In the first part of this series we looked at why landlords are being repossessed despite tenants paying their rent — and how the interest-only mortgage structure built during a decade of low interest rates stopped working when rates rose. If you haven't read that piece first, it is worth doing so because this one picks up exactly where it left off.

You have received your notice. The landlord has lost the property. Now you need somewhere to live. And this is where the second layer of the problem begins — one that is just as structural as the first, and just as invisible until you find yourself inside it.

You have just made a Universal Credit claim. You need somewhere to live. You find a property, you apply, and you lose out to another applicant. Nobody tells you why. Nothing illegal has happened. And yet the system has already decided the outcome before anyone looked at your application properly.

To understand why, you need to understand one design decision buried inside Universal Credit — and what it does when it meets the private rental market.

Why Universal Credit pays in arrears