How does poor housing affect the nations health?
This is the subject of an interesting report I found via the excellent Legal Action Magazine (required reading for all housing professionals) and is from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST). You can find it here.
The report, despite being just four pages long, is packed with interesting and worrying data. For example
Poor housing conditions are believed to cost the NHS at least £600 million per year.
Imagine the improvements that could be made if that sort money was made available for grants! It could be combined with initiatives to improve the carbon footprint of properties, which would go towards meeting the governments obligations in that respect also. Unlikely to happen but it would be a great if it did.
Making homes decent
The main standard used is the Decent Homes standard, which was set up quite a few years ago with the baseline conditions acceptable for property to be a home.
The private rented sector (PRS) is now the chief culprit, after the social housing sectors efforts to comply with the Decent Homes Programme (moderately successful). Under 50% of PRS homes are believed to comply which is pretty bad bearing in mind that many experts think the decent homes standard itself is too low.
Inevitably a large proportion of these ‘non decent’ homes are rented to tenants on benefit.
Issues highlighted by the report include:
- Difficulties in communicating and engaging with people in this sector
- Its diverse nature, making it difficult to do anything in a systematic way
- Fears by tenants that they will be evicted if they complain to their landlords
- Reluctance by landlords to invest in their properties or take up initiatives
This is unfortunate because, as the report points out:
While such long-term investments would be challenging in the current economic climate, lack of investment in homes now may result in increased costs in the future. 80% of current housing will still be in use in 2050.
Two of the top problems are
- accidents – 45% of accidents occur in the home and they are in the top 10 causes of death for all ages, and
- cold - which can be particularly dangerous for the elderly
Both these will be picked up by Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) inspections, and local authorities must serve improvement notices if they find any category 1 hazards after an inspection.
However due to the cuts, Local Authority have fewer officers available to carry out these inspections, and there is always the problem of ‘moaning minnie’ tenants being kicked out by their charming landlords if they dare to complain.
It is difficult to be anything other than be depressed after reading such a report, although good for POST for publishing it, so that people can be made aware of the problems.
It is hard to see how any improvements can be made in an environment where housing benefit landlords are being asked to make cuts in their rent. However if you have any ideas, please leave a comment.
The report Housing and Health is available online.
Note – the picture is from the front page of the report.
Are you a landlord? 
To be fair, my personal experience has it the other way round. Privately rented properties tend to be in fairly good shape; it’s social landlords that drag their heels with disrepair and fight tooth and nail to avoid carrying out repairing obligations. One client of mine reports that the Council refused to do repairs that clearly fell under s. 11 LTA because “there’s no money for repairs.” Another was told that she wasn’t entitled to repairs because there were rent arrears (of under £200 incidentally). A third was told that a burst pipe was her fault because she’d put down laminate flooring (the sort that locks together like a jigsaw) and they assume a nail had pierced the pipe without even looking at it.
And the retaliatory eviction is alive and well in the social rented sector also. My colleague recently ran into a Housing Officer who told him that unless his client withdrew his complaints, he would serve notice.
The “no money for repairs” line really got up my nose though. They might not have money for repairs, but they certainly have money to fight every disrepair claim tooth and nail.
I also question whether retaliatory eviction in the private sector, though, is as prevalent as it is feared to be. If the complaining tenant is paying their rent in full, surely it’s economically insensible to evict them and put in a new tenant, who may be a non-payer, and who you may have to take some time finding, thus receiving no income while the property’s empty?
JS,
As an Environmental Health Practitioner with 12 years experience in the private and social rented sector, I can confirm that the worst housing conditions are found in the private rented sector. Retaliatory evictions are also a major issue.
Local Authority Private Sector Housing departments typically receive complaints from tenants who have just moved into properties with no heating systems, leaking roofs and serious dampness problems. When tenants are asked why they would accept properties in such conditions, a common reply is ‘I was desperate’. These complaints often came from single mothers in receipt of housing benefit/ local housing allowance. To make matters worse, the poorest housing conditions I have experienced are from tenants who do not complain because they are unaware of Local Authority services or their rights.
As there is always a long line of tenants who are willing to rent poor quality accommodation, it makes business sense for those landlords to use retaliatory evictions.
theEHP (www.theEHP.com)
Question for Tessa Shepperson.
Is it common for solicitors to take on cases from private sector tenants against landlords who fail to complying with their obligations under the Landlord & Tenant Act? It would be appreciated if you could answer this question considering my below example; the fact that the disrepair seriously affected the tenants use and enjoyment of their property; and the liklihood that the tenant will be in recipt of local housing allowance.
A tenant complaints to their Local Authority because their landlord refuses to carry out repairs. The landlord eventually carries out the repairs, 6 months later, after the service of an Improvement Notice by the LA.
theEHP (www.theEHP.com)
theEHP recently posted..Housing- RLA post Local Housing Allowance FAQ
@theEHP – first of all, nice blog. I have put it on the blogroll in the resources section here.
As regards your question, you must realise that I do not have privileged information on what other solicitors are doing, particularly in other parts of the country.
However I don’t think that many firms are taking on this work. It is a shame but, from a practitioners point of view, understandable. It is work which is often complex and difficult, and before taking on complex and difficult work solicitors need to be sure or have a good chance of being paid for it.
There are two possible sources of payment – one is legal aid and the other is conditional fee agreements.
Very few firms do legal aid nowadays as the poor rates of pay and excessive administration requirements, along with problems in payment have made it unattractive for the profession. However I believe legal aid is still available for this type of work, although no doubt colleagues will correct me if it is not.
Conditional fees are an option and I know a few firms do this. But I suspect not many. It would be good if any solicitors reading this could leave a comment saying whether or not they offer this service and if not, why.
I personally do very little ‘one to one’ case work nowadays – my main service is my membership site http://www.landlordlaw.co.uk which is on a ‘one to many’ model with only a limited ‘one to one’ element.
I can confirm that I have never known a single case of action taken for disrepair in my borough by solicitors and I must get around 20 complaints by phone each week.
I always refer them on to our own EHOs but if there aren’t any HHSRS Cat 1 hazards there is little they can do and it is up to the tenant. I try to help out as best I can, given I mainly do harassment and illegal eviction and defend mortgage repo’s but the procedures for set off and protocols for disrepair usually just puts people off.
I agree that the worst disrepair is in the private sector too. We also get loads of houses converted into HMOs without planning permission. I recently found out we have 13,400 HMOs in our area and only 2 EHOs to licence them
I always refer them on to our own EHOs but if there aren’t any HHSRS Cat 1 hazards there is little they can do and it is up to the tenant. I try to help out as best I can, given I mainly do harassment and illegal eviction and defend mortgage repo’s but the procedures for set off and protocols for disrepair usually just puts people off.
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