[Ben Reeve Lewis has stab vests on his radar …]
Conference number two in the bag and all went swimmingly.
Unlike my voiced concerns last week I managed to get through the whole event without any inappropriate jokes….at least I think so. If I offended anyone let me know.
Billy Bunter or kicking ass in Crimea?
Stab vests have been on my radar this week.
As my TRO role morphs into potentially more dangerous work I have been told I need to get one for my safety.
So I’ve been trawling the internet and cant choose between what they call ‘Covert vests’, which you wear under your jumper but which makes you look like Billy Bunter, or ‘Overt vests’ like the police and army wear, which make you look like you’re about to parachute into the Crimea to kick some ass.
Its turning into a strange job. Instead of sitting peacefully in my office waiting for complaints of criminal landlords to come in I have to go out and find them.
The housing advice/court work is being superseded by turning up unannounced at rough looking properties at 7am, hammering on the door and blagging my way in to identify dodgy buildings and landlords.
You never know if you are going to find a bunch of perplexed looking Columbian hotel cleaners or a crystal Meth factory guarded by a dog with all the charm of Max Clifford.
Hence the stab vest….whose adverts rather worryingly try to reassure me are also “Ballistics proof to 9mm 124gr Remington or .357 Magnum 158 gr ammunition”.
I’m only looking for missing smoke alarms!!!!
And so to this week’s news.
The million dollar pad
Two ends of the spectrum hit my eye this week. The first, a report in the Evening Standard that the proposed development of Battersea Power Station, that infamous upturned billiard table that has sat idle my entire life, will result in bedsit studio flats retailing for £800,000
At the other end is the report in Inside Housing of the “World gone mad” that is the current homelessness situation in the UK
The gobsmacking revelation of an £800,000 bedsit is one form of madness but how about this, lifted straight from the Inside Housing piece:
“A total of 36 homelessness providers in the capital have closed or merged over the past five years and just eight agencies have entered the sector.
This has coincided with some of the toughest cuts imposed in local government, with council commissioning budgets getting smaller and smaller. Providers are having to offer more services with less funding.”
The report in question published appropriately on April Fools Day by the London Housing Foundation goes on to say:
“Extremely low staffing costs are already written into council contract specifications across the capital and warns that the sector could revert back to the ‘dark ages’.”
So homelessness goes up at the same time that homelessness staff get cut and organisations disappear off the map.
Never mind. Cheryl Cole is back on X Factor so we don’t need to worry.
Councillors start to get interested
A lot of hoo haw going on in my council at the moment with next month’s local elections taking place. Suddenly enquiries from hopeful councillors are flooding in to all council offices looking into what officers are doing about this ASB complaint or that dumped bed.
Its not that these complaints aren’t common throughout the year but the cynic in me cant help noticing the timely rise.
Shelter have also been musing on the effect of disgruntled tenants on next year’s national elections postulating the idea that with generation rent forming increasingly large numbers in an environment where there is no regulation of either rents or letting agents the government could seriously be missing the mark.
The article mentions a YouGov poll which states that only 1 in 10 tenants said they rent because they want flexibility while 6 out of 10 say they rent because they have no other choice. Mortgages being unobtainable for many and affordable social housing similarly a distant fairy tale.
Shelter said:
“When we asked over 4000 renters what their reasons for moving in the last five years had been, more than 1 in 6 blamed poor conditions, 1 in 8 wanted to live in a cheaper property and 1 in 20 just couldn’t afford their rent payments.
This tallies with Generations Rent’s findings that two-thirds of private renters (67%) felt stuck renting because of the cost of buying, and more than half (52%) said the level of their rent was their biggest problem.”
I do agree with Shelter’s predictions. Tenants by and large feel trapped in the market by a range of social forces, none of which are being addressed in any way by the Eton Mess and they might just find they pay the price for this hubris.
If they do then I for one will laugh and laugh and laugh….fit to burst the velcro straps on my stab vest.
Big fines for bad landlords
A warm glow entered my stomach on reading on 24 Dash of the prosecution of Hounslow landlord Abdul Khan who had ignored council planning notices after they found him cramming 11 self contained flats in two homes.
He pleaded guilty and was given 12 months to pay £52,000 in fines.
It’s a good sign for the future as my door-knocking activities are revealing far worse overcrowding than this joker.
We recently prosecuted a local landlord for similar planning offences and she was ordered to pay £38,000 by 4pm the following day or face prison.
And I can finally reveal to the world with pride, an illegal eviction I was involved in last year, where I quickly used force (Kicked the door in) to re-instate the tenant only to have the landlord illegally evict him again 4 days later and install new tenants straight away to block further action.
I worked in partnership with a local solicitor in civil proceedings and he was ordered to pay £52,000 in damages to his tenant.
It’s the sort of result that gives an ageing old TRO a spring in his step on the way home.
Now……back to eBay…hmm, this one has pockets for a note book and loops on it for torches and such like. I think I’m warming to the SWAT team model vests. I wonder if I can get my employers to shell out for a matching gun?
See ya next week
From the Shelter article;
http://blog.shelter.org.uk/2014/04/private-renters-a-potential-political-force-to-be-reckoned-with/
“Our YouGov polling shows that only 1 in 10 renters’ main reason for renting is because it gives them the freedom and flexibility they want.”
It would be nice to see what question they asked and to whom.
If they had said only 1 in 10 renters with 2.4 children of school age, a dog, two cats and a hamster said they rent because they want freedom and flexibility, it would be believable (but a lot less dramatic).
But what about people re-locating? working short term contracts? Armed forces? immigrant workers? students? divorcees? etc etc.
Not saying that most renters don’t want stability but their 1 in 10 figure just isn’t credible.
Perhaps it was an April Fool joke? I hope they aren’t going to carry it on for the rest of the year.
A very fair assessment HBW. Surveys are generally rigged I find. Not just Shelter’s either. I just got a customer satisfaction survey form through from my local GPs, I had a lot to say about appointment times and actually being able to speak to a doctor etc but the answer categories were very carefully crafted to limit any criticism.
Whilst I take on board your comments I have to say, being in the position where I speak to tenants all day long on a number of levels from complaints to my involvement with a number of London based tenant’s rights groups I just never meet people for whom flexibility is their main concern.
In the tenant’s rights groups in fact 99% of them are the singleton, generation rent folks who you might expect to form that 1 in 10 but they don’t. Stability is their main concern.
My gut feeling (And there’s a solid piece of evidence based information for you haha) is that 1 in 10 would be about right. I have to say in my defence that it’s a fairly informed opinion.
Short term contracts and people relocating would certainly be a sizeable constituency as you suggest but given how many are renting in the PRS currently, I still think those numbers, boiled down into statsitics would be around 1 in 10.
Short term contract people are ably catered for by Spare room.com and I have two friends who fit that profile, but both professionally and personally, they are the only two people I know or have ever met who are satisfied with flexibility.
Hello Ben,
The article says ‘reason for’ not ‘concern’.
I’m sure stability is right up there as a main concern.
One of the big advantages of renting is the freedom and flexibility it brings (despite the obvious downside). I believe across all renters across all of the country, this figure would be considerably higher. Shelter seem to be playing it down for their own ends.
Another Yougov survey from someone with different vested interests puts that figure at 24% across all renters, more than 30% for more affluent households and more than 50% of under 24 year olds. I think that is more realistic and it reflects my experience. See;
http://www.savills.co.uk/research_articles/141280/172165-0
Lies, damned lies and statistics eh?