More than 5,000 households who contacted housing charity Threshold in the last quarter were at risk of losing their home and possibly entering homelessness, according to a new report.
On Tuesday, Threshold published its quarterly impact report, which covered the period of July to September 2023.
During this time, the organisation supported over 900 households to stay in their homes or secure alternative housing, preventing them from entering homelessness, with 1,333 adults and 939 children supported.
Of the new households who contacted Threshold in the third quarter, 5,318 were at risk of losing their homes and possibly entering homelessness. For the third consecutive quarter, most of these renters were at risk because their landlord wished to sell the home.
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Overall, almost 9,000 households were supported by Threshold’s frontline advisers on wider issues regarding their tenancy. More than half of the main queries in this quarter related to tenancy terminations, an increase from 38 per cent in the same quarter last year.
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John Mark-McCafferty, chief executive of Threshold, said these figures show there is “still a lot of work to be done to tackle the housing crisis”.
“It is very worrying, if not surprising at this stage, to see that one of the main challenges facing tenants continues to be tenancy terminations and more specifically, termination as a result of landlords selling homes,” he said.
“While our incredible team prevented over 900 households from entering homelessness, the threat – and reality – of tenancy termination continues to be a very real one for many households across the country.”
The quarterly report also showed an increasing number of tenant queries relating to poor standards of accommodation.
Overall, seven per cent of queries from July to September concerned standards of accommodation, up from 4.5 per cent in the previous 2023.
There is a minimum set of legal standards that landlords must abide by, and tenants are acting within their rights by expecting that these standards are met.
In order to combat the growing number of queries regarding accommodation standards, including issues regarding mould and broken heating systems, Threshold has proposed a new NCT-style system for housing that would ensure accommodation standards are met.
Mr McCafferty said it is a right of a tenant to expect the conditions in which they live to be kept to a liveable standard.
“By proposing an NCT-style system, Threshold hopes to make a real change to the living standards of private renters,” he said.
“At the very least, an overhaul of the existing Local Authority inspections system is required in order to address massive inconsistencies of approach between local authorities and the difficulty in follow up regarding properties which fail inspections.”
