The government's period of grace for private renters has now ended, and difficulties for many private renters, who can ill afford increases in rents or other (more expensive) options now loom. What can be done ?
Benefit levels are punitively low, and are intended to be so, as it seems to be an article of faith in the Conservative Party, against all evidence, that increases in benefit payments are a disincentive to work. In fact, most benefit claimants are in work : increases in welfare payments would help with the unavoidable costs of working (and living) , such as childcare - and keeping a roof over your head. Another longer term solution would be to guarantee construction of social (social, not 'affordable') housing by land nationalisation, or by a tax on property speculation. However, there is a significantly greater possibility of my seeing pigs fly over Royston than there is of the Conservative Party adopting these proposals. It is possible that an unintended consequence of Brexit will be, over a period of years, significant wage increases for groups of lower paid workers, as a consequence of the supply of workers from the Continent having been blocked by new immigration rules. However, that is not an immediate solution to this problem.
A tentative suggestion which may (possibly) win cross-party assent is to re-think the terms of the landlord-tenant relationship. I propose the following: Tenants would (subject to certain conditions, of course) be granted very long-term (or life time) tenancies. In return, they would have to assume complete responsibility for the maintenance of their living space. Both landlord and tenant would pay regularly to a central government fund for repairs and maintenance of private rented property, to which recourse could be made when the need arose. This proposal has the significant merits of giving tenants security ; alleviating an important source of tension in the landlord-tenant relationship ; and lifting the burden of repairs from landlords. I think that this idea is worth some consideration.