England’s renters are about to gain more rights, but until then landlords may exploit weak regulation even more cruelly

‘The government expects the changes to be implemented by the summer of 2025, and campaigners are worried that the next six months will see mass evictions and last-minute rent gouging.’ Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Last month, I was working with a young homeless family on England’s south coast. The local council had found them a privately rented flat with an agreed rent, and provided a “landlord incentive” payment of £1,500. But, when the council emailed the landlord to confirm the arrangements, he replied to say that he was increasing the rent by £100 a month because “the market is moving in that direction”.

The property was mortgage-free, so the price hike could not be blamed on rising costs. This is not uncommon: Zoopla estimates that 70% of landlords have either no debt or a small mortgage. Nor was there some sort of supply shock: the council’s statistics showed that many thousands of homes in the local area (more than 8%) were sitting empty. The flat was not suddenly in a nicer location, nor in a better condition than before. The rent had gone up simply because there was nothing to stop the landlord from naming his price.