ABSTRACT
In the private rented sector the 1991 Census revealed that as many as 40 per cent of households were non-earning, only one in five contained more than one earner, and as many as one-half of all households in the sector had disposable incomes of less than £8,500 (ONS, 1994), yet under the Housing Act of 1988, fair rent tenants were being increasingly brought into the assured tenancy or assured shorthold system (with minimum lettings of only six months), and tenants suspecting that their rents might be above the market level lost their right to refer the matter to the Rent Assessment Committee (DoE, 1995b). As Table 11.1 illustrates, private sector rents (as a percentage of average incomes) increased substantially throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In some areas of Britain, where the local authority stock had been depleted, the upward pressure on private sector rents might have been even greater had Conservative government proposals to permit local authorities to accommodate a proportion of the homeless in private rented housing (DoE, 1995a) been fully implemented.
