This book explores theory and practice in the complex policy area of privately rented housing in England, with a particular focus on environmental and public health. Bringing together a range of both academic and practicing experts in the field, it responds to the rapid growth and changing nature of the sector and considers the range of options available to local authorities in ensuring more effective regulation strategies. This book: Creates a key, up-to-date professional resource for housing regulation based on road-tested academic course material. Breaks down strategies and practices to an implementational level. Provides impetus to leaders, practitioners, and students to both deliver and reflect on improved regulation. Explores responses to various stakeholder needs through the lens of protecting and supporting tenants. This book will interest professionals working in public health, housing, and local authorities, as well as environmental health and housing academia. Students across environmental health, social work, nursing, and other disciplines will also find this appealing.

Against a century-long trend of decline, the private rented sector grew significantly during the 1990s. This book explores why and looks at the consequences for tenants and landlords, as well as the wider implications for housing policy. Written by legal and policy experts, the book brings together, for the first time in over a decade, leading-edge research on the newly deregulated private rented sector. It provides background information about the recent history and development of the private rented sector and explores the changing nature of the sector. The book will be invaluable reading for law, public policy, housing and social policy students. Housing practitioners and policy makers will also find it a stimulating read.

This book explores the decline and growth of the private rental sector in Australia delving into the changing dynamics of landlord investment and tenant profile over the course of the twentieth century and into the present period. It explains why over one in four Australian households are now private renters and investigates the contemporary legal and regulatory frameworks governing the sector. The reform discourses in Australia and comparator countries, and debates around key concerns such as Australia’s advantageous tax treatment of investors in rental property and the power imbalance between tenants and landlords are highlighted. The book draws on rich data: 600 surveys and close to 100 in-depth interviews with tenants in high, medium and low rent areas in Sydney and Melbourne and regional New South Wales. The book provides in-depth insights into this large and expanding component of Australia’s housing market and shows how being a private renter shapes the everyday lives and wellbeing of people and households who rent their housing including short and long-term renters, those on low and higher incomes and older as well as younger people.

Deregulation, revenge evictions, corruption, and day-to-day instability: these are realities becoming ever more familiar for those of us who rent our homes or apartments. At the same time, house prices are skyrocketing and the promise of homeownership is now an impossible dream for many. This is the rent-trap, an inescapable consequence of market-induced inequality. Samir Jeraj and Rosie Walker offer the first in-depth case study of the private rental sector in the United Kingdom, exploring the rent-trap injustices in a first-world economy and exposing the powers that conspire to oppose regulation. A quarter of British MPs are landlords; rent strike is almost impossible; and sudden evictions are growing. Nevertheless, drawing on inspiration from movements in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and elsewhere, The Rent Trap shows how people are starting to fight back against the financial burdens, health risks, and vicious behavior of landlords, working to create a world of fairer, safer housing for all--lessons that extend well beyond the borders of the UK.

Help the Aged funded this major study because of concerns that older people living in private rented housing were vulnerable to abuse and harassment by landlords. Drawing upon detailed research with older people, professionals and landlords in six different localities, the report provides the first major study of this important issue. The report concludes with a series of recommendations to central and local government. These include the need for changes in such areas as the overall regulation of the sector, the rights of older tenants and in the housing benefit system. The recommendations also cover the need for better training for professionals about abuse and harassment, improved age related records and the need for improved funding for advice and advocacy services. This study will be essential reading for a wide range of practitioners and academics whose interests and responsibilities span older people and their reliance upon the housing and welfare systems.