Homeless figures treble amongst private rental tenants

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Rinoa wrote: »

So in effect, the homeless figures in all probability haven't trebled,.

Probably not.

But in reality, there have been a few noticeable trends over the last few years that all point to the same conclusion.

- The number of empty houses has fallen

- The number of homeless people has increased (albeit not by 300%)

- The numbers of people in overcrowded accommodation is rising

- The numbers of people living in flat share and HMO-s is rising

- The number of households taking in a lodger has absolutely soared

- The numbers of adults living with parents is now several million and rising

Those are all really quite obvious symptoms of a housing shortage.

The shortage drives up prices and rents so as to ration scarce housing resources, until enough people are forced to share, live with parents, etc, until supply and demand equalise..... Temporarily.

Then savings increase from staying with parents for a few years, or people's wages rise, or whatever, and some of that pent up demand is unleashed again.

And in the meantime, a few idiots cheer on credit rationing and in so doing make the shortage worse.

"Can kicking" on an epic scale....

Blanket

I rent. I work and I pay my bills. I do not get any housing benefit. Less than 4 weeks into a 1 year AST and I have had no cooker since day 1, no hot water at all for for the 1st 10 days, it's occasional now. The heating does not work. There were loose live wires behind the fridge. There was a gas leak and no gas safety record for the property. I could go on but I won't. All the problems were either things that are not checkable on viewing or deliberately hidden on the viewing. There is mold growing through the freshly painted ceilings.

I am demented. Honestly, I just feel like screaming. I have done all I can, tried to insist with the LL that things need fixed, contacted housing rights, seen a solicitor, written to my MP and contacted the environmental health office.

Solicitor says with hold rent. Housing rights say not to with hold the rent as then I will have broken the tenancy agreement and could be evicted. I would need a reference for a new place so that's not an option. Environmental health say you have to give the LL time to fix the problems before we do anything. They have been saying that for 2 weeks now.

You can not win as a tenant. There is not enough back up to help you.

I do not want to stay here as I have no faith that anything will get fixed. What is the winter going to be like? Honestly, this is like a bad dream.

The sooner LL's lose some of their power the better. If they want to own properties for rent they and their houses should have to pass a fitness test. I don't think the people on the show were the worst cases, I would say that they were a fairly normal bunch of tenants being screwed by unregulated LL's.

The private rental sector is a complete disgrace (for tenants).

PasturesNew

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Panorama are covering it tonight at 7.30pm.

Ooops, I missed it. Now got to find out when else it's on, and on which channel .. and hope to randomly discover it.

I've no catchup/recording devices and can't watch it online, so it's over to flicking through the channels for me, see if it's on at 3am on some other channel or something.

Was it any good?

GeorgeHowell

Bantex wrote: »

Surely just pegging rents to inflation and not being able to evict as long as the rent is up to date and the tenancy terms have not been broken, would be fairer overall.

Seems to be too much in the landlords favour at the moment.

No, there are all sorts of reasons why landlords might want their property back and if that is prevented indefinitely many will stop renting out. Similarly price controls seldom work for long. It is not speculative to say these measures would kill off the private rental market. They were tried before and that's exactly what happened.

CLAPTON

Blanket wrote: »

I rent. I work and I pay my bills. I do not get any housing benefit. Less than 4 weeks into a 1 year AST and I have had no cooker since day 1, no hot water at all for for the 1st 10 days, it's occasional now. The heating does not work. There were loose live wires behind the fridge. There was a gas leak and no gas safety record for the property. I could go on but I won't. All the problems were either things that are not checkable on viewing or deliberately hidden on the viewing. There is mold growing through the freshly painted ceilings.

I am demented. Honestly, I just feel like screaming. I have done all I can, tried to insist with the LL that things need fixed, contacted housing rights, seen a solicitor, written to my MP and contacted the environmental health office.

Solicitor says with hold rent. Housing rights say not to with hold the rent as then I will have broken the tenancy agreement and could be evicted. I would need a reference for a new place so that's not an option. Environmental health say you have to give the LL time to fix the problems before we do anything. They have been saying that for 2 weeks now.

You can not win as a tenant. There is not enough back up to help you.

I do not want to stay here as I have no faith that anything will get fixed. What is the winter going to be like? Honestly, this is like a bad dream.

The sooner LL's lose some of their power the better. If they want to own properties for rent they and their houses should have to pass a fitness test. I don't think the people on the show were the worst cases, I would say that they were a fairly normal bunch of tenants being screwed by unregulated LL's.

The private rental sector is a complete disgrace (for tenants).

I sure that much of what you are suffering is already illegal but there is a very poor level of enforcement in these matters.

wotsthat

PasturesNew wrote: »

Was it any good?

I discovered that if you have a history of not paying the rent or are at increased risk of not paying in the future landlords find you unattractive as a potential tenant.

The answer seems to be to build more social housing because the taxpayer doesn't mind if the already subsidised rent doesn't get paid.

chucknorris

Blanket wrote: »

The private rental sector is a complete disgrace (for tenants).

It is also a disgrace for landlords too when dealing with problem tenants, they can't get them evicted before very large debts have accrued, usually with little chance of recovering those debts.


I don't think that there is much wrong with the law protecting tenants, apart from the implementation, which does need addressing to enable quicker action. The legal system also needs to be speeded up to evict rogue tenants quicker.

IveSeenTheLight

Graham_Devon wrote: »

You haven't reduced supply. When you sell the house, it doesn't disappear. It might well be sold to someone who rents, so one less renter and one less rented house. Nothing changes.

You missed the point Graham, which is that there is one less rental property for the future generations.

I posted stats which showed that Social housing had reduced by 1.5 million whilst private rental had increased 2 million, so 500k more rental properties, however in the same time period, the population had increased by 7.5 million.

An extra 500k rental properties is simply insufficient for the extra 7.5 million population. That's only 6.66% increase in rental supply, whilst there needed to be circa 35% to match the population needs

Now if social housing had not been sold off, we may have been in a rental neutral position.

IveSeenTheLight

JencParker wrote: »

Only because they don't want to provide any homes - they sold off all the council houses cheaply and never replaced them, wiping their hands of those most vulnerable. Typical Tory.

I fully agree.
The root cause was the social housing sell off.

BTL helped to try and fill the gap but simply put, there is still insufficient BTL and social homes to meet the expansion in the population.

One thing for sure is that the governments can;t afford to start a rebuilding of the social homes and the maintenance of such at this time, hence why all parties are keen for the private market to fill the gap.

IveSeenTheLight

Blanket wrote: »

The private rental sector is a complete disgrace (for tenants).

I feel for you and it seems you have been very unfortunate.
It certainly is not a way to act as a landlord nor is any instances you cite are acceptable, however....

Statistics reveal that property quality has improved since the increase in private rentals.

With 4 million private lets, if your situation was the norm, then there would be a much greater furore which would incite change.

In Scotland, all Landlords are required to be registered


This gives the opportunity for the tenants to contact the local authority with any issues.

I once was contacted by the local authority as one of their routine inspections found that an outside gutter had become broken and loose. I was grateful of the notification and immediately passed on to the factoring company maintaining the building.

Maybe Landlord Registration is not yet in place in your local area and hopefully it will come soon and help in the future.

In the short term, I would look very closely at your lease and probably look to enact clauses where they have failed and hence broken the lease so you can move on.

You may also need to consider the quality and value you are prepared to pay for.

Wish you all the best