If ever there was a canary in the coal mine of Britain’s broken rental market, it is GoFundMe reporting that last month a record number of people fundraised to pay their rent.
Before 2020, this bizarre scenario was virtually non-existent. Back then, crowdfunding was for unexpected medical bills, funerals and charity causes. It was not for rent.
But since 2022, rent-related fundraising campaigns are up by 60pc, with more than 100,000 people a month donating to help renters.
It may be an unpopular opinion, but crowdfunding should never be required for rent. The daily cost of living should never be a legitimate reason why people need to crowdfund. Crowdfunding campaigns should be for the exceptional, not the everyday.
It is not acceptable that people can’t afford to live. It is not normal to crowdfund your life and we should not legitimise this by buying into the narrative. This state of affairs is an indictment of failed government policy and an unacceptable shift in cultural norms.
When my tenant left me with more than £10,000 of rent arrears – and a property to make good – I didn’t beg for charity. I highlighted the failings of the justice system and how long I had been forced to wait for a bailiff-assisted eviction. I opened up about the issues with the system, the shift in attitudes, and that I would no longer succumb to what I called “dumb gratitude”. As a result, the house was sold, not re-let.
The comments section was awash with criticisms that I hadn’t taken out rent-guarantee insurance. I was also in the wrong for not referencing the tenants correctly, according to commenters, even though I had and they’d been with me for more than a decade.
Few readers asked why it was that my long-term tenants had stopped paying rent. I never found out why, the tenants simply “ghosted” me.
What I found more perplexing about some people’s reactions was that they seemed to place the burden on me as the landlord and not the tenant. The contract with my tenants is clear: they pay the rent or they lose the right to live in my property. When you take out a mortgage, income protection is often offered in case you lose your job, to ensure you don’t lose your home. These contracts are simple: you pay or you leave.
Of course, the key issue here is that private landlords have been called the enemy. Whatever happens, it will be the landlord’s fault. This obscures the real issues and means important questions don’t get asked, let alone answered.
We are in danger of legitimising how the rental market works (or rather, doesn’t), and that is not right. It is not acceptable that about 30 new campaigns to pay rent or bills are appearing every day on GoFundMe. We’re creating a parallel emergency welfare system and need to ask: what on earth is going on?
You won’t be surprised to hear that I think government policy is at the heart of the problem. Local housing allowance has been frozen since 2020 and is still far below the 30th percentile in most areas – meaning the shortfall is widening. Between 2021-2024, more than 300,000 families a year applied for emergency rent support via councils. In addition, discretionary housing payment applications have increased, yet the proportion of applications that are rejected by local authorities has increased by 40pc, largely because of a lack of funding.
But although the cause of these problems is government spending cuts, the narrative is always about greedy landlords.
The “tax burden” is at a post-war high. Politicians have presided over a broken energy market, so that many people are plunged into debt by their utility bills.
It has been clear for many years that governments don’t want small landlords. That’s why they have created such an inhospitable, inequitable, onerous and punitive environment for small property investors.
Mark my words: when the large “build to rent” property investors take over the rental market, housing benefit will be miraculously unfrozen. But there’s no chance our tax thresholds will be thawed: how else will any of this be paid for?
