‘Living in fear’: the renters in England facing two-month ‘no fault’ evictions

When Kitto Haywood moved into their eighth-floor flat in Manchester last year, they planted tomatoes, strawberries, garlic, carrots and mint in pots on the balcony. It had taken five months to find an ideal home after moving from Brighton. “I finally felt like we were going to be there long-term,” says Haywood.

But over the summer, Haywood, 24, let the plants wilt. On 21 May they received a “no-fault” section 21 eviction notice from their estate agent, telling them to leave in two months. Four months later, they’re still in limbo.

For Haywood, who is unemployed due to disability and shared the place with their partner and support dog, Starry, the disruption took a significant toll. The couple say they have attended scores of viewings, but have been unsuccessful with multiple applications. Haywood suspects their disability benefit and service dog may be putting landlords off.

“We’ve really struggled to feel like we can settle down into a place … and then it just got ripped away from us again,” Haywood says, describing the feeling as “horrendous, rock bottom”.

Haywood is one of thousands of households facing a section 21 “no-fault” eviction this year – which means landlords can reclaim their property with two months’ notice without specifying a reason – before the government plans to ban the practice in England with the renters’ reform bill. As the legislation works its way through parliament, housing charities fear landlords may be pushing cases through while they still can, with a surge in people seeking help with evictions.

Citizens Advice says it helped almost 2,000 people in May with no-fault evictions, the most on record for one month and a climb of 25% on May 2022. The number of households evicted by bailiffs in England more than doubled in the first quarter of 2023 compared with the year before – to 2,252 from 1,045 households – according to Ministry of Justice data.

Tarun Bhakta, the Shelter policy manager, says section 21 “creates power for the landlord and takes power away from tenants”. Tenants “live in fear” of making requests about conditions or challenging unfair rent increases “because they know the landlord can just evict them with two months’ notice”.

Dozens of people got in touch with the Guardian in response to a callout to renters and landlords asking to hear eviction experiences. Barbara, a 55-year-old single parent whose 11-year-old daughter has just started secondary school in Somerset, has been told to leave her home by 29 November. But despite looking for almost six months – she got the original notice in May, which was invalid and has been re-issued – Barbara has been unable to find a new place locally in budget.

“It’s stressful,” she says. While they remain, the landlord has also just upped the rent from £795 to £1,045. “It’s just that feeling of being pressured and squeezed and there’s very little wriggle room.”

Barbara has tried to protect her daughter from the anxiety, but told her she might have to change schools. “She looked absolutely devastated,” Barbara says, to potentially leave a place she feels “comfortable and confident”. “For her mental health, I think it would be disastrous.”

Amid the housing crisis, “radical change is needed, affordable homes are needed,” says Barbara, a part-time counsellor who receives top-up universal credit. “The whole system needs a shake-up – the pressure and the push has got to come from the people to do that.”

The renters’ reform bill plans to end no-fault evictions, except if a landlord genuinely needs to sell up or move in, and to strengthen section 8 evictions – meaning it will be easier for landlords to evict tenants for antisocial behaviour.

Homelessness and housing charities such as Shelter, Crisis and St Mungo’s have welcomed the proposal, but the National Residential Landlords Association says it could lead landlords to exit the market and “exacerbate the rental housing supply crisis”.

Related: Renters’ reform must close loopholes for unfair evictions, campaigners say

Jeff Atkinson, a 57-year-old landlord in Surrey, says if section 21 is abolished he will stop renting his four properties. “It’s an instant way of getting rid of a serious problem,” he says.

He says he’s used section 21 evictions four times as a last resort across 25 years as a landlord, for instance when tenants were damaging the property or refusing to pay full rent.

But Atkinson supports reform to section 21, for instance by offering some way of rewarding tenants for long stays, such as giving them an extra statutory month of notice for each year they stay in a property.

Atkinson says he is considering selling his properties to invest in the stock market to achieve more stable returns rather than risking [his] capital. He says abolishing no-fault evictions shows the “anti-landlord sentiment” of the government: “If section 21 goes, I go.”

Bhakta, of Shelter, says there’s not “really strong evidence as yet of a mass exodus of landlords” over the bill.

Sharon Wright, 70, a landlord, faced property damage to her three-bed rental in Surrey – for instance a smashed fence – so served the tenants a section 21 notice at the end of last year.

“I thought, maybe I’d get them out now while I still can,” she says. Wright says she then thought: “Perhaps that’s a bit mean, expecting them to find somewhere to live over Christmas,” so gave the family four months instead of two. She says insurance payments did not cover the damages so the “stressful” experience left her out of pocket.

Wright says she sympathises with tenants. “I was a renter myself when I was young, and I was chucked out of a shared house when I was working as a staff nurse … we were all very upset so I do understand both sides of it. But from my point of view now as a landlady, I feel like, it’s my house, if I’m not happy with what’s going on – as long as I give a decent amount of notice – I should be able to get people out.”

Wright, who says she is left-leaning politically, worries getting rid of section 21 will mean some landlords exit the market and make the housing crisis worse.

Eventually, unable to find a new home, Haywood and their partner moved back in with their parents – outside Manchester to a village in Shropshire – which makes them feel “anxious about how long we’re going to be here”.

While Haywood’s future remains uncertain, their belongings are mostly being kept in storage for £136.80 a month. Haywood was devastated that their tomato plant, which still had fruit ripening on the vine, had to be thrown out.

“It’s the not knowing how long we will be here that’s the worst part,” they say. “Everything is on hold.”