Generation Rent and members of the Renters Reform Coalition handed a letter into 10 Downing Street today to urge Boris Johnson to end unfair evictions for good in 2022 and announce a Renters’ Reform Bill in next Tuesday’s Queens Speech.

After six months of no evictions taking place at all, courts have reopened and landlords can resume the legal process of evicting their tenants. 

Despite the government's insistence that "the most egregious" cases will be prioritised, tenants can still be booted out without a reason, with no ability to appeal it and only six weeks' grace if they face "extreme hardship".

This is possible because of Section 21, the law that the government promised to abolish last year. Today it is exactly one year since the government closed it's consultation on proposals to change the law, and we are still waiting for it to publish the Renters Reform Bill to make it all happen. Join our campaign to get Section 21 scrapped.

There has been a flurry of bad news for renters over the past few days. 

• According to Homelet, rents have risen by 8.2% in the past year.
• One in five Londoners has no disposable income at the end of the month, according to the Centre for London, which has coined the term "Endies" in their report, "Hollow Promise".
• Shelter has found that the Bank of Mum and Dad is shelling out £23,000 on average to help their kids into a home of their own. 
• The National Housing Federation has found that a first time buyer today has to raise a deposit 10 times bigger than their parents would have - after taking inflation into account.
• And this morning, it's the turn of the Office for National Statistics to tell us that house prices have jumped 13.5% for first time buyers in the past year. That's another £5000 to find this past year alone - and the picture is even worse in London.

Politicians are waking up to the fact that the 9 million private renters being shut out of home ownership and social housing need a stable, decent and affordable home. Only last week the government announced its support for a Bill to end revenge evictions. 

But we need to keep the pressure on - both to reform private renting and build more genuinely affordable homes. To do that we need your voice - so please sign up to the campaign.

Generation Rent was very happy to attend the launch of a new report on electrical safety in the private rented sector last week, entitled ‘Home Improvement: Tackling Poor Electrical Safety in the Private Rented Sector’.

Alex Hilton from Generation Rent supporting the All Party Parliamentary Group on the Private Rented Sector in calling for tougher landlord regulation

You can see the BBC News item here