Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

katep23 wrote: »

One afternoon we saw a couple of particularly enterprising teenagers who, having already been soaked, decided to capitalise on the situation and were charging the stranded motorists to push them through the flood water to safety :T

That's a brilliant bit of initiative from those youngsters.

Hester, waterproof executives lol. Mind you, my deep and abiding loathing of the phrase 'executive homes' leads me to believe that people have it coming to them as a cosmic payback for naffness.

craigyw, I've only visited NI briefly, but I can tell you from personal experience and professional experience that the vast majority of English private landlords have refused to rent to people on benefits for nearly two generations. The adverts used to state "No DHSS" and there hasn't even been a "DHSS" since the 1980s. If they said "DHSS welcome" you could bet your bottom dollar that they were slumlords living on the Costa del Sol and renting out revolting pits to the desperate here in Blighty. You should have seen the perma-tans on my Scottish landlords.......

Try to find a private rent as an unemployed person (been there) or a person on long-term disability benefit (ditto) and you normally can't get a private landlord to even return your calls. Letting agents sometimes phrase it diplomatically - probably lying thru their teeth - by saying that they can see that you're decent but their clients the landlords have said no one on benefits and they have to go with the clients' wishes.

And then there are (and were even 30 years ago when I lived in Scotland) landlords specialising in renting overpriced grotty bedsits and rooms to the most impoverished sections of the population with benefits picking up the tab.

In a free-market society, you can't compel a landlord to rent to anyone they don't want to rent to. I have myself had many a workplace convo with distraught landlords and landladies, often with a single rental property, who have been royally scr*wed over by tenants who have taken the Local Housing Allowance paid to them by the council to cover the rent and spent it on personal amusements, leaving the long-suffering landlord badly out-of-pocket.

There are good landlords and bad landlords, there are good tenants and bad tenants. I'm a decent responible citizen whether I am employed or unemployed and would be a safe pair of hands as anyone's tenant.

Ultimately, I ended up using personal contacts to secure private-rented accomdations where my decent reputation would be recognised.

elaine, get well soon, ear infections are miserable blighters and make you feel proper poorly.

craigywv

thanks for that GQ so its really nothing new or startling. sometimes I read an item and wonder what its all about especially if it does not involve me. I just want to understand things a bit better. thanks again.

nuatha

vanoonoo wrote: »

morning all - merry seasonal festivities to one and all x

And to you and yours.
Hoping all is well.

jk0 wrote: »

My tenant has now been in the hotel for five nights, so today I was expecting him to go home.

I just got a call from 'Housing Aid' at the council saying he has contacted them saying that the place is unfit to go back to. The woman suggested she was going to send environmental health round to view the place. I told her to go for it.

I can echo what GQ says regarding LA homelessness officers.
I've had regular dealings with homelessness units from 7 local authorities and I struggle to believe some of the tales.
I've always found EH officers to be helpful and a useful source of advice, provided you are upfront with them.
Good luck on getting everything sorted and the builders footing the bill. (Meanwhile the hotel bill is a business expense).

GreyQueen

Existing benefit claimants are usually persona non grata in the private rental sector. If you lose your job and have to claim, the landlord is stuck with the situation, at least until they serve a Section 21.

Some once employed-now unemployed/ sick private tenants go to great lengths to diguise their claim from the LL, by having the LHA paid directly into their personal bank accounts - which is the norm - and contiuing to pay the rent by DD, topping it up from savings as the LHA is ususally short of the full rent liability.

Small anecdote from 30 years ago.

A very much younger GQ in a Scottish city, minding her own business in her bedsit in a large flat in one of those four floor stone tenement blocks, two flats per floor and an entryphone system on the street door.

Approx 7 pm there is a knocking on the flat's door so someone has let this person in past the street door. I open it as my bedsit is the nearest one to the door. And blink in surprise at a besuited type with a clipboard, who asks for my landlord by name.

GQ He doesn't live here.
Suit What do you mean, he doesn't live here?
GQ It's bedsits. He's the landlord. He lives in Spain.
Suit (nastily) Oh, really? Well, I'm from his mortgage company and he's got the mortgage on this flat as an owner-occupier.
GQ (holds up hand) Whoa, you never spoke to me.
Suit. You never spoke to me, either.

Never did find the outcome of that one as started to look for my next bedsit right away.

*************
nuatha, they're not fabricating. I've been on the sidelines and in interviews and the level of dishonesty in homelessness presentations makes the banking industry look as pure as the driven snow.

[Deleted User]

MrsAtobe wrote: »

Any water tanks above you?

Not a one.

[Deleted User]

nuatha wrote: »

a lot of flood water is contaminated with raw sewage.

This reminds me of some advice I read, many moons ago, which is, if you have a cellar, flood it with clean water, before the outside flood water reaches it.

That way, the contaminated water stays outside, making the clean up far easier.

[Deleted User]

Goldiegirl wrote: »

We were away for 24 nights in September. My friend kindly offered to drop by from time to time to check the house - I made sure she looked in the bathroom on each visit, but not even a drop of water escaped.

Could you not have turned the water off at the stopcock?

charlies-aunt

GreyQueen wrote: »

nuatha, they're not fabricating. I've been on the sidelines and in interviews and the level of dishonesty in homelessness presentations makes the banking industry look as pure as the driven snow.

:rotfl: Speaking as an ex-homelessness officer, I have to agree :rotfl:

The sheer breath-taking bare-faced lying & brazen attempts to cheat the system quickly disillusion anyone dealing with this client group

GreyQueen

charlies-aunt wrote: »

:rotfl: Speaking as an ex-homelessness officer, I have to agree :rotfl:

The sheer breath-taking bare-faced lying & brazen attempts to cheat the system quickly disillusion anyone dealing with this client group

Which is why there are a lot of ex-homelessness officers about as few people can stomach encountering such behaviour for too many years.

The homelessness officers I know start off as Guardian-reading lefty types and end up somewhere to the right of Genghiz Khan. The burnout rate is pretty high for this aspect of housing work.

I treat stories about homelessness and housing departments in the meeja, whether local and national, with deep cynicism. Where I have personal knowledge of the case through my job, I'm often on the edge of an apopoleptic seizure from sheer fury at the lying little toads.

The bland LA response 'we cannot comment on individual cases' hides a lot of the shenanighans from the general public. If only people knew....

westcoastscot

luckily it doesn't disillusion us all