Rental Housing: the current legal framework in England Arrendamento para habitação: o actual quadro legal em Inglaterra Caroline Hunter Professor of Law, York Law School, University of York Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK
[email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7504-3422 Jed Meers Lecturer in Law, York Law School, University of York Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK
[email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7993-3062 September 2017 REVISTA ELECTRÓNICA DE DIREITO – OUTUBRO 2017 – N.º 3 DIREITO DE ELECTRÓNICA REVISTA ABSTRACT: Residential tenancies law in England are complex because of an over-lay of (changing) legislation on the top of common law principles, and sometimes different law for private and social tenants. In this article we use a framework of legal determinants of housing precarity to analyse this law. There are five determinants to our analysis: tenure/time; control; cost; conditions (habitability); and immigration status. The difficulties occupiers and landlords face in untangling the patchwork of protections unites these different – determinants. Further we demonstrate that the position of tenants has become in some ways OUTUBRO2017 more precarious in the last 30 years – in terms of the ease of eviction and, for private tenants, for rents. – N.º 3 N.º – KEY WORDS: Residential tenancies; England; precarity. WWW.CIJE.UP.PT/REVISTARED RESUMO: O regime inglês do arrendamento para habitação é um regime complexo, devido à sua (mutável) legislação, a qual se sobrepõe às regras gerais, bem como à existência de normas diferentes para o setor privado e para o arrendamento social. Neste artigo, analisamos esse regime a partir de certos fatores legais que determinam a precariedade da habitação.