[Benjamin]

It's a warm Wednesday morning in August and mother of six, Carly, is trying to take off her front door to remove the fridge from her home.

Along with her 14-year-old son, she has an hour to frantically move furniture to a van before bailiffs arrive and lock them out of their house for good.

Carly says she has nowhere to go, and does not know where she and her six children, aged between seven months and 16, will sleep tonight.

“I might have to sofa surf,” she says.

Carly has lived in this privately rented, four-bedroom house, in Enfield, north London, since 2018. She was paying £1,900 per month.

Last year, the landlord said he wanted to increase her rent by £100 - an amount she could not afford.

In November 2023, a court issued a possession order but Carly says Enfield Council advised her to stay put until she received further notice from the landlord. She was given two weeks' notice of eviction.

The impact has been extremely distressing for her and her children.

“The stress alone is unimaginable, I wouldn’t put this on anyone,” she said.

“It’s been a nightmare."

In the first three months of 2024, there were 4,600 households claiming homelessness support from their local council.

Carly is one of an increasing number of Londoners facing homelessness after a private tenancy ends.

Currently, a tenant can be evicted with a Section 21 no-fault eviction notice after a fixed term tenancy ends if there is a written contract or during a tenancy with no fixed end date.

Tracks have been made to change this. The previous government promised to abolish no-fault evictions but the Renters Reform Bill failed to become law before the general election.

Now Labour is in government, it has promised to prioritise the issue of homelessness.

Rents have been rising in the UK, but in London in recent years, a demand for properties has outweighed supply and, according to Rightmove, the average monthly rent in May was £2,652, a record high.

In the first three months of 2024, there were 4,600 households claiming homelessness support from their local council following the end of private rental tenancy, a 12% increase on the same period in 2023, campaign group Renters Reform Coalition (RRC) said after analysing government data, external.

Carly was paying £1,900 per month to live in a privately rented, four-bedroom house in Enfield
Without a home or anywhere to settle, Carly and her children are preparing to spend the day in the local council offices to apply for emergency housing.

Generally, councils can only help people with accommodation once they are actually homeless.

For Carly, that means she's had to put all of her things in storage - another extra cost she cannot afford having had to borrow money to pay for it - and faces a long wait with her children.

"You wouldn't want this for anyone, it's scary for the children," she said.

Sarmad Dar, who has run a removal company for 10 years, is taking Carly's things to a storage unit today and says the number of evictions he goes to has increased, particularly since the pandemic.

He says he now estimates eviction removals make up about half of his workload.

"These days there's too many evictions," he said.
"I believe that the reason is the rent prices are ridiculously high".

Deputy prime minister and housing secretary, Angela Rayner, said: “Work is already under way to stop people from becoming homeless in the first place.

"This includes delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable homebuilding in a generation, abolishing Section 21 no-fault evictions and a multi-million pound package to provide homes for families most at risk of homelessness.”

In response, RRC said: "We need to see renters' rights soon, but the government need to get it right rather than rushing it through."

Carly's landlord and estate agents acting on behalf of her landlord declined to comment, but Enfield Council said that Carly and her family were allocated rooms within the day, and assigned a case worker.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ylvy84pq8o

[Mystic Mock]

This country needs to put a cap on how much a Landlord can charge for rent.

Because some Landlords are basically scamming their tennants.

[Vanessa]

Originally Posted by Mystic Mock

This country needs to put a cap on how much a Landlord can charge for rent.

Because some Landlords are basically scamming their tennants.

Definitely I'm renting privately and it's a complete nightmare.

[Mystic Mock]

Originally Posted by Vanessa

Definitely I'm renting privately and it's a complete nightmare.

I dread to think what you're going through in London tbh.

[Ammi]

…this is very sad, very scary, very wrong and how families can so easily become seperated…I hope there is some immediate intervention and that Carly is able to keep her children together in their family unit…

[Livia]

She should drag the kids over to Calais, row back in a dinghy and get a free house.

[UserSince2005]

Why's she got 6 kids when she can't even afford one?

Hope social services rescue those kids and she can sofa surf by herself.

[rusticgal]

Well she needs to go straight to the Council offices or look for somewhere with cheaper rent...

Where is the father/s...no mention.

[user104658]

The even bigger issue here is that in many cases, it's not even a matter of money. Rental availability is shocking with often dozens, if not hundreds, "competing" for a place to stay... so money totally out of the equation... if your landlord decides to sell up/dies/something happens to your house like structural damage in a storm that they can't afford to fix... you might end up without a home for some amount of time EVEN IF you have plenty of money for rent. There might simply be nowhere to rent.

We wavered over whether to go ahead and buy or just continue renting but rent a bigger/nicer place for years, wondering if it would be better to keep the flexibility of being able to move around that you have (or SHOULD have) with renting, but have now been looking to buy exclusively because after going for a couple of nice rentals in the area and failing to get them, we looked into it and found out that the last one we looked at and applied for had 108 applicants. One hundred and eight!! We're not even particularly close to the bigger population centres... it's mental.

And then we realised, if our current rental (which is too small anyway) was to unexpectedly fall through like for one of the reasons above... we'd be in a pretty bad situation, because it turns out, you can't just go and rent somewhere else any more.

Meanwhile house prices continue to drop and we have a massive deposit saved because our current rent is, to be fair, absolutely rock bottom - they haven't upped it a penny since 2014 . So it's a buyer's market I guess.

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Quantum Boy

The even bigger issue here is that in many cases, it's not even a matter of money. Rental availability is shocking with often dozens, if not hundreds, "competing" for a place to stay... so money totally out of the equation... if your landlord decides to sell up/dies/something happens to your house like structural damage in a storm that they can't afford to fix... you might end up without a home for some amount of time EVEN IF you have plenty of money for rent. There might simply be nowhere to rent.

We wavered over whether to go ahead and buy or just continue renting but rent a bigger/nicer place for years, wondering if it would be better to keep the flexibility of being able to move around that you have (or SHOULD have) with renting, but have now been looking to buy exclusively because after going for a couple of nice rentals in the area and failing to get them, we looked into it and found out that the last one we looked at and applied for had 108 applicants. One hundred and eight!! We're not even particularly close to the bigger population centres... it's mental.

And then we realised, if our current rental (which is too small anyway) was to unexpectedly fall through like for one of the reasons above... we'd be in a pretty bad situation, because it turns out, you can't just go and rent somewhere else any more.

Meanwhile house prices continue to drop and we have a massive deposit saved because our current rent is, to be fair, absolutely rock bottom - they haven't upped it a penny since 2014 . So it's a buyer's market I guess.

Oh god absolutely buy if you can

[user104658]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Oh god absolutely buy if you can

We've been looking to buy for 18 months now, still holding out for the "perfect one" but ending more and more towards "will accept close-enough" ... while we're restricted by school transport area etc. I don't think we're ever going to get ideal house + ideal location. But ideally, once we've bought I don't particularly want to move again .

[smudgie]

She was allocated rooms that day, so no sofa surfing needed.
Just as well as it would have to be a bloody big sofa for seven people.

[arista]

Originally Posted by UserSince2005

Why's she got 6 kids when she can't even afford one?

Hope social services rescue those kids and she can sofa surf by herself.

Yes why no Dad
is she that bad...............................

[Oliver_W]

Originally Posted by arista

Yes why no Dad
is she that bad...............................

Is whatever happened between her and the father(s) the children's fault?

She probably is a prick, but that doesn't mean her kids deserve to be split up and sent to different foster homes or whatever.