The Housing crisis in UK

November 5 2017

The heart and soul of Thatcherism is section 21 of The Housing Act 1988.

Without that there would be no housing crisis. High rent was not a problem in the past because fair rents were imposed and in line with Housing Benefit payments. No one got thrown out of their houses unless they did something wrong. Not now, thanks to section 21 no reason is need to evict a private sector tenant. So why won't labour talk about it? Why won't they repeal it? Why didn't they repeal it for the 13 years they had the chance?

The housing crisis is created by landlord MPs who also come up woith all sorts of other reasons for it. The main ones being immigration and excessive breeding by tenants. These landlord MPs are a majority in parliament. Most Tories are landlords (ore their wives) but the other parties ar3e stuffed with them. Owning property and letting it our is an easy thing to do. The hard bit is borrowing the money to do so. hard for most of us but not established landlords. The lending criteria - ostensibly to prevent another financial crisis assists landlords to buy as against first time buyers. Indeed the help to buy scheme is designed to stop first time buyers competing with landlords who buy older and cheaper properties.

The real cause of the Housing crisis though is none of the above it is section 21 of the Housing Act 1988. This section - never talked about by any MPs of any party you will notice - is the heart and soul of British capitalism and Thatcherism in particular. It was protected for 13 years by the Labour Party. It has been protected by the House of Lords and the Supreme Court. It has been declared unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights. A decision ignored by the UK Government and Courts.

Section 21 underpins the Housing Crisis and gives landlords in the private sector the power to serve a notice requiring possession of the property whenever they like. All they have to do is give the tenant two months to leave. If the tenant does not a court must make a possession order. No grounds are needed other than that the notice has been served. If it is served then a possession order is made. Bailiffs can use force to remove a tenant who objects. If this section was repealed - a ten minute job in Parliament (if you could get it past the landlords) - then a landlord would need grounds to get a possession order: rent arrears, damage to the property, criminal behaviour, anti social behaviour, violence etc.

It's funny though that you never hear Shelter mentioning this (landlords).
You never hear MPs mention section 21: landlords.
You never hear newspaper columnists mentioning this: landlords or ignorant.

Anyone who wants to end oppression, misery, homelessness and Thatcherism should be in
favour of repealing section 21 of The Housing Act 1988.

Funny no one who could repeal it wants to - Landlords all.