Ben Reeve Lewis Friday Newsround #179

[Ben Reeve Lewis predicts arrears ..]

I had a chat at the bus stop last night with a housing benefit colleague who has been seconded over to the job centre in advance of Universal Credit being rolled out locally next year.

His role is to call people on benefits and ask them what they know about it. The usual response being “Well, I’ve heard of it but I don’t know what it is”.

He then has the unenviable task (or enviable task depending on how you get your kicks) of telling them how it is going to affect their income, at which point he sticks the call on speakerphone and hides under the desk.

I don’t understand how so many people can still not know about this particular steamroller that is rumbling their way. In this case ignorance definitely isn’t bliss.

Let the rent arrears commence.

Predictable arrears

Attempting to get ahead of things it was announced this week in Inside Housing that a consortium of social landlords have been working with Microsoft to build an algorithm that will be enable them to predict rent arrears.

The calculation takes into account in-house data on payment history and combines it with government data on crime and for some bizarre reason pollution.

It’s called a ‘Neural based predictive algorithm’ a name that will I’m sure give more than a few geeks and housing managers a bit of a turn on.

You can tell that Matt Leach of Housing Action Charitable Trust is already getting a bit squiffy by the way he says enthusiastically:

“’Big data’ is described as such because it usually poses a processing challenge to overcome the volume, velocity and variety of information and extract valuable findings.”

Good luck to the 20 participating housing associations but try as I may I simply can’t summon up any belief that this will work.

Its 42 …

It’s the notion as a whole that there is some magical mathematical solution that will uncover the meaning of life that I’m dubious about. I saw Russell Crowe in “A Beautiful Mind” driven mad by such pursuits.

Admittedly this is the view of a man whose own skills with maths makes him dizzy simply reading “John has 3 apples” and a reckless attempt at the three times table would see me sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Don’t even think about it …

Laugh out loud moment of the week came via Estate Agent Today where it was reported that a proposed strike by German Estate agents had to be called off due to lack of support.

Apparently the strike was in response to the introduction of rent capping by the government that would prevent 11,000 letting agent members of the German Federation of Estate Agents from earning commission.

It was the 64% abstentions that sunk them. Said 64% being sales agents who are unaffected by the cap.

An interesting tale that I researched a bit more, finding most articles concentrating on the slew of jokes on twitter about estate agents, one German wag posting “Please strike forever” while another, similarly hilarious punter tweeted “Imagine a strike which just makes everyone laugh”.

Wooooaaaah nearly cracked a rib at that one.

I have no idea why, when reading those ‘Jokes’ in my mind I hear the voice of John Cleese in that infamous Fawlty Towers episode.

Sorry if I seem to be stereotyping German humour. In actual fact I love German comedian Henning Wehn who said:

“With stand-up in Britain what you have to do is bloody swearing. In Germany, we don’t have to swear. Reason being, things work.”

The biggest fine ever?

The cockles of my enforcement officer heart were well and truly warmed this week by reading on Property Hawk of the misfortune of Islington Landlord David Kohali, who was ordered to pay

• Fines of £190,000
• A confiscation order of £76,562.76
• Court costs of £15,042.50

Making a grand total of £281, 607.57…..Ouch.

What was his heinous crime? Ignoring numerous planning enforcement notices over tiny flats stuffed into a crappy building.

Islington councillor James Murray said:

“We want to make sure people have decent places to live – not places like these six small, sub-standard flats crammed into an outbuilding. The owner’s decision to cram in these flats was done without planning permission, and our requests to comply with an enforcement notice were repeatedly ignored.”

Nice fella James. I had a pint with him a few months back.

Subletting crime

I have written before about the poor reaction of most social landlords to the new criminal offence of sub letting homes.

Most have gone down the route of offering a pathetic amnesty which results in a key or two being handed back and goes nowhere near tackling the problem which is on a huge, even organised scale in some areas.

But Hackney council and housing associations Family Mosaic and Guinness Trust have been working together and this week seized their 100th sub let property

24 Dash reported:

“Thanks to a tip-off received by Family Mosaic, it was discovered that the crook and her husband were illegally sub-letting two homes; one from Guinness and another from Family Mosaic.

The couple were profiting in excess of £400 a month, as their ‘tenants’ were paying the social rents to the landlords and transferring additional funds to the couple’s bank account in Angola.”

Team work you see? Gets them every time.

Team works works

As a social housing worker I am always amazed at the prevalence of what is known as ‘Silo working’ in public services, where teams beaver away in isolation without talking to each other or sharing information.

My particular team is a multi agency network and we regularly meet up with other boroughs and you would be amazed what information drops onto the table when we all share info on rogue landlords.

It actually doesn’t cost anything either. It just needs a change in perception.

What made me smile this week

Well it’s actually a case of “What will make me smile this week?”, because on Saturday night I will be doing my first gig in 20 years.

I was a professional musician in the 1980s, a bass guitarist but I gave up many moons ago when I swapped my instrument for a sampler, some white gloves and a glow stick, until Frazzy bought me a guitar as a xmas present which I took up with the sole intention of playing at home but bumped into old mates who still play.

Now I am officially the lead guitarist in “The Vinyl Collective”.

Admittedly I’ve got two extra strings that I haven’t quite got to grips with but if I learnt anything in my years as a pro it is this….“Turn the volume up, look confident and bash away”.

Anyway, the gig is at a Rugby club. The audience will be too pissed to notice or care by the time I strut my funky thang!

See ya next week.