Warnings about the end of a government ban in England overlook the methods landlords have already been using to turf out tenants
For weeks, newspapers and campaigners have been warning of a looming evictions crisis. Of landlords free again, as of this month, to set the bailiffs on their tenants. Of hundreds of thousands of people losing their homes. Of an entire market teetering on a “cliff edge”. A terrifying prospect – except it doesn’t lie in the distance. An evictions crisis is already here and it is ripping through people’s lives.
That is not what I expected when I began writing this column. I was looking for signs of a storm brewing now that the evictions ban in England is over and it’s legal again for landlords to send in bailiffs to turf out tenants. Then I headed to Hackney, east London, to one of the Victorian townhouses lined along a roaring main road. Marching to the top, I walked into a flat whose tenants didn’t feel protected by the ban.
