Shelter claims renters are struggling to pay rent and afford essentials

Get your violins out.This is more rubbish from Shelter.

Reply to the comment left by David at 20/10/2026 – 09:30
But at least now they are calling for more social housebuilding, finally dawned that section 21 wasn’t the panacea they claimed 🤣

But past governments should not have been selling off social housing at bargain basement prices for decades, housing designed to rent .

Shelter discovers a problem that they have helped to create!

Nothing about the impact of illegal immigration on housing availability reducing stock for those needing a property.

Clearly the Government trying to control the PRS is now biting hard.

Mairi MacRae says “Decades of poor political choices have driven down the supply of genuinely affordable social homes and pushed millions into expensive private renting.”
Ms MacRae misses the point. Whether the homes are “social” or private, the problem is that too few new houses have been built given the increase in population.
Making matters worse are the likes of Shelter who have cheered on legislation that has caused many private landlords to withdraw. Their highly successful but absolute nonsense slogan that S21 causes Homelessness is being shown up for the nonsense it was. The abolition of s21 is causing homelessness.

AHH boo hoo. No one at shelter is considering that hard working people who have bought homes is the last decade have probably seen their mortgage costs rise by up to £10,000 per year due to interest rates. We don’t care about tenants who have seen rises of about half of that due to the same rates plus government interference.
The number of overall council houses has actually decreased by 11,000 over the last two years so it’s time to refocus on that rather than persuading more private landlords to leave.

The problem for Shelter which has never housed anyone or had any experience of being a landlord themselves have only themselves to blame for the current scenario. They have spent years bullying landlords, causing many landlords to either exit the market due to very high expenses navigating red tape with the threats of disproportionately huge fines being issued by councils run by people with the same mind set as over zealous traffic wardens. Now here are the consequences. They love the stick method. Maybe a rethink and a lot more carrot would encourage more landlords to invest to rent and put some profit margin back in to house building companies to then start building creating more homes, rather than having downed tools and waiting for a change of government to put things right.
Shelter is a good reason not to entertain being a landlord.

“more than 300,000 private renting households have less than £50 a week to spend after paying for rent, council tax, water and energy bills.”

No thoughts around energy & council tax bills outpacing inflation then Shelter? :/

Shelter ought to come ask Landlady’s if we struggling.
Cause if we struggling, then surely the tenant struggles too don’t they?

On many houses, I’m losing 7k pa EACH house.
I’ve got lots house value 240k, tenant paying £1000ishpm, 12k pa, I get after tax 7k.
In normal safe investment tracker, on average I’d get 14k pa with ZERO tax till I sold the investment. And then be just one off CGT tax 24%.
What can we do to keep tenant safe? Oh I see, threaten Landlord with £7000 fines for not uploading boiler certificate to new £65 a year database costing landlord dozens more hours a year-That should work shun’t it?