So where have all the evictions gone?

Last autumn, writing for the left-wing magazine Tribune, I predicted that winter 2020-1 would witness a large number of evictions. I predicted that, because there was a ban on bailiff’s appointments still in operation, many of these would be illegal evictions:

“One experience we will see repeatedly in the months to come is a spasm of fury on a landlord’s part when they grasp that an eviction, which they thought would only take a month or two from beginning to end, will require a year to work through every stage (from initial notice seeking possession, to court hearing, and then a bailiff’s date).”

“If I was a member of a tenants’ union, right now I would be preparing for what will inevitably be an increase in the number of landlords seeking to evict unlawfully, ignoring court proceedings and simply changing locks without an order. 

Today, unlike then, we actually have some solid data on evictions. We have “Mortgage and landlord possession statistics” for October to December 2020. They show that possession claims were still running at low rates by the end of last year – with more or less zero legal evictions taking place in that quarter. That’s not surprising; there was an eviction ban, and it worked. More surprising is the very low number of possession claims – ie landlords issuing a claim in the court, as a preliminary towards getting a possession order and then a bailiff’s date. Those were running at the rate of about 2,000 a month in October-December or 1/5 of the usual figure. In other words, landlords weren’t just failing at the final hurdle of the legal eviction process, they weren’t even getting to the first stage.

Meanwhile, Shelter believes 700,000 tenants have been issued with a section 21 eviction notice (i.e. a letter entitling the landlord to start possession proceedings) since the start of the lockdown. Fit that alongside the low number of possession claims, and the reality appears to be that landlords have been making a large number of very hollow eviction threats: for every 100 landlords threatening to take their tenants to court, only 1 actually has.

A further set of figures may help to fill in the gaps between these numbers. H-Clic is data generated by local authority homelessness officers. Of course, not everyone who loses their homes approaches their council. But we are at least talking about data which has been generated on a relatively consistent basis both before and during the lockdown.

According to these figures, just over 100,000 people asked their council for homelessness assistance – this figure is down by around 1/3 compared to 2019, but that fall is artificial. The local authority homelessness system broke down for large parts of the pandemic – for weeks, the offices were shut, and staff weren’t answering calls. It seems that real housing need is as great as ever.

Housing officers report that in the whole of the UK just 90 people were unlawfully evicted in October to December 2020. Now, from one perspective, this must be a highly misleading figure. The effect of the Protection from Eviction Act 1977 is that a landlord can only evict, or take preparatory steps to evict, by issuing court notices, and taking a tenant to court. Anything more than that is – in the broadest terms – illegal. The figures show that, for example, around 6,000 tenants approached their local authority for help in winter 2020, saying they had been told to leave their flat and the landlord was ordering them to go because they had reached the end of their tenancy. Given that eviction bans were in operation for most of this time, there is a decent case to be made that most, many or even all of these tenants were being “illegally” evicted.

On the other hand, if we treat the figure of 90 illegal evictions as meaning that only 90 tenants had their locks changed by the landlord per quarter – this shows that, on that definition, illegal evictions were no higher in winter 2020-1 than they had been a year before.

To conclude, what do I think has been happening:

-Landlords have been issuing section 21 notices (i.e. threats to evict) at higher than pre-pandemic rates, but issuing court proceedings at lower than pandemic rates. Effectively, they have misunderstood the present legal situation and assumed that the current “eviction ban” means the same as what it did a year ago – that court hearings aren’t happening, when in actual reality the courts are open and desperate for more work. (All that remains is a ban on bailiff’s dates and that only until the end of this month).

-Landlords have been giving their tenants all sort of warnings, legal letters, notices, etc. But they haven’t yet resorted to the most extreme options of changing the locks, turning the electricity off – the things which might get a landlord in trouble with the police.

-One reason why we’re not getting more locks changed etc, is that tenants have a weak sense of their own rights. If a tenancy agreement comes to the end of its 6-month or 1-year term, that doesn’t mean the tenant has to leave (if they don’t, the tenancy will just become an automatic rolling tenancy). If a landlord issues a tenant with a section 21 notice, that doesn’t mean a tenant has to go – they can wait, and the landlord has to apply to the court. And if the tenant has access to any sort of legal advice, the chances are they will win a case to stay. But, instead of that, there are still tens of thousands of tenants every month receiving section 21 notices and treating those letters as an absolute insistence that they must leave. Tenants are treating landlords as if they have much more power than they do. In other words, landlords aren’t changing locks because they don’t have to – tenants are leaving, when asked.

I understand why tenants might want to leave in response to a first threat – often the same landlord who hand out section 21 notices repeatedly are also ones who refuse to pay for repairs. Most people don’t like conflict; what tenant would want to be stuck with a landlord who hates them?

In addition, with tens of perhaps hundreds of thousands of people having left London in the pandemic, now is a good time to be looking at the housing market and seeing if you couldn’t get just as large a flat on considerably low rent. Leaving a tenancy has beecome, for some tenants, an opportunity. The fear of tenants’ growing market power may also be causing some landlords to hold off on issuing possession proceedings – a tenant who can’t afford the full rent may still be a better commercial proposition than an empty flat.

For the moment, in hundreds of thousands of homes people are muddling by. Perhaps landlords accepting a lower rent than they need to (although paper rent arrears are growing all the time, to be enforced in due course), and tenants agreeing to go before they need to.

But, all the time, there’s a constant fear that the system is about to lurch in a much more sinister direction. That the eviction ban will end and nothing replace it. That landlords will be empowered to take all the steps that, so far, they’ve only been threatening to do.

The moment of truth will come at the end of this month, when the eviction ban reaches its end. If landlords respond by issuing claims in the proportion that they have been handing out section 21 notices – then we will indeed see the wave of evictions that tenants’ representatives have been warning about.

My book Jobs and Homes: Stories of the Law in Lockdown has been published by Legal Action. It is available to order here (https://amzn.to/3nFJXb4) and here (https://www.lag.org.uk/shop/book-title/210103/jobs-and-homes).

Simon Moore: ASBO decision

 

At today’s hearing before Westminster Magistrates’ Court, District Judge Purdy issued the ASBO sought by the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, making an order limiting Simon’s ability to protest for the minimum period of 2 years required by law.

Unusually, DJ Purdy issued his reasons as a typed document, which have been scanned (although they are not tremendously easy to read) onto the Indymedia website.

As to the merits of the application, Purdy says as little as he could possibly get away with, noting that Simon is personally brave, sincere in his hostility to the corporate take over of the Games, and non-violent.

Purdy granted the application (as almost any district judge would feel obliged to do), but with 2 interesting refinements:

i) Although the order was made for the minimum two year period, Purdy recorded that the order could be dismissed by consent as soon as 17 September, i.e. as soon as the Games have been finally put to bed (and it has to be assumed that if Simon applies for its discharge, that will be granted).

ii) Purdy discharged the old “clause 3” of the order which prohibited Simon from trespassing anywhere. It now appears that it was this particular clause which police in Windsor had relied on when arresting Simon for involvement in a Levellers protest (unrelated to the Olympics) last weekend. That doesn’t take away all the malice of the ASBO, but it does lessen its sting a little…

After the hearing, Simon issued a short statement to the press: ”The effect of this ASBO is to criminalise peaceful protest.  There are legitimate issues for concern around the Olympics such as the destruction of Leyton Marsh in East London for a temporary basketball training facility and the ethics and human rights records of corporate sponsors for the games.  These punitive and coercive measures will not stop us from peacefully protesting or from doing what is right.” 

“I stand by my position that I will continue to do what I think is just even if that means having to live in prison.”

London 2012: the touts move in

Sunday’s papers report the news that Serbian and Chinese Olympic officials have been caught offering to sell tickets outside their jurisdiction in blocks of up to 1500 tickets at a time. This in turn begs an obvious question: who is buying the tickets, and who will be filling their seats?

The suspicion is that some of the tickets are being sold to British sports fans.  Thursday’s and Fridays’ issues of the Metro newspaper ran an advertisement for tickets for the London Olympics. “The Games may not come to London again”, it began “are you and your family really going to miss them.” (Phew, so no pressure there). It was the prices that really caught the eye: £295 for the unglamorous Canoe Sprint at Eton Dorney, £495 to watch the slightly most desirable sport of handball in the Olympic Park, and £695 for the morning athletics events at Stratford on 3 August.

What delights await the spectator who stumps up £695 for a single ticket? The 1st round (of 2 rounds) in the hammer, the 1st round (of 2) in the 3000 metres steeplechase, and one (repeat, just one) final: the shot put. All that for just £695 per person? A bargain, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Simon Moore speaks

 

The court hearing the application for a “full” (i.e. 2 year) ASBO against Simon Moore has reserved its judgment until Monday.

This is the text of the statement Simon read out in court:

“I feel that this ASBO is symptomatic of the nature and feel of the Olympic games in London 2012 and the general state of consciousness of the authorities at this time.

I think it is clear to see from the delivery of London 2012 that these games are not simply about sport and amusement. They involve the channelling of very large amounts of public funds into the hands of private corporations whose primary aim is the make as much profit from their service as possible.

Partly due to this, I believe that a culture of greed has been created as London 2012. It has been reduced from an event which could be a benefit to everyone to a profit making exercise which places private interests above public.

The games offer the government the chance to increase its national and international image and popularity at a time when austerity and turbulence are becoming commonplace. The government appears to be desperate to use the games to better its image.

For these reasons I believe that there is a pathological desire on the part of the authorities and private interests to ensure that the delivery of the games is executed to exactly as they intend. This is not a healthy, balanced and reasonable attitude and it is creating negative effects.

The needs of local communities in the areas where the infrastructure of the games are located are being ignored and in many cases overwhelmed or infringed on by the delivery of the games. This is evidenced by multiple examples including:

The intensive and ecologically destructive developments for games related venues on open metropolitan land at Hackney Marshes, Leyton Marsh and Wanstead Flats to name a few. This destruction of local community resources illustrates that the authorities believe is a price worth paying despite how unpopular the decisions have been in the local areas. It feels like a case of: ‘the games must be completed at any cost’.

The pathological desire for results has created an atmosphere of intolerance towards anyone or anything that disagrees with any aspect of the games or its delivery.

This has meant that when local communities have expressed legitimate concerns about the way some aspect of the delivery of the games is being delivered in their neighbourhood, not only have they been ignored, they have been criminalised and penalised. The campaign to Save Leyton Marsh which is made up of residents and locals has been subjected to coercion and intimidation through the use of the law as it attempted to peacefully stand up for the protection of a community space which was taken without their consent for the construction of a basketball training facility. The construction has created a lot of problems for the locals there including the exposure to dangerous toxic waste in areas in which children, adults and animals regularly play, not to mention being effectively locked out of a vital community space indefinitely. Their concerns are legitimate and have not been listened to by the authorities to any degree which could be called understanding.

The use of measures such as the ASBO which are tools to coerce and punish, are being used for those who are engaging in ordinary peaceful demonstration against aspects of the games which are unpopular. They can and are being used to stifle legitimate dissent. This reflects a possible desire by the authorities to ensure that the public image that they are crafting for the games is not tarnished in anyway by peaceful protest. It is a further indicator of a pathological mentality which characterises the undertaking of the delivery of the games

Personally I do not think disrupting the ceremonies or sporting events of the Olympics would necessarily be an effective form of helping to awake people to an injustice. I think there is a risk of alienating and irritating those people who may be open to a message, but are also keen to enjoy these events.

However I believe that this use of punitive and coercive measures to intimidate and punish those who cause or are under suspicion of causing some form of limited, temporary and non-harmful disruption is unreasonable and is symptomatic of the pathological mentality which characterises these Olympics.

This attitude shows no attempt to understand why people have issues with aspects of the games including its delivery, its timing and its relationship with private interests.

The authoritarian nature and behaviour of the authorities in its behaviour in delivering the games are also present in its everyday activities, although perhaps in a less extreme way. It seems that our system of diluted fascism is becoming more fascist everyday. It need not be this way and it is within our power to change it.

In my case this ASBO has imposed on me a challenge whether to proceed with activities which I know are fair and reasonable and by so doing break the law or to succumb to its coercive nature and stop. I have decided to break the law.

The activities which I speak of include:
Travelling around London and elsewhere and passing through and by the various Olympic routes and venues as part of a consequence of taking part in everyday activities including visiting family and friends and even coming to the court today. (in contravention of prohibition 1).
Engaging in peaceful demonstration against unreasonable aspects of the games or other issues in, around or near Olympic venues or routes such as Leyton Marsh.
Living on disused land and using camping equipment such as sleeping
bag, tent and other equipment in order to create low impact
sustainable communities. (In contravention of prohibition 3).

I have decided that I would rather live in prison than be entrapped and controlled by fear of breaching the prohibitions contained within this ASBO. Control by fear is a worse prison than physical prison. Only reacting to fear can imprison the mind and spirit.

I would also like to take this opportunity to say that the heavy reliance of ASBOs and other forms of coercive or punitive laws to regulate society and prevent ‘anti-social behaviour’ is failing to create a just, peaceful and free society. I think we need a radically different approach to dealing with anti-social behaviour which is based on ‘restorative’ justice.

Sir I would like to put to you that if you think the prohibitions contained within this ASBO are just then you should do as you see fit. However if you see the injustice of this ASBO or any legislation which you think is unjust, you would show the highest respect for the law by resigning your post.”

Simon Moore: an update

Longstanding readers will recall my post from the end of April in which I drew attention to the case of Simon Moore, the Save Leyton Marsh activist who was faced with an ASBO banning him from (amongst other things) “Taking part in any activity that disrupts the intended or anticipated official activities of the Olympic games or Diamond Jubilee celebrations.”

Simon was arrested in Windsor on Monday, apparently for breaching the terms of this order. He was part of a group of people trying to set up a self-sufficient eco-village on unused land that is part of the Crown Estate, i.e. in the vicinity of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations (even though these have now ended) and in the vicinity (ie about 5 miles away from) the venue of the Olympic rowing and flatwater canoe/kayak events, even though these don’t start for another month.

The above photo shows Simon with a group of fellow “Diggers” shortly before his arrest – and a long way from any Olympic site.

Details of where Moore is being held, or the basis under which he is being held, are still vague but some information can be found on London Indymedia at https://london.indymedia.org/articles/12392 and https://london.indymedia.org/articles/12379

Two things we can say for certain: the first is that the ordinary practice of the Magistrates’ Court, when sentencing for a breach of a post-conviction ASBO, is to sentence the person to imprisonment.

The second is that Moore’s order is too widely-drawn and offends against even the limited legal protection which the courts offer in Asbo cases – namely that an order should only be made to prohibit a specific form of conduct, closely tied to the accused’s previous behaviour. To expand an “anti-Olympic ASBO” into an order prohibiting protest within several miles of an Olympic event that is not due to take place for six weeks is to expand the order into an all-purpose prohibition on “thought crime”.

I am sure all my readers will join me in sending solidarity greetings to Simon. His detention is another small sign of how the Olympics are changing Britain: for the worse.

UPDATED

Save Leyton Marsh has now reported that Simon was released on bail today, but is bailed to attend Westminster Magistrate Court this Thursday at 9.30am, where there is likely to be a full hearing of an application to convert his present interim ASBO into a full (i.e. 2 year) order. There will be a protest outside that hearing. I would encourage everyone who is available to attend.

Simon Moore: notes towards a defence

On 3 May, Simon Moore will face a hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court to determine whether (according to the Inside Left blog, which has published a statement from him) he should be pre-emptively banned from

1. Entering or remaining within 100 yards of any existing or proposed Olympic competition or practice venue or route or participant’s residence withinEnglandandWales.
2. Entering or remaining within 100 yards of any road being used on that day for the passage of the Olympic torch, or on which any Olympic competition or practice venue is taking place – e.g. the marathon – within England and Wales;
3. Not to trespass on, or without the permission of the owner to interfere with, any building or land;
4. Taking part in any activity that disrupts the intended or anticipated official activities of the Olympic games or Diamond Jubilee celebrations;
5.  Obstructing the movement or passage of any Olympic participant between their residence, practice venue or place of work and venues being used for Olympic competition or cultural purposes and vice versa

The ostensible justification for these measures is that Moore has been successfully prosecuted for obstructing police officers at the Occupy Leyton Marsh site, and received a custodial term of 4 days. Having been prosecutes once, he is now being portrayed as a serial protester who must be prohibited from taking part in any further actions.

ASBOs have long been criticised because they give a barely fettered power to individual police officers (and because they are heard in the Magistrates Courts, the police do almost always get the orders the seek) to creatively invent new criminal offences, meaning that people are then prosecuted for “offences” which Parliament never designated criminal. 

Breaches of ASBOs are prosecuted and result in jail terms. The ordinary practice of the Magistrates Court, when faced with the breach of an ASBO is to order a custodial sentence, which in Moore’s case (because it would be a repeat conviction) would be likely to be lengthy.

In this way, by doing mundane acts, which on no rational basis could actually be characterised as anti-social behaviour (eg standing 98 yards away from a road that in two months time will be part of the marathon route) Moore potentially faces severe penalties.

Even the Coalition government accepts that ASBOs are an unhealthy development of our law and should be removed. (Although the government has taken no practical steps though to act on this promise).

My own approach would be as follows:

Agree nothing in advance and if need be appeal. If you can get the case away from the Magistrates Courts and into the High Court you will find that the atmosphere changes, there is a different approach altogether.

The courts have repeatedly said that an order can only be justified if it is completely comprehensible and no person could unwittingly breach it.

But consider the terms

1. Entering or remaining within 100 yards of any existing or proposed Olympic competition or practice venue or route or participant’s residence withinEnglandandWales.

Has Moore been given maps showing where every “existing or proposed” competition, venue, route and residence is situated? If not, how is he expected to know whether he is unwittingly breaching that order or not?

Clauses 2 and 5 duplicates the “route” provision in clause 1 and are unnecessary.

Clause 3 bears no rational relationship to what he is accused of doing. Moore is not a serial occupier, he does trespass on flats or houses. He has protested once at an Olympic site. Clause 3, as currently drafted, would potentially make it a criminal offence for him to enter a shop without the owners’ permission.

You just have to fight every dot and comma of the proposed order.