One in five renters expect to lose their jobs

Almost one in five renters say they expect to lose their jobs in the next three months due to the coronavirus crisis, according to housing charity Shelter.

The news comes amid growing concerns from build to rent developers and institutional landlords about the impact of the pandemic on tenants’ ability to pay rent.

Shelter said today that a poll undertaken for it by YouGov found that 19%, equivalent to an estimated 1.7 million adults nationwide, said they expect to lose their jobs in the next quarter, while one in four say that losing work will make them immediately unable to pay rent.

The government has instructed mortgage lenders to give payment holidays to homeowners who have lost income due to the coronavirus outbreak, however there is no such protection for renters, despite them having lower incomes on average.

Yesterday the London Property Alliance wrote to housing secretary Robert Jenrick calling for the government to instruct lenders to give the same leeway to landlords as they are to homeowners, because of the likelihood of losing rental income.

The government has brought in regulations temporarily banning evictions in order to give much needed certainty to renters, but leaving rented housing developers potentially without any recourse if tenants fail to pay but their funders still demand loan repayments.

So far listed residential landlords have reported that most tenants are continuing to pay rent, but it is not certain how long this will last for. Last week Grainger said it had collected 95% of rent due in March, in line with historic trends, while the week before institutional landlord the PRS Reit said in interim results that its rental income was covering all its costs.

Shelter said that Universal Credit would need to be increased significantly in order to cover most rental costs, with the shortfall between the housing element of Universal Credit and average rents in any given area being on average £400 a month outside London and £1,200 in the capital.

Polly Neate, chief executive at Shelter, said the UK was facing an onslaught of people suddenly unable to afford their rent. She said: “The government has rightly suspended evictions until June, so no one has to face homelessness in the middle of this pandemic. But millions of renters will be in dire straits further down the line without more government support.

“To avoid spiralling debt and needless evictions, the government must increase the housing element of Universal Credit so that it covers the average cost of local rents.”