‘My family is being evicted at Christmas, I had to tell my children we couldn’t afford presents this year’
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the worldSign up to our free Morning Headlines emailSign up to our free Morning Headlines email“We were really hoping that this was somewhere where we could really be long-term,” says Kristina. “Somewhere to recover and heal from what happened to us. But instead, here we go again.”The single mother of two has just received her second Section 21 eviction notice in less than two years. She and her boys must now say goodbye to another home by the end of February.From May, landlords will be banned from using the controversial power under Labour’s new Renters’ Rights Act. Until then, they can still administer these “no-fault” notices to remove a tenant without reason at two months’ notice.open image in galleryThe average rent across the country reached a record high in the third quarter of 2025 (Getty)“To be receiving one before Christmas as a single parent household, and to be telling your children ‘I’m really sorry but there will be no presents this year’ … it’s so scary,” says Kristina, from Muswell Hill, north London.The creative freelancer lived in her previous property for 15 years before being issued a Section 21 notice. Her struggle to find a house left her and children – now aged 18 and 11 – homeless for seven months.They were staying in temporary accommodation at a Travelodge before finding their current home, while her eldest was sitting his GCSE exams.Another mother-of-two, Christina, from Hertfordshire, was issued a Section 21 notice in September. The 46-year-old, her partner and their children were given until the end of November to leave the house they have lived in for nine years.About a week before the deadline, Christina was able to negotiate an extension to the end of February. She said: “I contacted the agents that we deal with and literally begged, and said ‘we don’t have anywhere to go’ and in six weeks’ time it’s Christmas.”open image in galleryKristina says getting a Section 21 notice for her home in Muswell Hill is ‘so scary’ (Getty)Even with the extra time, Christina is finding it a struggle to find a new place to live in her area. Despite her and her partner both being in full-time employment, the family is finding that rental costs in the area have become barely affordable.“A couple of times we went to view properties, and within half an hour we’d been beaten to it,” she says, “you have to make a decision in about 10 minutes”.We’ve been “hitting our heads against a brick wall”, she says, finding that they’ll likely need to pay £500 more for a similar property in the same area, pushing them up to at least £2,000 a month.Ben Twomey, chief executive of Generation Rent, said: “Homes are the foundations of our lives. But evictions shatter those foundations, pushing people into poverty and homelessness. These stories show that the end of Section 21 can’t come soon enough.open image in galleryChristina says she and her partner are ‘hitting our heads against a brick wall’ looking for a new place to rent in Hertfordshire (Getty)“Landlords will still be able to price us out of our homes by hiking up the rent beyond what we can afford. The government must slam the brakes on soaring rents to make sure that every renter is protected in their home.”Mr Twomey is one of many housing campaigners who are calling for more action to be taken by the government to tackle rising rents in the UK, arguing that its Renters’ Rights Act does not go far enough.The average rent across the country reached a record high in the third quarter of 2025, according to data from Rightmove, at £2,736 in London and £1,385 in the rest of the UK.Labour have said they are against rent controls – where the government limits how much landlords can raise their prices. However, the act will introduce greater powers for tenants to appeal “excessive above-market rents,” challenging what is often called “backdoor eviction”.Paul Shanks of the Renters’ Reform Coalition says the Section 21 ban will come into force “sadly too late to protect renters like Kristina, or the hundreds of thousands of other tenants who have been evicted while waiting for successive governments to fix our broken renting system”.open image in galleryThe Renter’s Rights Act, originally sponsored by former housing minister and deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, came into law in October (PA Wire)“As welcome as it is, the new law won’t address the major issue for most renters in England – the outrageous cost of rent,” he added.“The government must do more to make renting genuinely affordable and put money back in tenants’ pockets. As a first step, a cap on rent increases to prevent them from outpacing inflation or wages would help to keep renters in their homes by preventing landlords from using unfair rent hikes as a backdoor eviction.”An MHCLG spokesperson said: “The government is committed to supporting renters. Our landmark Renters’ Rights Act will ban section 21 no-fault evictions once and for all, ensuring no one is evicted unfairly again.“We are taking action to help tenants by capping advance payments to one month’s rent, ending unfair bidding wars, and giving tenants stronger powers to challenge excessive rent hikes.”
