[Ben Reeve
Lewis is playing the horses this week …]
Frazzles and I went to see Tom Jones last night at Sandown Racetrack. Two and half hours of betting and then a gig without having to move. Perfect entertainment. You either celebrate your winnings with a dance or drown your sorrows by crying along to the ‘Green, green grass of home’..
The latter for me, who lost £20 and the former for Frazzy who won a total of £72.
Her mate Bea won £150, while her partner Mark, a seasoned gambler tried to explain to me what all those numbers were about but he might as well have been speaking Japanese for all I could follow, and I certainly didn’t understand how he could put £30 on a horse which won but he still lost money on it because of the type of bet, albeit only a quid or 2.
The Shapps mention
How can you win and yet lose at the same time? Oh I know, like when you get a new housing minister but it turns out to be Grant Shapps!
Still, Tom did his thing and we all waved our hands in the air and bogled away to ‘It’s not unusual’ but it was only while I was swaying my arms about and singing along to Delilah that I realised it’s a horrendous song about stabbing a woman to death. It only took me 40 years to twig to that, almost as long as it is taking the government to take the housing crisis seriously.
Invest in your mates
Did you read this week about how they are going to invest several billion pounds in the rail network? Forgive me if I’m wrong, trains not really being my thing, but isn’t it all run by private industry nowadays who keep hiking the fares beyond the rate of inflation?
And it’s loads more dosh than they are investing in sorting out the housing crisis when they have stated housing is taking centre stage in their policies. I suppose you wouldn’t get very far if you said “We are taking trains very seriously. So seriously in fact that we are going to give billions of pounds of public money to the private companies who run them”
Property pros get the hump
Property Newshound, an excellent property journalist whose website is worth a read has been doing a little surfing of his own and noticing that several housing bigwigs are getting the hump with government’s lack of progress.
Grenville Turner, boss of Countrywide, one of the biggest names in housing is quoted as saying:-
“There will be 400,000 more households in the UK than there has been housing built. However, no comprehensive government plan of action is in place to contend with this”.
Regular readers of this column will know that I get angry when the poor are blamed for the recession and having more money clawed back off of their already miniscule income to save the country billions and bring us back from the brink, so I was intrigued to read Grenville (is anybody who was born after 1890 called Grenville?) when he said:-
“The total tax proceeds foregone due to the current shortage of housing supply and low transaction levels is in excess of £7 billion a year. The current tax take from stamp duty is almost four times as much as the annual spend by the Homes and Communities Agency on building affordable housing”
£7 billion? Wow think of how many rail networks you could improve with that????
Criticism that hurts?
Property Newshound notes that our Grenville isn’t the only dissenting voice among the housing establishment either.
Governments can always withstand the bombast of pressure groups like CPAG, Shelter and Tony Benn but when the criticism comes from people who would normally donate to the party coffers it must be starting to get a bit embarrassing.
Cutting the local authorities
While rail networks are set to get a cash boost us poor lot working for local authorities still have to billions in cuts.
Now I know council’s aren’t everyone’s favourite people. It can often seem to the outsider that bureaucracy is still rife and debilitating but it really is all about cuts, not so much about red tape these days. We still have to provide much needed services and the more we do so the more cuts we get hit with and the more criticism that gets thrown at us when our services don’t deliver as well as the law wants.
Imagine trying to make a Shepherd’s pie when everytime you turn around to pick up a knife or a spoon, someone has nicked some of your ingredients.
Much of the problem is with negative perceptions rather than what is actually going on, which is why I read with interest a recent article on Housing Excellence about PR firms and their take on the matter. Nicola Dufty of Profile Communications said, quite rightly in my book:-
“The real fact is that professionals who work in the social housing sector are actually among some of the most forward-thinking people in the country, they are literally at the coalface of what is happening day to day and are the first to gauge the mood of society”
Speaking as a social housing professional I heartily agree (well I would wouldn’t I?)
Getting great ideas
Councils and particularly housing associations abound with people displaying great ideas, who exercise amazing creativity in the face of endless cuts. The difference is in the speed with which these ideas can take effect.
If we compare private housing concerns to the racehorses I lost my money on last night, sleek, fast and able to turn on a sixpence, social housing organisations are like a cavalry regiment, requiring complex logistics to move as one but who are quite a force to be reckoned with when it all comes together.
When the going gets tough …
In the same article Lyndsey Maddocks of PR firm Word Association said:-
“You just need to work harder and be more creative and make sure what you are doing is absolutely relevant because you can’t afford waste. Everything has got to be very focused, it will just require more effort when you have got a tighter budget but there are still ways of promoting especially nowadays with technology being more advanced.”
I have come to believe that humans are at our most creative when our resources are limited. Conversely having a wealth of money sitting around when we need it can actually stifle innovation.
After a lifetime spent working around social housing organisations, even when I was self employed I have seen hundreds of housing crises come and go and always marvel that any of us are still here. This is testament to the imagination and commitment of the people who work in the industry, not because of any great government policies.
Time to stand up and be counted. I’m council….and I’m proud!!!!!!
Agent bashing corner
Finally, in what seems to be rapidly becoming “Agent bashing corner of the week”, hot on the heels of what is going on in Wales and Scotland, 24 Dash report on Labour’s new policy to regulate the PRS, paying particular emphasis to agents fees Labour’s Shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary Hilary Benn said:-
“We need a professional lettings market in which unscrupulous agents can no longer hit landlords and tenants with rip-off charges. The private rented sector should provide stability both for families who want to plan for their children’s future and for landlords who want to invest for the long term.”
Oh dear, the knives are definitely coming out against agents.
Nice idea Hillary but you’ve got to get into power again yet. If the Con Dems stay in then unregulated agents will be perfectly safe, unless the Welsh dragon can weave it’s magic in the coming months. Now that’s a horse I would bet on.
Ben Reeve Lewis
Ben’s runs Home Saving Expert, where he shares his secrets on defending people’s homes from mortgage repossession Visit his blog and get some help and advice on mortgage difficulties, catch up with him on Twitter and check out his free report “An Encouraging note on Dealing with your Mortgage Lender” and have it sent right to your inbox.
Sorry, but I find the idea that cuts are to blame for everything that goes wrong in local authority land to be at best disingenuous and at worst outright fibbing. My local authority in the East End blames cuts for every time they can’t be bothered to actually assist people or do the necessary repair works to their aged and crumbling housing stock… yet their chief executive still trousers £300,000 per year plus perks.
(They can also find time and money to enforce pettifogging licencing rules about whether the dancers in strip clubs are getting closer than 1 metre from the punters. I kid you not. I’ve seen them send people round with rulers.)
I also have a family member who works for a certain City Council in the south of England and is quite aghast at how much of the taxpayer’s money is spent on such drivel and at the attitude that if they did their jobs properly they’d be out of a job.
That councils don’t have other operational problems I wouldn’t deny JS and I don’t disbelieve that a council has operatives standing in front of barely clad women brandishing rulers. In fact if that job ever goes out for recruitment I will seriously consider abandoning TRO work and taking my own measuring stick in my hand, that’s if I don’t get trampled to death in the rush of other applicants…..what a dream job haha
But it has to be said that red-tape and general bureaucratic nonsense aside you cant deny that the ability of many council departments to provide the service they are often legally obliged to isn’t severely hampered by cuts.
My lot went through a round of cuts 2 years ago and yet next year have to find another £30 million’s worth, Camden council have to find £82 million.
My own team is a typical case in point. 3 years ago there were 8 of us, doling out housing advice on a range of issues, dealing with harassment and illegal eviction, disrepair, and doing case work on rent tribunals, court appearances in defending possession etc. Now we are 2, doing exactly the same work but with defending mortgage repossessions on top of it.
The simple fact is, every council has to do more with less each year. As mentioned by the PR guy in the article, we cant afford to waste.
Yes sometimes working for a council is a bit like an episode of “Yes Minister”, or maybe even “Dad’s Army” but any comedic aspect quickly disappears for the frontline worker facing 100 people in the homelessness reception area all kicking off, swearing and abusing staff and demanding properties we don’t have.
This has been a good week for Labour realising that many of their potential voters are renters. But agents are an easy target: the thing that unites tenants and landlords is a mutual disdain for these hucksters. Rent controls, longer tenancies, and end to retaliatory evictions, assumed permission to decorate? Now that would be better. And don’t tease me with the Shapps mention: I thought he might have done the decent thing…
I’m no politician Penny but if renters far outnumber home-owners then politicians would be well advised to come up with tenant friendly policies.
Thatcher did the reverse in the late 1980s and its legislation we now live with, outdated legislation at that. The Housing Act 1988 gave the keys to the sweet shop to landlords but now PRS tenants outnumber social housing tenants only a foolish politician would deny support for their main voting base. With the growing groundswell of support for landlord and agent regulation tapping into that, it seems inevitable to me. My prediction is 2 years. I reckon PRS regulation will become a major election issue and I know where my vote will go, speaking as a pissed off tenant and someone who is daily exposed to complaints about clueless unregualted agents and violent, self interested landlords
Immediately after posting the last piece I thought I ought to explain my landlord weary week, given I know that many landlords and agents understand that I generally hold a more generous and holistic view.
Monday; I had a Polish family in comppaling that their agents were harassing them. I couldn’t find a legal angle and explained this to the tenants, albeit sympathising that the law and justice weren’t exactly the same thing. The husband lost hi stemper with the wife who agreed with me. He began beating her in front of her children. Our security guy threw him out into the street, he ran off and threw himself inm front of a bus outsaide the reception door. Air-Ambulance arrived. Dead I presume.
Tuesday; I get involved in a 6 hour investigation with the police where a landlord who is proclaiming innocence turns out to be involved in a £2.5 million drugs bust in the North West, before decamping to my borough where she was done for running a brotherl from the property in January. And has been approached by environmental health for letting a 3 bed house to 20 illegal Chinese immigrants
Wednesday: Tom Jones
Thursday: I get the cops around again. This time investigating a landlord who takes on people without recourse to public funds (Illegal immigrants) He doesn’t charge them rent, in fact he pays them £10 a day to stay there to give neighbours a semblance of normality because the properties in question are cannabis farms and as long as neighbours see people coming and going they wont twig. Our guy complains about the danger and somehow word gets back to the landlord. When the tenant gets home, 2 thugs are waiting for him, the beat him up and lock him in a room saying they will kill him later. He escapes through a window and tells all to us.
Friday: I get asked to comment on a crisis unfolding on Martin Lewis’s Money Saving Expert website, where a terrified young girl tenant has refused to allow the estate agent in to show a purchaser around the property. She has previously helped out but the visits are now getting so numerous they are bordering on harassment. She said she wasn’t happy about it and the agent copied her into an email saying:-
The viewing will take place at 2pm tomorrow afternoon. Please instruct the locksmith to be on standby to remove the apartment door lock and indeed perhaps to remove the apartment door if necessary. The tenant must be aware that she will be responsible for all cost incurred by ourselves in relation to accessing the property. My best estimate of these costs will be around £160.00 plus VAT for specific timings.
So forgive me if my usually more sanguine approach towards landlord and tenant matters is a trifle biased towards tenants this week.
When people think that we make up our postings, or invent the things we write about, it’s things like that, experienced by us both, that make me so furious. It’s real. People are often terrified. And someone has to cope and make everything better. Really to see this Ben. You are one of the good guys.