Revenge eviction
Renters who report issues with their property to their landlord or to housing health and safety regulators risk a type of eviction. While landlords are often legally required to conduct certain repairs or ensure properties to-let are within health and safety codes, a landlord might choose to evict their renters instead of addressing the issue.
In the United Kingdom, revenge eviction is legal via the use of a Section 21 notice so-called "no-fault eviction".
In the United States, retaliatory eviction as it's known is illegal, and since Edwards v. Habib has been as a legal defence for renters unjustly removed from their homes.
Revenge eviction in the United Kingdom
Within the United Kingdom, Revenge eviction is a term used to describe an eviction process initiated by a landlord where a tenant asks for repairs to be carried out or complains about conditions. Campaign groups such as Shelter have called for revenge evictions to be legislated against.England and Wales
In England and Wales, an assured shorthold tenancy is the default legal category for residential tenancies. This allows a section 21 notice eviction, which does not require the landlord to have any reason for evicting tenants after a fixed-term tenancy ends or during a tenancy with no fixed end date. This allows landlords to evict or threaten tenants that complain without needing to give an explanation. The Deregulation Act 2015 introduced some curbs on when a section 21 notice of possession may be served upon a tenant following a complaint of disrepair. However, data released by a Freedom of Information request by Generation Rent, suggests that very few tenants are protected from revenge evictions after making complaints about their housing quality.A 2015 Citizens Advice study on section 21 evictions found that tenants evicted using this process were twice as likely to have complained to their landlord, and six times as likely to have complained about their landlord to a local authority.
Several groups, including Generation Rent, Shelter, and the Local Government Association, have called on the government to scrap section 21 for this reason.
Retaliatory eviction in the United States
In American landlord–tenant law, a retaliatory eviction often refers to the substantive legal defense and affirmative cause of action that can be used by a tenant against a landlord if the tenant was evicted for reporting poor housing conditions, such as sanitary violations or violations of minimum housing standards.Retaliatory eviction first appeared as a tenant's defense against eviction in Edwards v. Habib, where a tenant was evicted after reporting sanitary code violations. The D.C. Circuit recognized that the eviction was unjustified because it was in retaliation for the reporting of violations.