Warning of how your property can be devalued

OpalElite

I have already posted requesting advice on the charities board and I hope someone here can give me suggestions and/or advice.

My parents own our house, next door is owned by a housing association charity called Circle Anglia formerly Circle 33. They specialise in the tenants from hell.

Their first tenant a decade ago beat my father up so badly that he was made disabled (his hands are crippled). She pleaded guilty in court and was known for extremely violent unprovoked attacks and she was not sent to jail because she was seriously mentally ill.

The next tenants were ok but evicted for social securtiy fraud. Now this tenant is acting the same as the first. The police are useless and we have to be killed before they will do anything that actually solves the problem. Last Friday this woman was in court for having a knife in her hand outside when she said "Next time I see you I'm gonna take this knife and stab you with it". The rest of what she said was too crude to post. We had the incident captured on CCTV and the police did arrest her. But she was allowed back to the house so her children could go to school and in the weeks between the arrest and the court date she did more death threats and harassment but the police did not and do not want to know. She was given an 18 month conditional discharge but there was no restriction on her as to us and what she can do. So she is now harassing us as before.

We had taken action privately against this woman last year after the police did nothing after she assualted my father, what made it worse was his skin had only just grown back after radiotherapy where she had assaulted him. The result was the woman was found guilty of harassing us, but because we used our cctv system to record the harassment the judge did not impose any penalty. Without the footage her side could of claimed that she never said that she was going to blow up our house, 11 days after the London bombings. We could not believe that someone who has given undertaking to the court to not harass us and being found guilty of breaking the undertakings was not given any penalty.

The housing association have been supporting this woman. We have NEVER provoked her in any way and we kept the CCTV tapes for entire days to prove that we had not but no one cares. The housing association gave us their policies on anti social behaviour and nusiance neighbours (after a long delay) and they clearly state that they have enough evidence to evict this woman, yet they are refusing to do so. But instead they have threatened to sue us for reporting her behaviour to police.

Our GP believes this woman is seriously mentally ill and some police officers have said that her behaviour would continue even if she was moved out. The problem is because my parents own our property there is not a single person or organisation that can help us or are able to make Circle Anglia unhold their policies on anti social behaviour. If we lived in a property owned by a different housing association then we could go to the housing ombudman. Our MP refuses to help because we took it through the courts, we are outraged as all of Blair's laws to curb anti social behaviour are clearly not being held up in court.

What annoys us as well is that this woman is being protected and any story she makes up about us being racist (we are not and have had to get friends to write letters saying so) and invented acts of provocation are being believed by the housing association when we have proof that we have not done anything. Brown wants everyone to own their own home but there is no safeguards on this situation. We have a house that should be worth 1/4 million but because of the thing next door it is worthless. We can not sell the house, we can not move or escape. I suffered an industrial injury some years ago and I can not work so I can not move out and get a mortgate, I can not get housing benefit because I live with my parents. My parents are retired so they can not get a mortgage.

There is a hell of a lot more to this and if you have made it this far I thank you. If anyone has any suggestions of who to try or even who would be best to contact to get this in the media then I would be thankfull. My parents and my health have been affected and I have managed to stop another nervous breakdown yesterday so the anti-Ds are upped today. We have no means of escape and are at the mercy of a mad woman, I hope that people buying a property are aware of the dangers of having a housing association property next to them.

Poppy9

Why not ask the Housing Association to buy your parents house.

You could also contact your local councillors for help and advice.

Sumostar

Have you contacted your local councillor? I know this is not council housing stock, but sometimes a good local councilor can put pressure on and keep complaining on your behalf. It certainly can't hurt.

mi-key

This sounds like a terrible situation, but the way I would look at it is :

1) Your house isnt worthless - if you sell a house cheap enough, someone will but it, even if its to a slum landlord who rents it out to people worse than the current neighbours !

2) How much is your ( and your parents ) health and security worth ? If I was in this position, I would sell the house for whatever I can get, and look at downsizing or moving to a different area - anything to get away.

3) I imagine your parents bought the house a long time ago ? if so, then iif they sell it for half the market value, this is still going to be a lot more than they paid for it so they have 'made money' - as long as whatever they sold it for was enough to pay outright for the new place, dont worry about any percieved loss and it not being worth as much as it otherwise might be.

I imagine you can take the HA to court for lowering the value of the house - chances are you'd lose, lose the house with the court costs, and the stress would quite possibly finish you off.

I can sympathise with your situation, and would hate to be in it myself, but realistically the only option you seem to have it to sell up and move on.

OpalElite

Our local councillors are aware but they are unable to help because it is not a council house or a housing association that has been formed with former council houses. This goes back to the original theme that even though they have written to the housing association they are just ignoring them and they are refusing to evict this woman.

We are desparate to move but why should we sell the property for less than it is worth? Plus we can not afford to lose much on the property as we are unable to buy elsewhere even if we got full market value. We have had the property on the market in the past when I was working but to move out of London we would still need a mortgage to get the same sized house, sounds ridcullous but true.

We have asked the housing association to buy our house - but they refused to even discuss it. The house at the end of our development sold for £226k in July, our house has a greater floor space and a bigger back garden but my parents are willing to sell for £220k if anyone would buy. But who is going to buy a house next door to a woman who is going to attack you for no reason and watches you inside your own home.

If anyone has any other suggestions then please make them, selling the house and moving away is what we want but why should we move and why should we have to sell grossly undervalued when it is not our fault? If you are buying a property then I suggest you look into who owns the properties around as housing associations can get away with this.

Poppy9

email Mr Blair

or else speak to a solicitor because if things are as you say they are then you must have rights.

rchddap1

Just a quick note to say that not all housing associations ignore behaviour like this. We have a couple of flats next to us and a while back the upper tennant caused some problems. Essentially most of the contents of his flat ended up dumped out the window and we had some nice late night 'thumping' music too.

Lots of people complained and at first we got the 'yeah thanks' and then later the 'yeah thanks'. Gave us the impression they didn't want anything to do with it.

Turned out they were taking the bloke to court to legally evict him. No-one knew about it until after he'd gone.

OpalElite

We have a solicitor, the same one that i used to fight my employer who made me disabled. We have exhausted everything legally except taking Circle Anglia to court and the estimate for that would be more than our house is worth.

Thank you for your suggestions and I am sorry if I am angry but we are desparate for this to end, it has been a very long five years. Our solicitor in the past has tried to get Tony Blair involved but it has not worked, our local MP does not want to get involved because we have a solicitor.

if we do something like hoover, then we are punished by banging on the wall for something like 15 minutes. So selling would be a nightmare as she also accosts any visitors to us and that includes the police. We had a workmen this time last year who was working on our front door, the whole time he was out there she was singing to him and watching him from the pavement outside our property. If you were viewing a property and the neighbour acted "strange" then I doubt anyone would seriously consider it.

At this moment in time the only way we can see forward is that this is made public. For someone to say the laws of this country are being applied and that homeowners have absolutely no protection when a housing association refuses to abide by its own policies. I am aware that the former council homes that are now housing associations in our area do evict people for a lot less than this, our councillor has told us what he expects to happen and can not understand why they refuse to evict this woman. Also this woman has a noise abatement notice on her from the council and that would appear in the searches apparently.

So we can not sell because potential buyers would be scared off by the abuse or behaviour of our neighbour when viewing the property. If someone did make an offer and started researching they would find out all the complaints we have logged with the council and police.

Does anyone have any suggestions on who to contact in the media (or if you could Martin) in order for people to be aware that this housing association are able to operate like this with absolutely no restrictions on their pratices?

Poppy9

If there are noise issues then you can call enviromental health.

Bagpuss1973

Really sorry to hear about your situation. I know this is going to sound a bit sad but you are very desperate!

Threaten the MP etc with TV exposure...along the lines of GMTV or someone to take on your case for you...it wouldn't make your MP look too good if s/he ignores their voters in this fashion.

Perhaps you could get a petition together with your other neighbours - she must be affecting other people too.

Hope it all works out in the end for you.

Bagpussx

Here's a big hug for you:grouphug:

seven-day-weekend

Could you rent out your house and use that rent to rent somewhere for yourselves? Or would they be the same with anyone?

(I don't see why you should have to, BTW - but if nothing is being done at least you are away from it).

Also, just KEEP ON to the Housing Association - surely they must have to do something?