[Ben Reeve Lewis, reluctant TV star …)
I’ve become quite an old hand at this TV malarkey.
In the past 5 years I’ve done two Panoramas, two Dispatches, a couple of Inside Out’s, a 6 part series for Channel 5 (and a bit for series two), two Channel 4 news’, a pilot that didn’t air and a brace of Radio 4 comments, with two more upcoming programmes at varying stages of production in the pipeline.
Monday this week saw me working as a credited ‘Housing consultant’ on Channel 4 Dispatches about landlords earning millions from housing benefit for letting out crap and dangerous properties.
The novelty of being on TV wore off some time ago, as has the novelty of the 2 or 3 people each week tapping me on the shoulder in Tesco saying “I saw you on TV”, to which there is not much you can say other than “Oh right” and you have to be extra smiley, regardless of your mood, lest they go home and say “I saw that bloke off the housing programme. He was an arse”.
What really annoys is that documentaries always leave 90% of the scurrilous stuff out for fear of being sued, so even the worst landlords don’t look that bad. I’m losing faith in my idea that media can be a useful adjunct to rogue landlord enforcement.
Going DOWN!
Having spent most of my life with my nose in the dirt, often literally I see a different reality and have noted the rise in dodgy basement excavations in London, which is why I was intrigued and not wholly surprised to read of poor couple Ed Godswain and Jaquie Hale whose basement conversion caused their property to actually break in half.
What sounds mildly amusing as a headline has been an absolute disaster for the couple, as the article reports:
“More than three years later the couple have been left with debts of about £1 million, some £500,000 in legal bills, £100,000 in expenses and a £700 monthly mortgage – payable for the next 20 years – on a property they will never live in again,”
My heart goes out to them. Barnet council added insult to injury by whacking them with a £318,000 bill for the cost of the demolition. Why didn’t they just let it sink into the basement, stamp it down and concrete over it?
They were doing what so many are currently doing in the capital, trying to add to the family home by digging down, in fact the article reports that several other residents in the street have done the same.
Down with the washing too
On a similar topic the Nearly Legal crew report the strange case of a council tenant, Mrs Lafferty hanging out the washing who fell into a sink hole that opened up under her laundry basket It wasn’t the injuries that she was concerned about but she had to do the washing again.
OK I lied about the last bit.
It’s actually an interesting legal point about the landlord’s liability for this kind of thing when the fault couldn’t have been detected before it happened. The council won, the courts commenting that it would be unreasonable to expect a landlord to undertake a satellite geophysical survey on their properties at regular intervals.
OK I lied about that last bit as well, I seem to be developing a theme this week.
Laundering in London
You might think I am lying about the next piece of news, but the truth is the website keeps closing before I can grab the link to free newspaper City AM where it is reported this week that London is about to be deluged by a £6 billion splash out by Iranian property developers.
Said investors seeing London, like so many others as a great place to launder money and stock pile homes that they won’t be living in, consequently driving up house prices even more.
All adding weight to the warning, growing more real by the day, that London will soon be occupied by only two types of people, the very rich and small families on benefits. If you have more than 3 kids you are screwed by the benefit cap and have to move to Dunfermline.
Meanwhile, the working people who are doing Iain Duncan-Smith’s ‘Right thing’ are moving out to more affordable places.
On yer Vespa
In the 1980s we had Tebbit urging the unemployed to “Get on their bike” while 30 years later it is working people who have to get on their bike, albeit these days likely to be a classic Vespa.
Only last month the Evening Standard reported that sales of prime London property were showing signs of slumping. Then just in time the Iranians arrive with the cavalry and bags of cash to halt the slide. Mind you with current London prices £6 billion will probably net them three terraced houses and a run down HMO.
Alternatively as the Standard’s article suggests the unoccupied prime properties will degenerate into slums that the poor can then move into, providing at last accommodation for Londoners to live in.
A clear message for Landlords in Brum
This week’s ‘Boo-Hiss award’ goes to the story of Birmingham landlord Mirsad Solakovic who was fined £700 for illegally evicting a family and 7 children. The award is actually not for Mr Solakovic, who just does what so many do but for the judges at Birmingham Magistrates Court who once again prove that the judiciary in criminal prosecutions for illegal eviction don’t take it seriously.
The appointed councillor trotted out the same, identical line that all councillors and council press offices say of these affairs:
“Today’s prosecution sends out a clear message that we will not tolerate this behaviour and will pursue those landlords who operate outside the law”
Yeah right……….. With 7 kids to accommodate I doubt £700 represented even one week’s rental income.
The article links to another case, curiously enough in the same Brum area of Bordesley Green where landlord Sead Alimajstorovic was, according to the headline, forced to “Pay £5k for evicting a mum and child”.
My eyebrows raised slightly more in approval until you read the article which shows again Birmingham Magistrates actually only fined him £1,035. All bar £104 of the rest being legal costs.
Well done the Birmingham TROs but I know they were most likely underwhelmed with the result but at least this time the same councillor, John Cotton managed to avoid the standard line about sending a ‘clear message’.
The ‘Clear message’ being its cheaper and quicker to illegally evict a tenant than to follow due process, especially if you live in Birmingham.
What made me smile this week.
A George Carlin observation “As soon as someone is identified as an unsung hero, he no longer is”
See ya next week.