FROM tomorrow landlords will be free to evict any of their tenants who have fallen into rent arrears during the long months of the pandemic.

It doesn’t take much imagination to work out the human costs of this immoral and arbitrary act of cruelty.

Apart from tenants, the normal operations of the housing market and the mortgage business mean house “owners” who cannot afford their repayments — usually for the same reasons as tenants cannot pay rent — will also face eviction.