Home Truths: How long is an emergency? examines routes into and out of emergency accommodation in the Southwest. Our last blog post focused on the private rental market as a gateway to homelessness. In this blog, we turn our attention to the changing nature of the private rented market as an exit route from emergency accommodation.

From 2018 to 2020, the private rented sector was the main tenancy exit route from emergency accommodation in the Southwest. During that time, an average of 59 households per quarter exited to private rented tenancies. But from 2021 to mid-2014 this fell to an average of just 18 per quarter.

Taking the more recent time span of the 15 months to Q2 2024, just five households per month exited emergency accommodation in the Southwest to private rented accommodation. But, during these 15 months, 10 households per month entered emergency accommodation in the Southwest following a ‘no fault’ notice of termination from their rental home. So, for every one household that leaves emergency accommodation to a private rented tenancy, two more enter following a ‘no fault’ eviction from private rented accommodation – one step forward, two steps back.

Among households new to emergency accommodation in the Southwest who had received a ‘no fault’ NoT, the main reason for it was that the landlord intended to sell the property. This is reflected in latest figures from the Residential Tenancies Board (Quarterly Data Bulletin Q1 2024) which show 58% of eviction notices nationwide relate to a landlord selling a rental property and 18% relate to a family member moving in. Greater rental security is needed in the case of such ‘no fault’ NoTs – we explore this topic in the next post.