Does Sir Keir Starmer with all his experience as former head of the CPS believe that the courts can process 3% more eviction and possession cases each and every month for the next 99 months until October 2028? If not why is he selling his inept and disastrous housing policy over all broadcast news media today?
Keir Starmer has proved his incompetence with his first major policy initiative, the 5-point plan on housing in response to COVID19 as not only does he fail to challenge the current government on their mishandling and ignorance of what an eviction ban actually means, he compounds this Tory knee-jerk policy failure by advocating a much greater extension of it
The 3-month Conservative eviction ban is a disastrous policy for all renters and even for landlords and has monumental adverse impacts. Starmer instead of challenging the Tory eviction ban wants to extend this idiotic policy to 9 months in order to buy time as the basis for his other four points.
Why is the Tory eviction ban so disastrous?
This question has not been asked by the Labour Party and its plethora of advisors in astonishing ignorance of what it means which is a systemic catastrophe for all rented housing, renters and landlords alike whether in the private rented sector or the social rented sector.
- The lack of Housing Moves
The eviction ban does not just prohibit evictions or forced moves, it prohibits almost all housing moves including voluntary ones. IF an existing tenant can’t move out then a new tenant can’t move in and the other side of that coin applies as a new tenant can’t move in if an existing tenant can’t move out.
Most will be familiar with the argument of bed-blocking in the NHS. If there is no suitable home for an inpatient to leave hospital then a new patient can’t have their operation and become an inpatient. The eviction ban directly creates the same problem and this is a house-blocking problem. The existing tenant who wanted to move out cannot move out to another rented house as the tenant they were due to replace can’t move as his or her intended new property is not available. The prospective tenant who was to move in is thus blocked from doing so.
On 26 March when the 3-month eviction ban was imposed by the current government guidance was released on housing moves which says that all moves whether in buying or renting a house should be stopped.
The eviction ban is not just a prohibition on forced moves such as eviction it is a prohibition on almost all moves. The rented housing system grinds to a halt as all housing moves effectively stop.
- Quantifying the prohibition on housing moves
- In England alone we typically see 30,000 housing moves in the social rented sector each month and so a 3-month ban sees near 90,000 housing moves deferred and disallowed.
- In the private rented sector we typically see 120,000 housing moves each month so the 3-month ban effectively prohibits another 360,000 housing moves.
These figures come from official data which says in England the combined moves of council and housing associations is 360,000 or so per year and the PRS figure is derived from the average length of stay in the PRS from English Housing Survey figures. These figures have remained broadly constant for many years and entirely valid.
In total 450,000 housing moves in the SRS and PRS don’t take place with the current 3-month ban or 150,000 housing moves per calendar month in the period 26 March 2020 to 25 June 2020.
- The problem with no housing moves is systemic catastrophe
The up to 450,000 housing moves denied between 26 March and 25 June means firstly that the day after the current ban is proposed to end 26 June 2020 we see 450,000 added to the demand for moves. This 450,000 adds to the normal 150,000 housing moves expected between 26 June and 25 July and that is 4 times the normal number of housing moves wanted or a 300% increase in rented housing demand.
IF the rented housing market can increase the number of housing moves by 3% each month which is a huge increase in practical and cost terms (and higher than the growth of COVID19 testing in April which government claim was a huge increase!) it will take until April 2023 and 33 months to clear the 450,000 backlog created by the current 3-month ban … all things being equal.
For each month of a ban it takes 11 months to revert to normal with a 3% increase in allocations and so the Labour Party proposal to extend the current Conservative ban to 9 months would take 99 months of huge growth to get the English rented housing market back to what it was pre COVID19.
However, all things are not equal and you can only increase those who move into housing by 3% per month if you increase those moving out by 3% each month.
YET the eviction ban also creates a huge backlog in the courts come 26 June 2020 as the courts will have to process (a) the pre-existing cases; (b) the normal cases in any 3 month period; and (c) the massive increase in COVID19 new cases.
Does Sir Keir Starmer with all his experience as former head of the CPS believe that the courts can process 3% more eviction and possession cases each and every month for the next 99 months?
That is what his policy means and needs to happen to enable a 3% per month increase in new rented allocations to clear the 1,350,000 backlog his 9 month eviction ban would create and it is a very pertinent question as it exposes how incredibly naïve and disingenuous his own policy is, a policy he has been selling over the broadcast media all day today.
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For more on the disastrous nature of any length of eviction ban see here
For how the Labour Party advisors who developed this even more disastrous policy for Starmer see here.
For a quick overview of how Starmer has been flogging this dead horse policy and wholly ignoring the disastrous premise of it in the eviction ban extension try this from LBC this morning:
Not one word about the efficacy of the eviction ban is there? It is all about a response to the kicking that Starmer has got on social media about prioritising landlords over renters and no rent relief ban. Note too how his answers in the penultimate tweet reveal Starmer thinks that only the private tenant does not get full housing benefit and the social rented tenant does!
Speye Joe 
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