According to Generation Rent, which uses Department for Levelling Up figures on statutory homeless, 34,130 households were assessed as being threatened with homelessness, therefore were owed a prevention duty.
The latter is up 5.8 per cent from the same quarter last year.
This includes 6,170 households threatened with homelessness via a Section 21 notice, which is up 34 per cent on the same period the year before.
Generation Rent added that between Q2 2019 and Q3 2022, 59,260 households were owed a homelessness duty by their local authority by being served with a valid Section 21 notice.
The government said last year that Section 21 notices would be scrapped as part of reform to the rental sector.
‘Backdoor to no-fault evictions’
The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Committee report earlier this month that repealing Section 21 notices would give tenants greater security of tenure, but the proposed sales and possessions grounds could create a “backdoor to no-fault evictions”.
Alicia Kennedy, director of Generation Rent, said: “The ability of landlords to evict tenants without needing a reason ruins lives by silencing tenants living in mouldy homes and, as these figures show, causing thousands of cases of homelessness every month. Nearly four years ago, the government committed to ending these unfair Section 21 evictions but we’re still waiting for the Renters Reform Bill.
“That’s too late for the nearly 60,000 households who have faced homelessness as a result of this law since April 2019. Life in the private rented sector will not improve until Section 21 is abolished and tenants have security of tenure.”
