241

of 500 signatures

To Michael Gove

As a family of four, with 3 generations living together in a rented property for 9 years, paying our rent in full and on time, imagine our shock to receive a Section 21 ("No fault") eviction notice just before Christmas. It was hand posted through our letter box, and it told us to get out by January 19th 2024. What a lovely Christmas present for us all!

As a family, we cannot afford another rental property anywhere in our local area. My daughter works part time so she can care for her children, and I am due to retire this year. We were told we would only get help to find affordable social housing if we stayed put in our property and waited for our case to come to court. Our council informed us that there is no social housing, and that if we didn’t wait for the matter to go to court, we would be deemed to be making ourselves homeless and receive no help at all.

The estate agent evicting us has applied to the courts for us to pay THEIR costs of removing us from the property. The only thing we are guilty of is being naive to think it couldn’t happen to us as model tenants.

This has broken - and broken up - our family. My daughter cannot afford rent on a 3 bedroom property. I have to find somewhere cheap on my own for my retirement. We are still currently living in no man’s land waiting for our case to go to court, and we are packing our stuff up to get it into storage, as my daughter and her 2 children must go into temporary accommodation where she’s been told she’ll have to buy takeaways to eat or live on pot noodles. We feel scapegoated, worried we asked for too many repairs on the property, and we feel that we were given the Section 21 at least partly because of my imminent retirement. Yet we payed for guarantors and background checks as well as a big deposit on this house when we moved in. We suspect that the estate agent will find excuses not to give us our deposit back. Section 21 evictions are tearing so many families apart, who are already struggling with making ends meet during the cost of living crisis.

Petition text

Abolish Section 21 No Fault evictions. They're only used to get renters out of accommodation so higher rents can be charged, that the current tenant can't afford. Tenants evicted with Section 21 should never be brought to court to pay the costs of their own evictions!

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Abolish Section 21 No Fault evictions!

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