occupation) and hostels.”
It reported:
“The company made £1.8m in profit in 2018-2019 on revenue of £22m.”
Huge windfall sums are being made by private landlords through a housing policy based on privatisation, with right to buy and the idea that we will rely on private builders to supply our housing stock. Will the Government look to ensure that we have genuinely affordable public housing for people to live in securely, free from fear of eviction permanently?
2.25 pm