Thousands of pensioners evicted from care homes and put at risk of homelessness: 'It's so cruel'

Thousands of elderly and vulnerable people have received eviction notices from their care homes in the last year, the Big Issue has found.

A total of 7,261 people living in nursing and residential homes were given a ‘notice to quit’ between August 2024 and September 2025, a Freedom of Information request to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) revealed.

Once people receive this eviction notice, they have 28 days to find a new place to live or they risk facing homelessness.

Experts told the Big Issue this can cause “severe anxiety” and “suffering” for individuals and families, at a time which can already be difficult given the challenges of transitioning to a care home and the decline of health in old age.

Around 70% of people in care homes have dementia, and a move to a new home can be “confusing” and “disruptive” for their specific needs.

A notice to quit order can be served legally – a resident may have complex needs the home cannot meet, have refused to comply with policy, have caused harm, not paid their fees, brought in disruptive visitors, or the care home may be closing down.

But charity Care Rights UK believes one of the most common reasons people are forced out of their care homes is ‘revenge evictions’. Lauren Byrne, policy and campaigns lead, explains that this is where people are “threatened with eviction as a result of raising a complaint, as a sort of retaliation”.

“There are other reasons why you might be evicted from a care home, if it’s closing down due to lack of funding or other issues with the facility, but it’s much more common that people reach out to us for advice about a revenge eviction,” Byrne says.

Revenge evictions are illegal but Byrne explains that they can often be hidden. A person may be framed as a “difficult individual”, for example, which can prove challenging to contest.

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Big Issue’s Freedom of Information request found that more than 4,000 nursing and residential homes issued ‘notice to quit’ orders to residents between August 2024 and September 2025. The real figure may be higher as this only includes those homes which are required to report to the CQC.

Another common issue Byrne has seen is that people have visits restricted or stopped as a result of raising complaints, which makes it harder for family members and loved ones to advocate for the resident.

“We see quite a fierce level of advocacy needed for people who are facing difficult things like revenge evictions. There are an unknown number of people living in residential care that don’t have friends or family or visitors who are able to advocate for them,” Byrne said.

“It becomes a matter of the care provider’s word against the individual’s. There isn’t necessarily a requirement for care providers to log how those decisions have been made or how that person has been identified as problematic. It’s difficult for people to argue that isn’t the case.”

Rose Williams, actor and Big Issue ambassador, has recently experienced having to advocate for her great aunt who was threatened with an eviction from her care home by her council.

Her aunt is 89 and frail, and Williams – who has power of attorney – went through the difficult process of finding her a care home earlier this year. She was allocated a home which Williams describes as “filthy”.

“You wouldn’t send your worst enemy there. What I’ve experienced, through doing a lot of research and going to see a lot of homes, is that there’s just nothing in between. It’s either a good home or it’s diabolical,” she says. 

“You’ve got care staff that really care and care staff that really don’t. I was doing everything that I could to not allow my aunt to end up at that place. And she, being the instinctive woman she is, refused to get in the car. She had a severe panic attack.”

Other options were not suitable because they were intended for dementia patients, which Williams believes would have led to “psychological decline” for her aunt.

“She wouldn’t be able to wander outside of her room without it being locked. She wouldn’t be able to go and make herself a cup of tea. She wouldn’t be able to have the freedoms that she needs. She’d be lonely. She wouldn’t be able to talk to anybody,” Williams said.

She was eventually placed in a home which Williams feels has been brilliant for her health.

“My aunt is really struggling with this loss of freedom, and she still is confused and has some resistance to the concept. But I know that she knows deep down that she’s safe. She’s opened up. She’s socialising. It’s just like night and day from when she arrived. She’s going out and having lunch with the ladies, having conversations. She goes down to the garden, her weight’s back up, she’s verbalising. It’s like a complete U-turn in health.”

Byrne explains that “finding a suitable care home that meets the specific needs of an individual can be really difficult, especially because it’s such a postcode lottery across the country”. 

“It takes a lot of advocacy to get someone the right placement, so it can be really distressing for individuals when they get evicted,” Byrne adds.

Williams was told over the phone that her aunt could be evicted and claims that no reason was given, which caused immense stress and she had to dedicate a significant amount of time to educating herself on the laws which may protect her aunt’s rights to staying in the home.

She has since heard that her aunt will be able to remain in the home, but she remains worried for her aunt’s future and for others in similar situations – particularly those without loved ones to support them.

“She’s very psychologically fragile. She’s already had multiple incidents of severe anxiety. She’s delicate. A move would kill her. She feels threatened. She stops speaking and she stops eating and she stops drinking,” Williams says.

“It’s already been a difficult enough transition with her saying goodbye to the house and accepting that she’s in a care home. It will literally kill her. And I know that in my bones.”

Care Rights UK is calling for stronger rights for people living in residential care.

“It is a really difficult legislative environment for them at the moment, because they aren’t really tenants, so they don’t have tenancy rights in the classic sense,” Byrne says. “We would like to see an equality impact assessment when they are threatening to close a home, or any potential evictions on mass are happening, to consider how that would affect people.”

Byrne adds that all evictions should be subject to appeal, regardless of how care is arranged or funded, and any threat of eviction should be reported to the regulator. 

She advises people to seek legal advice if they are given a ‘notice to quit’ order which they think may have been unfairly given, because people should be protected under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. This protects people’s right to home, private and family life.

If the local authority arranged the care, people should dispute the eviction through the local authority. However, some people do not have the capacity or support to challenge an eviction, and this is a key worry for campaigners.

Williams says: “It breaks my heart to think of all of those vulnerable people across the country that are in positions where they’re unsafe, uncomfortable, probably dying prematurely, dying in fear, dying alone. It’s not to negate that there’s absolutely incredible people out there doing this amazing job in care. I have the utmost respect for carers and care home managers, and I know the pressure they’re under. 

“If councils have to save a bit of money, I would implore them to think of other ways to save money, rather than to move vulnerable elderly people from placements that have been priorly approved to destabilise somebody in their in the last chapter of life, to cause them psychological suffering. I think it is so cruel.”

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) has been contacted for comment.

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