[Ben Reeve Lewis doesn’t care anymore…]
I am officially old.
Remember when you are young you know the latest actors, the upcoming bands, who is collaborating with who and what the hot stuff is?
Then you have kids, start working harder and you read the line-up for Glastonbury and realise with a mild panic that you haven’t heard of half the bands?
It troubles you, youth is slipping away. You might even go out, get a couple of CDs by these upstarts to keep yourself up to date and your kid thinks you are cool for a day, which cheers you up for a bit but not long.
Who’s a celerbrity?
Today I saw an advert for the line-up of ‘I’m a celebrity get me out of here’ and I realised that I didn’t know who a single one of them was.
But here is the clincher, not knowing didn’t depress me. What depressed me was that I didn’t give a toss that I didn’t know who they were.
It’s not the fact that you don’t know who they are that is the sign you are old, its ‘no longer caring’ that you don’t know who they are that tells you that the long inexorable slide out of the back door has begun.
So I had better begin the news while I can still remember my section 21s from my section 8s.
VIctoria hits the spot
In last Sunday’s Landlord Law Blog roundup Tessa pointed me at a clip I missed from Question Time of journalist Victoria Coren ‘s sarcastic but on the money remarks about working middle income groups leaving London because housing is so unaffordable.
Ms Coren’s not entirely ironic rant predicated by the idea that only the very rich or the very poor can afford to live here these days.
By very poor I mean people on benefits with less than 3 kids. More than three kids and the benefit cap will getcha.
Made me laugh but with a certain rueful acknowledgement, being as Frazzy and I are exactly in that group being squeezed out, despite working stupid hours each week, including weekends and yet still struggle to meet our housing costs.
Its 8pm at the time of writing. I’ve been on the case since 7am and Frazzy since 6am and we are still both beating away on our keyboards bringing in a living.
Support from London Think Tank
And lest people think that Ms Coren was only being provocative, look on this study published by leading think tank ‘Centre for London’ which states:
“that school teachers, bus drivers, electricians, chefs, doctors, nurses and even solicitors who don’t already own homes in the capital are being progressively “priced out” of it as house prices and private sector rents soar.“
What irks me is that my lot, these middle earners are exactly the group that government says they fully support and encourage. People who “Do the right thing” as IDS keeps mysteriously and meaninglessly saying.
No you don’t mate. Its that simple. You’re kicking us to death.
And yes before you say it, I know there is life beyond the M25. I’ve been there. I’ve lived there and its great but its not my home.
Anyway, I’ve written about this before and don’t want to bore my regulars, or turn off anyone new to Newsround so lets look at another fella working hard and get a kicking off of the state.
Four years later …
The unfortunately named Robert Fidler, a farmer of surrey who erected a huge pile of hay bales on his land while he secretly built a mock Tudor castle behind it so the planners didn’t see.
The name of the game was to get the house past the 4 year planning enforcement rule, after which time it cant be ordered to be torn down.
The planners successfully argued that as it was hidden behind hay bales he couldn’t apply for retrospective planning permission because the neighbours hadn’t seen it. He now has 90 days to demolish it.
Have a look at it in the article. Its actually alright, although not personally my cup of tea but very in-keeping with the Surrey countryside although I wouldn’t go as far as Mr Fidler in saying:
“It would be like Rembrandt being asked to rip up his masterpiece of an oil painting”
The council spokesperson from Reigate & Banstead said:
“The Secretary of State’s decision demonstrates that people who ignore planning rules for the good of everyone are likely to find themselves in this unfortunate position”.
For heaven’s sake give the guy a freakin break. Its is a bloody sight more attractive than half of the rabbit hutch flats springing up all over London that do have planning permission, most of which must have been granted in the form of brown envelopes in an underground car-park.
Mr Fidler just wasn’t greasing the right palms.
Why do we need new schemes?
Here’s a bit of hot news for you. The TDS are set to launch their own custodial tenancy deposit scheme In England and Wales on the 1st April.
Up until now only the DPS had a custodial scheme, I wonder if My Deposits will also follow suit? [They have – Ed]
I’m no expert on the working shenanigans of the market side of things but do we really need another custodial scheme? If both DPS and TDS scheme would be free where is the competition?
I’m not saying this to be sarcastic, I would genuinely like to know, so if anyone from TDS wants to comment and clarify feel free. What would make a landlord or agent go with TDS instead of DPS?
Scarface
A person who would have no interest in deposit protection or hiding a castle behind hay bales is the owner of El Fureidis in Miami which according to my daily newsletters from property porn website Curbed was used as Tony Montana’s mansion in ‘Scarface’.
I know its predictable but could anyone resist standing at the top of the stairs each day and shouting “Say hello to me leetle friend”?
I know I couldn’t but then I’m sad like that, as well as predictable.
Apparently the house sold for only a third of its $35m asking price. If Tony Montana had really owned it I dare say his estate agent would by now be dangling from his heels from the top floor by now.
What made me smile this week
A couple of things actually. Discovering Lyle Divinsky an upcoming soul singer (A new musician…. I cant be that old) who sounds remarkably like Daryl Hall and whose album hasn’t been off me iPod this week and also the long awaited publication of the 10th Bernie Gunther Mystery, ‘The woman from Zagreb’ by Phillip Kerr which I’ve been greedily devouring.
I’ve been waiting like a kid at Xmas since his last novel. If you like Bogart-esque film noir you’ll love Bernie.
Oh and also reading in the Independent this week that scientists have discovered that a warped sense of humour and the ability to laugh at tragic events is one of the early signs of dementia.
In which case I’ve been going into dementia all my life.
See ya next week
I am not saying that rent is not very high in London. However my issue if it is anything like some of the regulations poorly written and hard to comply. (only effecting law abiding landlords). For example I know someone who has phoned the police/council numerous times about 15+ working men people in a 3 bed semi but nothing gets done. I could very easily imagine if rent controls were enacted modest rent be deemed to high.
Custodial schemes are very useful when a property is being sold, or transferred out of the management of an agent. So an agent being able to pay the deposit into a custodial scheme while keeping with the same deposit protect scheme may be useful.
Competition is also partly over how disputes are dealt with and how good the admin systems are.
“only the very rich or the very poor can afford to live here these days” => I was told this by my dad when I was a child in the 80s living in Hackney. So nothing new…..
@ Sam I cannot refer to cuts too stridently. If you watch episode 5 of ‘Nightmare tenants, slum landlords’ you will see me attending a property overcrowded with Chinese immigrants, 3 or 4 of whom were illegals but when we whistled up UKBA police we were told that they couldnt spare any staff to collect them.
Do you know how many properties are massively overcrowded in London? 15+ people isnt really on our scale, its bog standard
Last year (to the day actually) we cleared a 9 room house with 47 people in it.
When you take UKBA with you, you probably get 5 or 6 officers. For each person they arrest you lose the team, because they have to be taken back to the nick and each one needs a Met cop with them for procedure’s sake.
Not of which addresses the trafficking gangs who are usually behind placing people in overcrowded and dangerous conditions, because that is what is behind it. Sex trade, DVDs and cannabis cultivation.
It has little to do with housing law and everything to do with organised criminal activity, for which councils and the police dont have the resources for because, as is being complained about everywhere this government only wants one thing…..cuts.
Support them at your peril.
@Ian. I started in homelessness work in 1978 as an 18 year old. We said there was a housing crisis then. My god if only we knew what we know now. We would look like children in a playground in our naivete.
I cant emphasise enough, and I can be more candid now I’m no longer employed by a local authority, there is little left in local authorities. Posts and services have been axed to keep council tax bills down
Thanks for your reply Ben. In this case it was not London. I am skeptical of some of the cuts done are necessary because the central gov demands.
For instance my labour run council are closing the libraries in the poorest areas of the city (no one mentions the poorest bit) because they need to ‘save money’ yet they hired consults for advise whom they didn’t even take would have covered the library’s cost and more. Later it even came out it would just be the cost of staff they would save so at the very least could have remained open longer. I might add they paid for more consultants later too.
Plus licencing HMO’s is ring fenced not to make a profit ie it’s just to run the scheme. Yet some landlord I spoke to said the hmo inspection lasted barely 10 minutes and the team for it were a handful.
Plus the amount of roadworks are semi regular in some locations (recently a month apart) yet just up the road slightly (20 feet if that) there are potholes and everything.
Most councils I know are in such a blind state of panic to get costs down that few cuts are thought of in long term Sam.
I may be doing senior managers a disservice. I’m sure many hours are spent deciding how to make an inch look like a yard but with most of the cuts I just cant see why they made them.
You get an entire team disbanded in one council whilst a neighbouring borough of an identical size and with identical social problems doubles the size of theirs, whilst axing something elsewhere. The focus is all in wages and services.
The mad thing is that at the moment there is quite a bit of temporary contract going in London as councils realise they have cut too many staff in departments and have to re-employ temps to keep the service running.
But there might be method in the madness. A £30,000 pa job doesnt cost the council £30,000, you have to factor in sick leave, annual leave, desk space etc. The true cost of a £30,000 job will likely be closer to £45,000, whereas a temp………Its all in the maths
Thanks again Ben for replying. I really think corruption and misapplication of money spent and incompetence is the main fault this country has.
For instance taxes in this country are already higher than Venezuela (a model Corbyn likes) yet most would not think that (although the tory press use Venezuela as a boogy man to scare there readers).
I knew some people who a rented council accommodation before the ‘cuts’ had not had working heating for years, in spite of telling the council many times. Then another was ‘generously’ given a flat for her and kids with literally rats, mold etc etc the DAY she moved in and was told she would have to sort it. All this from council accommodation? Then (And this council more than some goes on about sub standard private accommodation for many years
There are bad and good in all housing tenures but the headlines never talk about Council/Social housing. I suspect the reason you don’t is if they spoke out they fear (rightly/wrongly) the council/social provider would try and evict them
Have to agree with you there Sam. The biggest “rogue landlord” in LB Lewisham (BR-L’s former employer) is, you’ve guessed it, Lewisham Council. You try getting them to repair a property, if you wait less than 6 months you’re doing well. Yet they have the audacity to have a dedicated team telling private Landlords to repair a property in 28 days, the words pot, kettle and black come to mind here. BRL really does need to stop moaning about Public Sector cuts, they’ve been over staffed for donkey’s years and are now heading down towards the correct staff level, trouble is, they will all now have to work eight hours a day and Facebook status updates and Pet Rescue don’t count as work by the way.
I wouldnt disagree at all that social landlords have a disgraceful record on repairs. Manys the time I fielded phone calls from fed up council and housing association tenants asking my advice on moving into the PRS.
I always advised against it, pointing out that they need to consider the frustration of waiting ages for repairs balanced against uncontrollable rents and lack of security.
In Lewisham’s case, as with all councils, enforcement of repairing obligations is the preserve of the council, who as an organisation cant sue themselves. Therein lies the flaw in the procedure.
The tenant could of course sue the council or housing association but for the most part you dont get legal aid for disrepair claims, although there are some good firms out there who regularly sue councils and housing associations using CFAs.
Have you considered the possibility that the very reason that councils and housing associations may not be performing their repairing obligations may be down to the very cuts you accuse me of whining about?
Thanks again Ben. The London market may be entirely different I get that. Anecdotal it may be but the Landlords I have spoken to say provided the Tenant pays his/her rent he is happy to keep them for a considerable time. What they don’t want is bad tenants been given security of longer tenancies. For example my next door neighbors have moved out after renting their since 2007-2008 (ish). The previous tenant was also their at the latest 2000 (hard to remember exactly)
Thanks for the stories Ben my problem at least when it comes to property issues the media is like i said before always blaming private landlords and never council/social. Also ‘rogue’ landlords are thrown around regularly but ‘rogue’ tenants is hardly heard of anywhere (except landlord sites) the channel 5 show is the first time I believe).
I think legislation needs to be tweaked for different circumstances. For example if a tenant is deliberately and easily afforded not paying rent the 2 months rule should be lowered. I am not a landlord but as it is the law does not reward the landlord if he/she charges lower rent when it comes to arrears so most understandably charge more. (If I was and the law was different I would charge less)
With the talk of benefit fraud around, they could amend it so not handing on the Universal credit, Housing Benefit if not handed on to Landlord that would be deemed fraud (after all working on the side for less money is)Or much, much faster eviction process. That may encourage some landlords to take benefit claimants.
John Orson Thanks for that. The council I am talking about is not that one.
Sam I’m all for faster evictions where the tenant is at fault and you are right there are loads of rogue tenants out there as well.
The media’s steroetyped portayal of landlords seems to go way back. Think of the silent film archetype of the ‘Evil landlord’, wearing a top hat and twirling his moustache while he ties a damsel to the train tracks or evicts a family into the night.
Or more seriously that bloke in Bristol who for a while was a suspect in the murder of his tenant because a: he looked weird and b: he was a landlord.
Neither of which stereotypes fit individuals I know personally such as the lovely Serena Burt aka HMO Landlady and the equally lovely Marion Money, both wonderful people.
But also in the last 100 years we have seen mass evictions in Glasgow in 1915 over rent rises, Peter Rachman, more evictions and mass homelessness during the great depression etc and people have long memories and our present laws were constructed in response to a number of historical situations.
Whilst the laws are largely in place to protect tenants from the worst excesses of the worst types of landlord the landlord does have the ultimate power of eviction.
In my whole career I cant tell you how many times I have heard both landlords and tenants complain that the law is on the other person’s side but as an enforcement officer who has been involved in resolving thousands of disputes over the past 25 years I have to say it depends on what you are trying to do with it at the time.
If you are a landlord trying to evict a tenant who owes you 5 grand and it takes months it certainly must seem like it falls the tenant’s way but if you are a tenant being evicted when you have done nothing wrong other than to not be able to afford the rent increase it doesnt seem like you have much protection