The mental health of private renters is especially at risk given their uncertainty about tenancy. Marco Felici discusses how the ban on “no fault” evictions proposed in the UK’s Renters’ Rights Bill could reduce this risk.
My past work has highlighted how mental distress in the United Kingdom (UK) has increased across all housing tenure groups since 2015; but private renters have experienced the steepest increase in relative terms. Why should private renters be more vulnerable than other groups in this respect, and what does this work imply for the Renters’ Rights Bill under examination in the House of Lords?
I argue that one fundamental way in which private renters are more at risk lies in their degree of ontological security. Ontological security can be thought of as a sense of stability and continuity in one’s life. Housing plays a special role for ontological security since it generally provides shelter from the outside world, privacy, and a feeling of comfort and safety associated to the concept of home. During a crisis period that precipitates the discomforts or even the dangers of the outside world, the space of safety that housing represents for ontological security becomes more important.
It is apparent how the COVID-19 pandemic meant that, suddenly, the outside world became much more dangerous than before. The same period was also characterised by increased likelihood of losing one’s employment, or of seeing a significant reduction in income. While a change in the meaning of housing was a common experience in those years, financial strain and its consequences for the stability of one’s shelter were more severe in the private rental sector. In fact, there is evidence that private renters were especially likely to fear becoming homeless and to experience anxiety and depression during the pandemic.
This suggests that times of crisis that may negatively affect people’s earnings and employment might hit private renters harder, heightening their uncertainty about their ability to stay in their home, in turn affecting their mental health. While policy support to help people afford rent and avoid evictions in the short-term (as was the case in the UK during the pandemic) undoubtedly helps, it does not solve the more fundamental precarity that private renters experience.
One possible way to structurally alleviate this precarity is to favour homeownership. The UK has a history of such policies, such as the Right to Buy, supporting council tenants in the purchase of council houses, or the Help to Buy, an incentive for first-time buyers. But apart from the broader consequences that such schemes may have for housing markets, so long as a private rental sector exists, policy favouring homeownership alone will not address the mental health challenge for those who rent.
Germany offers an example of an alternative policy approach granting more continuity and stability in the private rental sector, and resonates with the current UK debate around the Renters’ Rights Bill. Germany has the highest share of population living in rental accommodation in the European Union (EU), at 52.8%, against an EU average of 31.6% and 35% in England. While the social housing sector is relatively small, the German private rental sector is a popular option for long-term housing because, among other reasons, tenancy contracts tend to be open-ended and evictions are limited to specific cases, such as breaches of contract, or the landlord moving into the property.
The Renters’ Rights Bill, currently under examination in the House of Lords, addresses directly the question of eviction through the proposed abolition of section 21 enabling “no fault” evictions, that is those that can be initiated without demonstrating any breach in the tenancy agreement. This proposed change is likely to reduce uncertainty about tenancy, promoting stability and continuity in housing and, as a consequence, protecting the ontological security of private renters. Both theory and empirical evidence suggest that this will structurally improve tenants’ mental health, in normal times as well as in times of crisis.
The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy.
