A day in the life of TRO Ben Reeve Lewis.
The case of MC Hammer
Explanation: Tenancy Relations Officers (TRO) work for local council’s providing advice on landlord tenant law and investigating allegations of harassment and Illegal Eviction and prosecuting landlords. All names are false but the stories are true.
I love Wednesday mornings. Most people hate them because they are halfway through the working week, it isn’t the beginning but it isn’t the weekend either. But Wednesday is the day that we are closed to the public for the morning and I can get a breather and catch up with things.
Researching the law
I use my time to research new developments in housing law, which changes by the day.
First port of call for me is always Landlord Law because it discusses all the latest developments but in a language that non-lawyers like me can understand.
Then I go to Nearly legal. Very good for in depth legalistic stuff but to be honest I do struggle with some of it and I then follow the links to other websites where I can read the non lawyer version that I can get my head around.
Pain Smith blog is also excellent for updates as is Arden Chambers E-Flashes, Nic Madge’s website and Swarb Law.
Sad as it seems I am a bit of a housing law geek and I actually really enjoy sitting with a large latte from the local coffee emporium and trawling through new developments and I don’t like to be disturbed. My team relies on me doing this and telling them what is going on. That way they don’t have to bother doing it themselves.
Another illegal eviction case
But in the middle of my reverie the phone goes and all I can hear is shouting and wailing in the background……here we go again.
Mr and Mrs Patel are an elderly couple renting a flat from their landlord Mark Mason who has just bought the property from their old landlord. They have been there for 3 years but he has decided he wants to improve the property and rent to a younger, more trendy market and the Patels don’t fit his vision.
He is there with a colleague who has already started the conversion (I can hear the hammering in the background over the wailing).
Mrs Patel cant talk clearly because she is upset and Mason wont come on the phone to talk to me. I manage to get the address out of Mrs Patel and set off to sort things out.
Bleach in the eyes
When I arrive Mr Patel is red and hyper-ventilating. His eyes are watering profusely and he is having great trouble breathing.
Through her tears and emotional state Mrs Patel tells me that Mark Mason’s colleague sprayed bleach into her husband’s eyes and that he is having an asthma attack as a result. She has called an ambulance.
The colleague is using a bleach spray to clean the kitchen surfaces and is studiously avoiding eye contact. I call 999 again to see what has happened to the ambulance, it turns out they could not get a coherent address out of Mrs Patel so I correct them.
Nobody has spoken to me yet and I have been there 10 minutes by this time sorting things out for Mr P.
Looking for a better class of tenant …
With the ambulance on its way I turn my attention to the landlord. I ask him what the hell he thinks he is doing. He just seems faintly amused by the fuss and wants to know my credentials.
While I am explaining my role as a TRO and the law on harassment in general his colleague moves behind me with his hammer. I turn on him and tell him to stop walking behind me. He adopts the same faintly amused stance as his boss and walks away but he does this 3 times in succession and 3 times I have to call him on it until Mason says “Alright Dave just leave it”.
Mason’s explanation is that he has bought the property, it belongs to him and wants to renovate it and increase his rental potential. He says that it is disgusting in this day and age that the council aren’t re-housing an elderly couple like the Patels.
I point out to him that not only have the tenants not made a homelessness application they aren’t actually homeless because they hold a tenancy that he is violating with his actions.
At this point some young lad that I hadn’t seen before starts taking bin liners out through the door that hold Mr and Mrs Patel’s possessions to dump outside the front door.
Things are becoming very chaotic and Mrs Patel is still wailing over husband’s wheezing.
Before I can continue with the landlord the ambulance arrives and I am roped into being an interpreter for the Patels.
While the crew are attending to Mr P I start angrily grabbing bags from the youngster and throwing them back in through the door.
The fop, the hammer and the wheezer
M C Hammer is still hammering, Mason is still smiling ironically like an 18th century fop and Mr Patel is still wheezing for England.
In the middle of all this chaos I suddenly stop and wonder why the hell I got up this morning. I am suddenly very weary of arguing and lose all energy or enthusiasm for the task in hand.
The ambulance carts off the Patels before I can tell them what to do next. Mason and his cohorts aren’t interested in continuing the conversation and the landlord even says to me “F***k off mate, we’re busy”.
I consider calling the police but there isn’t much point with the Patels gone now and I go back to the office to finish my by now cold Latte.
Another day in the life …
A week later I drop by the property. There is nobody there but a glance through the window sees the renovations coming on nicely.
All the way back I am considering ways to get back at Mason but as I walk through the door there is another one in. a woman and her 2 children just got in from the shops and their locks have been changed. Mr and Mrs Patel are old news and I start on the new one.
I don’t hear from the Patels again. Another day in the life. I need a holiday……..
Ben Reeve-Lewis
About Ben Reeve-Lewis: Ben has worked in housing in one form or another since 1987. He has variously been a Homelessness caseworker, Head of Homelessness for a local authority, a TRO and Housing law trainer. He now divides his time between doing contract Tenancy Relations work and as a Freelance housing law training consultant for the CIH, Shelter, Sitra and many more. Read more about Ben here.
What then is the point of legislation designed to protect vulnerable or gullible tenants, tenants who do not have english as their first language and may not understand the law.
What then is the point of TROs or other council officers [who may have some authority to uphold civil law and exercise sanction] who, when faced with an illegal eviction such as this don’t prosecute the actions of a rogue landlord, don’t call the police to an apparent assault, don’t call the Police to what seems to be an aggravated trespass, not to mention probable criminal damage.
Whilst the tenants may be considered as “old news” what about the landlord who has got away with a violent illegal eviction for his own profit and will see fit to be “new news” again. Why have those with some authority apparently sanctioned a charter for rogue landlords?
Where and to whom do the Patels confidently turn next time their landlord wants to kick them out beacuase they are the “wrong class of tenant” [sub text – asian and not white professional middle class…]
“considering ways to get back at Mason” [and presumably rentathug Dave]. Why can’t he be prosecuted? Is this a lack of local authority funding?
Sorry, don’t take it personally – I do know the travails of a housing officer but this post has made me really angry, is it just me or has the system, our laws, our councils, our housing policy and our executives locally and nationally completely failed people like the Patels?
Steve
A lot of the reasons behind this sort of thing are discussed on the Violent Landlords post here: http://www.landlordlawblog.co.uk/2011/01/26/violent-landlords/
I am annoyed about it too, but I can see that there is little that Ben could have done. You cannot prosecute a landlord for illegal eviction if the evicted tenants are not there to give evidence to the court.
Tessa, thanks for the quick response, I’ve just read through the Violent Landlords post and comments. Very interesting but extremely concerning really. I work as a Chartered Surveyor around SE London so am not unfamiliar with the good, the bad and the ugly amongst tenants, landlords and properties.
I do fully take the point that TROs are “relations” officers and not human shields or enforcers but surely someone somewhere has a responsibility to uphold and enforce legislation rather than effectively advocating the purchase of cheap flats with sitting tenants that can be turfed out at will for personal gain thereby legitamising that process by inaction and putting it in the “too hard to process box”.
I thought that the human rights act gave us all a right to an effective solution in law …
Steve
Steve you just echo my own thoughts and feelings. I turn up each day, get spun into chaos and spat out the back door at 5pm wondering what just happened.
Indeed, what is the point of a TRO and housing legislation? I think this everyday.
We dont tend to prosecute landlords because there arent enough of us, compared to the volume of work, to do anything other than put a sticking plaster over problems while we move onto the next one.
You are interviewing one illegal eviction or assault, knowing full well there is another one in your queue to pick up.
On another thread I was criticised of mir-representing the real world of landlord and tenant problems. People just dont understand, or dont want to hear, how much crap is going down on a daily basis.
It is all very well for Grant Shapps,Shelter, etc to urge local authorities in the shape of TROs to take robust action against rogue landlords but we are simply overwhelmed by the amount of cases where violence and intimidation are used against tenants and yet I am regularly pilloried for simply telling tales of my day to day life.
I dont take what you say personally Steve. In fact I find it heartening to find that someone else gets as angry and frustrated as I do. Sheer numbers mean that all you can do is shrug your shoulders and move onto the next one.
In the case reported above it was simply a matter of evidence. In the middle of all the ensuing chaos I didnt have time to get contact details from the Patels as the ambulance carted them off and I never heard from them again, so with no complainant witnessess I had no alternative but to drop it.
I once had a 74 year old man whose landlord told him he had to leave in a month. 1 week later a man let himself in through the door with a key and reminded him he had 3 weeks to move before beating him around the legs with an iron bar in a carrier bag.
The fella was hospitalised but there was nothing I could do because:-
We didnt know the identity of the attacker and we had no evidence that the attack was carried out at the request of the landlord, even though on a non evidential basis we knew who was behind it, a local family of herberts.
We had to rehouse the tenant because we couldnt protect him. I called the landlord and I was absolutely furious and unprofessional and I called him several anglo saxon names but he just laughed at me and said “I dont know what you mean mate”.
And yet still people dont want to hear what is going on, like the monkey with it’s paws over it’s ears.
You ask what is to blame. All of it, laws, policy, the system. I feel like sysiphus some days, just pushing the rock to the top of the hill, only to have it roll to the bottom and start all over again.
Until and unless government intorduce reulation and licensing this will continue. this is why I am getting out of the game.
Steve, we have lots of rights, but they are no good if you can’t enforce them. The people at the sharp end are not able to bring a prosecution themselves, and the people/organisations who can do this are either under funded or are in the private sector and need paying.
Although with the reduction of legal aid, there may not be many solicitors willing to do this sort of work for much longer. It is very expensive to run a solicitors practice and you can’t survive if you don’t get paid for what you do.
Yes and will add, look to what is going on with the coalition. The unspoken secret chipping away of people’s rights. Losing legal aid to deal with harassment and illegal eviction cases, placing the burden on overstretched housing advice agencies to protect people but at the same time cutting funding for law centres who do this work for free.
Nearly Legal reported yesterday of the immanennt (rrraaargghhh spell checker) closure of the biggest CAB office in the UK because of funding cuts.
So there will be no legal aid available for landlord and tenant disputes, no law centres and a handful of TROs and housing advisers dealing with a deluge of cases that nobody wants to hear about, while the police assist in ilegal evictions and tell landlords in even serious assault cases that it is a civil matter.
I really do wonder why I bother.
As Tessa writes above, people’s legal rights are one thing but what do you do when there simply arent the resources to use them?
As Jim Rolke would say “My arse”!!!!!!
Hi Tessa and Ben
I read the post today and was yet again amazed that this is allowed to continue. Ben my initial thought is if you aren’t able to do something what is the point of your position? I know you’ve answered quite a lot in your answers already.
I got into the letting business from being a landlord myself. I hear so many stories from applicants about the poor conditions they are expected to live in. Just the other day a prospect came to view a house and told me that the gas safety cert on her property hadn’t been done since 1999. I advised her to report it to her local council as this was totally unacceptable. She just looked at me and said I’d get thrown out if I did that.
This just says to me that they can do what they want when they want regardless of the law.
Good landlords deserve good tenants and vice versa.
Sandra everyone keeps asking me what the point of me is lately. I am starting to wonder myself haha.
I think that my increasingly gloomy articles reflect my growing frustration with being a toothless guard dog who is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
I comfort myself with the cases where I do make a difference. I actually save a lot of people’s homes from mortgage repossession (landlords too – you think rogue landlords are bad…..try dealing with banks) and I do get results in harassment and illegal eviction cases but they dont always come through orthodox means.
Prosecution is such a non starter as I have written about so many times on Landlord Law but I have become a specialist in making life more difficult for the rogue landlord than he can make it for the tenant, although forgive me if I dont openly share my methods here.
And the tenant you mention was right to be concerned. Its called “Retaliatory eviction” and is very common. The Labour government were looking into outlawing it but as with other plans it was dropped.
Many landlords I talk to are incensed just because the tenant rang us up for advice.
Addendum. Ive been laying in bath cogitating (steady!!!!!!)And a thought came to me.
Last month I went to a house where there were 3 familes with young children in 3 self contained flats in a house.
The landlord had threatened them so I did a visit. Whilst there I discovered that the tenants paid rent inclusive of electricity bills. The landlord had ripped out the elctricity meter long ago and had hot wired the supply into the street.
I persuaded the homelessness unit to get the 3 families out of there and then called EDF who came around to disconnect it. They said the house was on the verge of exploding.
So there is a point to me sometimes.
You are also able to tell people what is actually happening, via this blog. Many people suspect that these things go on, but as we do not have direct knowledge or personal experience, can go on with our lives just ignoring it.
But if these matters are brought out and placed under a spotlight, it is more difficult to ignore them. There is then a slightly better chance that something will be done about it.
You never know …
Thats true, and I train people up and down the land in not only landlord and tenant law but also over 2,000 housing staff have been on my “Art of Conflict Facilitation” course, teaching housing staff how to stay safe when dealing with aggressive people. Passing on the skills I have learnt in the front line.
That makes me feel better
Hi Ben
Didn’t intend to make you feel useless.
I understand from previous blogs that you do a fantastic job.
I was voicing frustration at the fact that the landlord quite blatantly got away with it. Not only evicting but also causing grievous bodily harm. The laws were introduced to help tenants and landlords. It makes a mockery if enforcing them is almost impossible.
It got me to thinking about how to self govern landlords and tenants for the benefit of all. Especially to eradicate the bad ones. I have much mulling through my head at the moment. It’s about making everything visible and easily maintained.
Would you have been able to trace/help the tenants if their contact information had been stored by the DPS?
I didnt take offence Sandra. I do regularly wonder why I bother.
As Tessa wrote in response to Steven’s post, having a law and being able to enforce it is not the same thing.
I think I feel the same frustration that the police feel when they know what has happened but cant prosecute for lack of evidence.
in the alternative I have to say I receive many complaints made by tenants against landlords that dont stand up at all. My guess is that rogue tenants probably outnumber rogue landlords, it’s just that I cant remember ever having a case where a tenant threatened or assaulted their landlord, its always the other way around.
Rogue tenants sub-let, run into rent arrears, cause neighbour nuisance and damage property. Different types of offence depending on the power balance.
I really do understand that those in the position to help out tenants that are treated unfairly, are also those that are over-worked, under-funded, and unsupported.
But what do you do when a tenant wants to push forward with action against an illegal eviction, agressive behaviour and assaults as shown in the case above?
As you say, the police brush it off as not their business, TRO’s don’t get the time to pursue landlords who lie and cheat their way through the system, and solicitors in law centres or funded by legal aid write many letters, but can’t/don’t/won’t do much more?
It is a problem.
Ben and I hope to be developing some kits to help people ‘do it themsevles’ fairly soon though, so watch this space.
I will certainly be watching for these, and may even be using it myself, thank you!
As Tessa says Amy plans are afoot at our end. Things have always been tough on the resource front in the TRO/Housing Advice world but with enforced cuts to local authority staff and the proposed eradication of legal aid for those kinds of cases and cuts in law centre funding the writing really is on the wall for tenants with problems.
Some of my tenants are confident enough to take things on themselves and thats great because I can work ‘With’ them to help them get damages or deposit recovery. The problem area for me is where tenants have English as a second language or they are not, to put it very bluntly, bright or articulate enough to do what needs to be done. Then all the burden is on me and thats when you have to make a decision on the amount of work it is going to take balanced out against the time you have available so usually the only thing we can do is put a sticking plaster on things.
Time is the most stretched resource we have because court action doesnt actually cost us anything. Our time is stretched by the amount of people we have to deal with (I am quite unusual in the TRO world in that I negotiate with mortgage lenders and defend possession proceedings in court on those too)If you go to court for an injunction to get an evicted tenant back in you will be in court most of the day hanging around and then when you have got it you have to find the landlord and serve it, Last week my collegaue had 3 addresses all over London for the landlord so he was out of the office for 2 whole days dealing with it but new cases are still coming through the door.
I really see the way forward in private services for tenants in trouble and that is what Tessa and I, both individually and jointly are working.