The facts haven't changed; the logic hasn't changed.

From the BBC:

Ministers are considering a short extension to the five-month ban on landlords evicting tenants in England. From Monday, courts are due to resume cases put on hold owing to the coronavirus crisis, under stricter rules.

Now the government is understood to be considering an extension to the ban. Renters have argued the financial and practical effects of the crisis mean they should not be thrown out.

Lots of people are still out of work through no fault of their own, so there is no reason not to extend the evictions ban.

I accept that a Home-Owner-Ist government needs a certain low level of homelessness pour encourager les autres, but even the Tories realise that if they allow mass evictions that's going to cost them a lot of votes.

UPDATE, they've just extended the evictions ban by four weeks. Why such a short extension?
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A large landlord can self-insure. If you own a thousand homes and one or two hundred tenants can't pay any rent but you can't evict them, well so what, your unearned income has gone down by ten or twenty percent, you're still laughing.

This should be extended to all landlords; they all pay (say) 20% of the rents they receive into the 'Housing Benefit Fund'. If a tenant loses his job and can't pay, the Housing Benefit Fund pays the landlord (say) 70% of the gross rent from that home which he had previously been declaring and paying the Housing Benefit Levy on (or a lower % if it's a bad year and more than 20% of tenants aren't paying rent).

No need for the taxpayer generally to step in. Taxpayer aren't expected to pay landlords' home and contents insurance, why should they pay their "loss of rent" insurance (aka Housing Benefit)?

"Don't worry about insecure tenancies...

... because there's no job security either."

From City AM:

All this has led to a quantum shift in the attitude of young occupiers; faced with the prospect of funding large deposits and huge mortgages at interest rates likely to rise from their current historically low levels, they are resigned to renting for much longer than their predecessors. But are these shallower property roots part of a wider transition?

As an employer, I see a trend among our brightest young talent that, while they are willing and able to put their all into their profession from week to week, it is still their career for the time being and not necessarily what they want to do for the rest of their lives.

Similarly, to “make partner” or become a director of the company can no longer be the assumed ambition, and employers have to be ready to give short-term reward rather than rely on the long-term prospect of promotion for loyalty.

Renting for a year or less fits with the shorter-term and wider view taken by my children’s generation of their working lives, and the political and economic uncertainty in the years ahead means there’s no reason why we should see a reversal of this trend any time soon.

Back to the future

From the BBC:

The weekly earnings of full-time workers in the UK fell, in real terms, each year between 2008 and 2013, official figures show.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says in cash terms earnings grew, by only 2% a year, from 2009 to 2013. But after taking inflation into account the purchasing power of those earnings suffered an overall fall of 8%.

This means that the real value of the UK's average weekly earnings are now back to the level of 2002.

From the BBC:

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), which publishes the [English Housing Survey] each year, said:

"The proportion of all households in owner occupation increased steadily from the 1980s to 2003 when it reached a peak of 71%. Since then, there has been a gradual decline in owner occupation to the current 65%."

It pointed out that private renting in England had been steady at about 10% of all households during the 1980s and 1990s, but had since grown sharply, nearly doubling in size.

From the BBC:

The number of tenants in England and Wales forcibly evicted from their homes last year after court action reached a record high.

Some 37,739 private and public sector tenants had their homes repossessed by court bailiffs in 2013, according to figures from the Ministry of Justice. That is the highest number since records began in the year 2000.

However...

However, the number of homes being repossessed by mortgage lenders at the end of 2013 was the lowest in a decade.

In cases that involved court action, 12,147 people had to hand back the keys to their home between October and December last year. The Ministry of Justice put that down to low interest rates and a "proactive approach from lenders in managing consumers in financial difficulty".