ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore the ways in which the law seeks to protect residential occupiers against harassment and unlawful eviction by criminalising both activities, and by enabling a person who has been harassed or unlawfully evicted to claim damages or re-instatement through the civil courts. The number of prosecutions for unlawful eviction and harassment is, and always has been, low given that they are ‘persistent problem[s] seemingly endemic within this residualised sector in which understanding of the consequences of letting is often poor and respect for the law limited’. Harassment can take a wide variety of forms, and perceptions of what behaviour by a landlord constitutes harassment and what is reasonable may be interpreted quite differently by the other actors involved: tenants, local authority officers, the police and magistrates. Harassment (and unlawful eviction) are persistent problems within the private rented sector. When the 1965 Act was passed, profiteering commercial landlords were thought to be the main culprits.
