New data from Threshold reveals private renters in desperate need of assistance

The national housing charity, Threshold, has released a new report revealing that the organisation has, on average, answered one call every 20 minutes from private renters facing eviction in the first nine months of the year.

Threshold’s impact report for the third quarter of the year shows how an average of 472 private renters a month, facing eviction, looked for help from Threshold between January and September.

The charity supported a total of 8,835 households between July and September, preventing 1,121 households from becoming homeless, including 1,758 adults and 1,185 children.

12,000 calls were answered by advisers and over 2,500 web-chats were replied to around this issue also.

During this period, 1,384 private renters sought help from the charity resulting from receiving an eviction notice from their landlord. 60% of these notices issued were due to the landlord's intent to sell the property inhabited. According to Threshold advisors 46% of these notices were invalid.

Speaking about the recent report, Threshold CEO John-Mark McCafferty said: “In the first nine months of the year, over 50% of queries received by Threshold concerned security of tenure and tenancy termination. This level of queries surpassed the number received on the same issue for the entirety of 2021 and was over double the number received in 2020.

“We are continuing to see a large exodus of landlords from the private rental sector, resulting in fewer properties available to rent and fewer housing alternatives for households who are facing eviction,” McCafferty added.

“Given the increasingly dire situation, it was necessary for the Government to introduce a ban on evictions to allow for short- and medium-term solutions to be implemented to combat the growing rental crisis.”

A widely requested winter eviction ban is currently in place nationally until April 1, 2023.

Under this legislation, all notices to quit given over the period of this emergency ban will be held-off until at least the end of March 2023. While eviction notices can still be issued to tenants, while this temporary ban is in place, these tenants cannot be evicted until after it comes to an end.

When these evictions can even be considered, the timing of the eviction will be dependant on a number of factors, including the date the notice was served on and tenancy length.

This legislation also allows tenants who were issued notices to quit before the ban to stay in their dwelling until at least April 1.

It's been specified by the Department that there won't be a “cliff-edge” on April 1. Evictions after that date are set to take place on a phased basis between April 1 and June 18 - based on the date the notice was issued and the tenancy length.

The Threshold CEO additionally said that it is “absolutely vital that the Government uses the time of this eviction ban to develop and implement measures to not only slow the rate of evictions being served on private renters, but also to increase the availability of affordable and secure homes."