[Ben Reeve Lewis’ has had an eventful week …]
Well I’ve had an eventful week, participating in a joint police , local authority taskforce to clean up a particularly run down and crime ridden high street in my locale.
Hitting the street with Police, UKBA officers (Now apparently called “ICE”, so they kept reminding us), environmental health, trading standards, food safety, EDF & British Gas revenue lads and a few odds and sods from DWP etc.
In 6 hours we only got through 7 shops with residential accommodation above but the day’s worked netted
- 2 prohibition notices on meat and fish shops including one on the spot closure,
- 3 unlicensed HMOs,
- overcrowding in death trap conditions we didn’t know about,
- 36 illegal immigrants in two flats,
- 8 arrests by ICE,
- 6 disconnections of gas and electricity for running stolen and dangerous supplies,
- a huge haul of DVDs, illegal tobacco and
- a load of fake over the counter drugs, humourously kept in a Met Police carrier bag under a bed.
We would have done more but the raid was cut short when someone was shot in the leg further up the high street and we lost half our police support who ran off to deal with that. It’s a charming area.
What amazed me as I scurried about in the lofts and hidden but occupied spaces in the residential bits, were the living conditions.
I’ve seen a lot in my time, as had the other teams there but even we were appalled.
Charles Dickens would have wept to see that 150 years later there were still people living in places like that. See pics.
Seven properties down, around another 68 to go.
Garden Cities
Of course government want to see an end to this and are bent over the hearth, holding up a sheet of newspaper to create an air-trap and relight the fire under the long dead notion of garden cities, originally created so that people didn’t have to live in such squalid conditions.
But there is a piece of damp wood among the kindling as Inside Housing tells us this week that the proposed 15,000 home development at Ebbsfleet is in a high risk flood plain as advised by the Environment Agency.
Remember them? That’s right, the ones who have been warning government about cuts for ages that resulted in this winter’s madness in places like Somerset.
Osborne quoted on the Andrew Marr Show said proudly:
“‘For the first time in 100 years [we are] going to build a garden city on the Thames Estuary… There is fantastic infrastructure. It’s on the river…”
Love the last four words there…”Its on the river” haha.
Hey George, how about telling us to invest in holiday homes in the Crimea?
Atlantis?
The Treasury Office said that full consultation over flood issues had been dealt with when planning permission had been granted but the offices of local MP Gareth Johnson said:
“They were not aware of any consultation that had taken place with local communities”
Although welcoming news of the proposed site he goes on to say:
“Families don’t want to move to a muddy quarry with no facilities and services to support the new housing.”
A note of caution there Gareth? Why did you expect that anyone was going to do something as tiresome as talk to local residents? It would get in the way of the multi millions available to developers.
Mind you it would be a nice touch if they named the new garden city “Atlantis” wouldn’t it?
Ukraine and the UK property market
And talking of homes in the Crimea (up a few lines….pay attention at the back) I read an interesting piece on the blog Mortgage Solutions, about how the current Ukraine crisis is impacting on the property market in the UK.
What I found curious about the article, written by head of KFH’s surveyors Robin Johnson, is the gap between the title and the article.
I know my grasp of financial matters is akin to a Monkey with a Harp but it seems he doesn’t explain it at all, in fact the Ukraine is only mentioned in passing in the last line.
However I did understand some of the other startling figures, even though I am a bit astonished by the angle he takes, which is a prime example of a mind-set where money talks and humans walk.
Making investors comfortable
Whereas I knew that 85% of prime London property is already owned by foreign investors what I didn’t know was that there is a caveat to foreign investment that sets a lower limit of £1m investment which deters investors.
There is recommendation that the amount be raised to £2m but yet another proposal to get rid of it altogether, so that “Investors are more comfortable”.
Mr Johnson informs us that:
“Not only has overseas money for new build apartments come flooding in, now it seems overseas money to develop the homes is also pouring in. The Malaysians recently funded the Battersea Power Station, the Chinese have financed 1 Nine Elms and the Singaporeans are backing Royal Wharf.”
I have a genuine question for anyone who reads this blog, if all these foreign investors are buying in the UK where are UK investors buying?
Does Ron Geezer own a housing estate in Chile? Or ‘Old Etonian investments’ an office block or two in Papua New Guinea?
If not, why not? And what deters them from investing in the UK’s housing stock?
Renewable energy – a new report
Feeling a tad depressed and irked by Mr Johnson paean to the pound with nay a mention of the humans at the sharp end of it all I turned deliberately to New Start magazine, an online blog of all things community and human scaled to cheer myself up.
Jacob Barnes interesting article talks of the gap between a new report by DECC, the Department of Energy & Climate Change and a new initiative, the Bristol Energy Network, a genuine grass-roots community lead set of solutions to renewable energy.
Another prime example, which seems to be this week’s theme, of the interests of people at the top bearing little connection to the interests of the people at the bottom. The article states:
“Where Bristol lays out its vision as ‘a city where everyone has access to sufficient, affordable low-carbon energy, with active communities across the city generating and managing a significant amount of their energy need’, DECC’s vision remains somewhat opaque”
“This (DECC’s) somewhat, incoherent definition contrasts strongly with the Bristol strategy, which was based on cross-sector consultation and simply sidesteps the perceived need to define activity”.
As with Ebbsfleet the government’s view of consultation is in marked contrast to the community’s.
Failed joke alert
But of course human beings are just Ants to many government and money types aren’t they?, which is I admit a puerile metaphor aimed solely at supporting a joke about Ant and DECC that I couldn’t actually come up with in the end.
I think I’m better suited to climbing through lofts and broken windows of the properties owned by foreign investors trying to save their tenants from burning alive.
See ya next week.
Brilliant post, Ben.
Cheers Penny, we aim to please.
It does seem at times…well, all the time actually, that Cameron’s posse, including Boris,just think that resolving the housing crisis is merely a question of free investment opportunities, usually for their mates.
Whereas at the coal face of human need, whose lofts I crawl through, sanitation and safety are still outstanding priorities.
This depresses me
I agree. The landlord trolls (who also hang around sometimes) are keen to repeat ‘most people are happy in the PRS.’ I still think it’s the low level misery of long-term insecurity and short tenancies, but stories like yours are far too common. In the end, what will actually happen to the hideous crook of a rentier? They won’t forfeit the property. They could even assign it to relatives. Even if they’re banned for a bit – they can return. It’s hard to endure and hard to witness.
Yes it is more widespread than people think.
At the planning meeting for the high street raid we carried out we were all pooling resources and trying to build a list of properties that were of interest.
The police in charge turned to EDF revenue and asked how many properties they were interested in. They said that looking at places where there was no record of supply, minimal use and fluctuations in supply, which would give them cause to investigate, they had 60 addresses in the one street.
While we sat back and blew out our cheeks they pointed out that this was only one half of the high street and also only the commercial meters, not the residential.
While we sat back even further and blew out even more cheeks the guys from British Gas revenue put their hands up and said meekly “We havent given you our list yet”.
True to form we didnt find a single property that was 100% decent and safe. Not one!!!!! People were living 6 to a room, dangerous hotwired supplies, even one person living behind a walk-in freezer in the basement of a butchers.
Every single space that could be crammed with a human being had at least one.
People would point to tenant choice but in this bottom end, poverty trap choice is limited. The benefit cap has put many families £200 – £300 and more per week short of the rent so up steps the criminals to provide no questions asked accommodation, on a shut up or get out basis.
It’s these people that my new team have been formed to take down. I always knew and came into contact with them as a TRO but in my new role, going out with all the other teams and police who have their own addresses of interest I’ve come to realise it is even more endemic than even I previously thought.
I think when landlords say that tenants are happy in the PRS they may actually mean THEIR tenants, living in their properties and the properties of other landlords they know.
Which, if they are good landlords, will probably be right. There ARE a lot of very good landlords around and the new landlords who came in with buy to let have often upped the standard. This needs to be remembered.
Many of the landlords I work with are passionate about the standards in their properties and providing a good service.
I hope that the bad landlords are, overall, in the minority, but not in Ben’s manor it seems.
Yeah its the work I do Tessa. The kind of landlords and agents I deal with never read Landlord Law Blog or any of the other blogs for that matter.
I dont use the phrase Rogue Landlord, it’s vague and unhelpful. The people I deal with are criminals pure and simple. Not even criminal landlords, but criminals who happen to be landlrods as well.
Unfortunately they are out there. Not in large numbers but it only takes one to have a huge effect in a community. 3 properties run like this will give you countless complaints of ASB, illegal evictions, harassment, unlicensed HMOs planning breaches, housing benefit fraud, child protection issues etc etc. This is why we now tackle them on a multi agency level.
Well done Ben.
It must be good to get a bit of job satisfaction amongst all the frustration.
With the thousands that EDF and BG have saved with just 7 properties, do you think there is any chance they’ll pay you all double time to sort out the other 68 over the weekend?
Haha Not a chance HBW, not a chance.
From what I understand of the revenue protection business the reason our bills are so high has nothing to do with fat cat salaries and everything to do with stolen utility supplies that they struggle to keep up with. Whether it be landlrods doing it on an organised criminal basis or tenants doing amateur bridging jobs.
Have to confess to a very satisfied Cheshire cat grin this evening. A landlord who I dealt with last year who illegally evicted 3 tenants and ignored all injunctions I got against him has just been through trial number one (civil court)…..£51,000 damages, 3 of his properties frozen and one of his bank accounts.
Trials two and three are on Wednesday. Sometimes all the years of frustration bear fruit
Hello Rentergirl,
Ignoring the dig about anyone disagreeing being a landlord troll, I think we have some common ground;
“In the end, what will actually happen to the hideous crook of a rentier? They won’t forfeit the property.* They could even assign it to relatives. Even if they’re banned for a bit – they can return.”
I wholeheartedly agree with the jist of what you’re saying.
They don’t even need to own it, just sublet and/or take on a commercial property and put up a frontman.
I believe Lewisham’s way of specifically targeting the criminals will prove to be the only effective way of tackling this.