“By limiting longer tenancies to new purpose-built private rented homes, the government has offered renters the bare minimum. The institutional investors building homes for rent are already keen to encourage long term tenants, and it will typically be the better-off who can afford to rent them.
“The vast majority of tenants will remain in existing properties, with no certainty over their home beyond the next 12 months.
“The government should incentivise all landlords to offer tenants greater security by putting a cost on the use of evictions where the tenant has done nothing wrong. Only last week, the US city of Portland, Oregon, did exactly that.
“Until the government builds enough to overcome the housing shortage, high rents will continue to stifle living standards, and ambition here is also lacking. Renters on stagnant wages need homes that cost no more than a third of their income, not ones let at 80% of the market rent, with a sticker that says ‘affordable’.”
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