Housing conditions in rental sector worsening, report reveals
Minimum standards legislation for rental housing is needed to protect tenants’ health, welfare and safety, Citizens Advice Guernsey has said, as its own report showed that housing conditions are worsening.
‘Some form of legislation in order to ensure the island’s rental properties – which are already in short supply – remain fit for human habitation can only be a good thing,’ deputy CEO Annie Ashmead said.
The report, which was recently released, examined enquiries made by 76 clients of Citizens Advice during 2022 and 2023, relating to private rental housing conditions.
It then compared the findings to those of a similar report from November 2021, which looked at 76 client enquiries from January 2020 to June 2021.
Of the clients who contacted Citizens Advice during 2022 and 2023, more than half mentioned inadequate maintenance and repairs, whereby they would advise their landlord or agent of a maintenance issue, but the landlord then failed to take any action or delayed repairs, allowing the problem to become more serious.
This compares with a third raising similar issues in the 2021 report.
Just over 40% clients reported problems with damp and mould, compared with 35% in 2021, while 28% experienced water damage, primarily seen to be caused by poor maintenance of the structure of the property. This was up from 9% in 2021.
Only 5% of clients – all landlords – reported tenant mess or damage, down from 17% in 2021.
The report’s public release followed the States agreeing earlier this month to give stronger legal protection to tenants through the enforcement of minimum housing standards and a new register for landlords and their properties. But the move was only narrowly passed and was seen as overbearing.
Citizens Advice said poor maintenance of rental properties appeared to be an increasing problem.
It said it was beyond the scope of the report to suggest possible reasons for the rise, but added the increased cost of labour and materials and shortage of building workers could be contributing factors.
Ms Ashmead said that the raw data from 2024 indicated a similar number of cases as previous years, suggesting a similar number of people were experiencing problems.
