When I became pregnant with my daughter in 2019, it was clear we needed to move into a bigger home. My husband put his bachelor pad, a one-bed flat in Clifton, Bristol, on the market. He’d lived there for two years, and I’d joined him for one. We decided to rent a home in Mumbles, on the western edge of Swansea Bay, where family lived nearby to help.
Not an ideal situation, but we were making it work. In an imagined future, we’d own a family home, but didn’t have any real time frame in mind. We had more pressing concerns to deal with, such as having a baby during a global pandemic. Home ownership wasn’t something I was worried about, at all, and the longer we rented for, the more, I thought, we could just rent forever.
Then I received an eviction notice in the post. “Notice to Vacate” it said on the official-looking document that arrived in a brown envelope one Friday morning in September. It gave us six months to move out, the minimum according to legislation in wales.
We’d spoken with the landlord by email at the end of July, who’d said we could rent the house for another year. This was how we’d done it every year. We didn’t have an up-to-date contract, but there was a tenuous family link – so we thought it was all fine.
It was a shock – I’d been expecting news on a different matter. And only five weeks before, we’d been told we’d have another year in the property. Now an eviction? “But I didn’t do anything wrong” kept repeating in my head – as well as, “what the hell are we going to do?”
In 2023, almost 26,000 households faced homelessness as a result of a Section 21 eviction – also known as a no-fault eviction – and had to go to their council for help. It means that they might not have done anything wrong, but the landlord wanted them out.
The latest government figures show that the number of people removed from their homes by court bailiffs as a result of Section 21 no-fault evictions is at a six-year high. When I rang the charity Shelter for advice, I was put on a waiting list with a message telling me they were receiving an extraordinarily high volume of calls.
Our notice arrived during the first week of my daughter starting school: she’d done just four days there. I’d just moved her from another school nursery to start reception in a Welsh medium school, spending hundreds on her uniform. Four school logoed cardigans? £80. Pack of red polo shirts, £20. Pinafore multipacks were £32. £28 for red summer dresses. The fortnightly “forest school” overalls I managed to find second hand for £10. Thankfully, I hadn’t yet invested in the branded bookbags and PE kit.
We’d made a lot of decisions based on living in this house. Like where our daughter would go to school, and where my husband would work. She was under specialist consultant care for a health condition, which means now we have to find a new consultant too.
When we signed the rental contract, the landlord told us he would give us the first option to buy when he was able to sell. He couldn’t at the time, as the house was tied up in a trust, complicated by feuding siblings. The landlord said if we bought it, he’d taken any rent we’d paid off the sale price. My mother-in-law really wanted us to take it. So we left the house we’d previously been renting, where we paid £700 a month, to live in this one, which cost £1,000. A significant increase, but it felt secure.
We were good tenants. We paid the rent on time. I bought a hedge trimmer to take care of the garden. It feels unjust.
When we got the notice, I started calling estate agents to ask about properties in other villages, and they told me that rentals don’t often come up. Not because there aren’t any rental properties, but because once people move in, they stay put. And I can see why – the housing market is absolutely dire. If I could sign a 10-year ironclad lease, I would. Not that there’s anything on the market we can afford – it’s all double what we were paying before.
Until now, I didn’t think there was a problem with renting our family home for life instead of owning. Our experience, until now, had been fine.
The house next door to our Mumbles home had been up for sale for years, and I took a look at it on Zoopla. The monthly mortgage would be 2.5 times more than what we’ve been renting for, at £2,500. Is it worth it to own a house? Is it even a good way to invest money? I read articles comparing high mortgage rates, to much lower rental costs. I saw social media posts of people talking about the massive increase in monthly outgoings since switching to homeowner from renter, describing it as a “prison”.
I watched clip after clip of investors talking about how they never buy their homes, they only rent. It’s a better financial decision, they explained. They invest elsewhere. You shouldn’t live in your investment.
House needs repair? Not your problem. Boiler breaks? Pipes burst? Roof leaks? The landlord pays. My grandmother rented her home as long as I knew her, for at least 20 years, and she never had any problems. She was happy, safe, and loved her rented home. There were no surprise bills. She considered it hers, and lived in it until she died.
It made sense to me, but as a family, it now feels like a risk you can’t take. Not in this market anyway. There are so many more variables to consider when you have children. Catchment areas, wraparound availability, proximity to family for help, then things like affordability and commute times.
On 1 October, we moved into another rental, in an area we’d like to settle in, so we don’t have to move schools again. Our hope is now to buy, not that we can right now because the proceeds from the flat are no longer enough for a deposit on a family home.
We might be perfect tenants, but we could still end up in the same position in another three months if a landlord decided to sell up, rent to a friend or anything at all. I know it’s not safe any more, and the eviction notice shattered the illusion that it ever was.
The Government’s move to abolish Section 21 evictions, so this kind of thing can’t happen to renters – and families – is crucial. The Renter’s Rights Bill was introduced into parliament in September, and means landlords will have to provide a valid cause to end a tenancy early.
While I acknowledge I have more resources than most evictees, it is still an entirely crushing thing to go through. I have no plans to end my life, but I can’t pretend that I haven’t found myself thinking “if I was dead I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this”. Last month, when this happened to us, it felt as if we’d lost everything, our whole lives. The Government is right to ban these inhuman evictions, which are a key driver of homelessness.
For families, the cost of eviction is more than the £5,000 it took me to hire a moving van and haul our life to another city, buy furniture, and pay a nearly £3,000 deposit on a new house. It’s the emotional and mental toil it takes on parents and children, the loss of home not just house, of community, of a support network. Of a life.
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