Tenants at mercy of landlords selling up
I FEEL I need to draw your attention to a housing issue which is beginning to occur in Cornwall and which is affecting several families in my local area and others of my acquaintance.
The pandemic has made people aware that they do not need to
‘go to work’ but can work just as easily at home. As a consequence, the housing market in Cornwall has boomed as people realise that we have been less affected by the pandemic than many areas, recent TV programmes have highlighted Cornwall as a great place and, of course, it is a beautiful place to live.
This is very beneficial to house owners, especially those who have ‘bought to rent’ – they can now sell those houses at an inflated price. But, it leaves their tenants with nowhere to go because the knock-on effect of this housing boom means that there are fewer houses to rent and more people looking for a rentable property – not to mention higher rental fees as landlords realise that less rentable properties means a bigger pool of tenants chasing fewer properties. The less well-off and more vulnerable families have become the victims.
Some that I know of locally have been in their property for 10 years or more, the children are settled, their friends are here and now they do not know where they will end up.
If they work locally and want their children to stay at the local school, they will also incur heavier transport costs (to say nothing of the ‘carbon footprint’!)
Added to this, for many wellestablished families their pets are part of the family, but more and more rentable properties now exclude pets, making it even more difficult to find a place to rent.
I believe this is a county-wide problem which will increase if property owners continue to be allowed to evict tenants with three months’ notice, leaving them to find somewhere else in a diminishing market, in the midst of a pandemic.
I might point out that it was the Conservative government which ‘sold off’ council houses leaving people at the mercy of private landlords who do not have the same strictures put upon them. Council housing in the past at least gave people some stability and some rights as tenants.
Barbara Hough St Eval, Cornwall