A kinder way to deal with tenants who are not paying rent

Reply to the comment left by Tessa Shepperson at 07/04/2022 - 09:42Tessa
Your headline says
``A kinder way to deal with tenants who are not paying rent``
Vulnerable Tenant is in a real predicament and needs help. They are in financial trouble and owe maybe £5000. As you say in your OP a tenants situation maybe ` absolutely catastrophic` You though have referred them to Julie who will charge them £50 that they can probably ill afford
Surely the `kinder`thing would have been to refer them to The Citizen Advice Bureau which is free
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/discrimination-because-of-disability/disability-discrimination-and-debt-problems/
That took me 10 seconds to google . You could have done that
Your underlying motives for posting this thread are very questionable in my view . When asked for a list of organisations you say `I am afraid I don't have such a list` .Just ask your friend / business partner Julie. She will have a list. But you are charging in effect £50 for that list and even then you probably wont want to disclose that list to a landlord or tenants as that will take business away from you .
Your commercial desire to gain £50 from Vulnerable Tenant doesn't look good . Make money providing a service to Landlords by all means I totally get that - but its not kind in my view to try and take £50 off vulnerable tenants

@Jonathan. Maybe if I explain the background. The Helping Tenants in arrears kit was developed with Julie Ford after Julie did a training webinar for my Landlord Law members where she explained how landlords could help tenants by (among other things) sourcing grant aid. We were all blown away by her presentation and the help that she had been able (after a lot of hard work) to give tenants (upon, in most cases, being paid to do so by their landlords).

It occurred to me that it might be helpful to work with Julie to create a kit to help others do similar work as clearly, Julie cannot on her own help all landlords whose tenants are in arrears. Julie currently works with the PRS providing mediation services.

The kit is not aimed at tenants and we do not expect hard-up tenants to pay us anything.

The kit is aimed at landlords and letting agents who want to know how they can help their tenants in arrears of rent. It is not a 'list of sources' for tenants. It is a step by step guide on how to help tenants. It would be very useful for example for a letting agency needing staff training so they can develop a service doing this work for their landlords.

Of course, there are other places where people can get help, and the CAB and the https://www.turn2us.org.uk/ website are two of them. I myself do not specialise in this work as Julie does (my work is helping landlords via my Landlord Law service and developing training services). I put the post up on Property118 as I want people to be aware that this resource exists. There is not a lot of point in doing it if no-one knows about it.

As far as helping tenants is concerned, I have together with solicitor Harriet Thomas at our own expense, developed a mostly free help site for tenants (or 'renters') at https://www.therentersguide.co.uk/ which has a lot of help and guidance, including this article https://www.therentersguide.co.uk/a-guide-to-getting-financial-assistance/ which is based on my experience in developing the kit with Julie. I linked Vulnerable Tenant to this article in my post above.

There is also a. massive amount of free help and advice for both landlords and tenants on my blog at https://landlordlawblog.co.uk/ which I have been writing since 2006.

So far as the £50 fee for Julie's advice is concerned, this goes to Julie not me, and the service is actually intended for landlords and letting agents, not tenants. Although if tenants want to use it, it is there for them.

Reply to the comment left by Tessa Shepperson at 15/04/2022 - 10:40With respect
1) I get the background - you detailed that at length in your opening post
2) The link you supplied Vulnerable tenant was not the links you detailed above
3)You say a hard up tenant is not expected to pay you anything. Can then a vulnerable hard up tenant get a free service direct from Julie?
4) Julie has a specialised role with no doubt years of experience and knowledge . A letting agent cannot learn these skills in a tool kit . They could potentially do more harm than good . Its a bit like a carpenter showing a letting agent a you tube vid on how to hang a door
5) Your renters guide is useful but in reality it collates websites on the net. These tend to overwhelm vulnerable tenants . It then feeds into a sales funnel for you of £115 per half hour
6) Vulnerable tenants need one to one from an experienced provider and the sessions can be intensive. Its quite time consuming . I do this
7) I have 40 years experience dealing with vulnerable persons in housing , substance abuse, domestic violence , debt etc etc I am also a landlord , a mediator , a counsellor , a letting agent.
When as a landlord i need specialist advice i turn to my housing support officer and pay her for that one to one intervention with my tenants. I would not turn to a letting agent. They are often seen as the enemy by vulnerable tenants and the polar opposite of what is wanted. For me its more of a time thing when i don't do the intervention myself as there is only one of me . And there is only one of Julie . You guys are monetising on that with a greatly watered down offering
What the country needs in my view is 100`s of Julies which can be employed directly by landlords and letting agents to engage one to one with their vulnerable tenants in danger of eviction .
But that business model is a far far more complicated one to set up and I understand that . And that is why i see your efforts as principally a commercial enterprise rather than a comprehensive solution to the problem
You are an experienced housing solicitor and i couldn't do your job with a £130 toolkit . But you feel that Julie`s job somehow can.
Sorry you mean well I`m sure but its tinkering with the problem in my view to make some cash and could potentially do more harm than good.

Reply to the comment left by Jonathan Clarke at 15/04/2022 - 17:05
You would have to ask Julie whether she gives a free advice service or not, but I suspect not. At present, she does mediation work for PRS.

I agree that a kit is not perfect, but it is better than nothing. People have to learn somehow and it is a fairly detailed step by step guide.

I agree that 100s of Julies (or 100s of you) would be better but we don't have 100s of Julies. Or 100's of you.

When I did eviction work when I practised as a solicitor I would have found the kit extremely useful and I wish I had had something like it to help me at that time. That's another reason why I suggested to Julie that we write it - and you will see that one of our testimonials is from a solicitor.

As regards the Renters Guide site, it is not there to be a 'funnel' for the telephone advice service. Some tenants want to speak to a specialist solicitor but don't know who to use or how to find someone suitable so we provide an easy way for them to do this (I have a similar service on Landlord Law). The vast majority of the £115 goes to the solicitor giving the advice, not to us!

If anyone has access to a local Christians Against Poverty centre their help goes far beyond any CAB advice centre.
CAP will visit you and help the vulunerable throughout a difficult journey. They are mentors not merely debt advisers.
The most vulunerable often do not or cannot seek help without a mentor to guide them step by step. CAP does this together with the vulunerable person.

Reply to the comment left by Tessa Shepperson at 15/04/2022 - 17:52
You said
``we do not expect hard-up tenants to pay us anything.``
That`s `we` and `us` you said .Its clearly a joint venture of some description between you and Julie
And it was you who provided the link to `Vulnerable Tenant` for Julie`s fee paying service.
When i asked do you therefore provide this as a free service for hard up tenants you suddenly no longer wanted to say `we` or `us` as it clearly was getting too hot to handle so you bounced it over to Julie with a...
``You would have to ask Julie whether she gives a free advice service but I suspect not ``

Its a bit cringing if I am honest

Why don't you ask Julie to come on here now that you've dropped her in it !

Talk about passing the buck!

You say
``I agree that 100s of Julies ... would be better but we don't have 100s of Julies``

Well yes there are 100`s of other Julies up and down the country but that would mean a different business model for you.

You are choosing the easier short term more commercially attractive business model which is a tool kit that gives rise to a 10% trained letting agent or landlord being let loose on complex issues often involving tenants often with mental health and addiction issues. A tenant sustainment officer is a proper job which requires proper training . Heres an example of their job description
https://www.broxtowe.gov.uk/media/8938/tenancy-sustainment-officer-job-description.pdf
As you see its a specialised role

Listen to the six Problems on Landlord stories on the site . They are complex and involved and time consuming exercise which draws on all of Julie`s skills . The vast majority of letting agents or landlords even after having a tool kit simply would not have the skills let alone the time to deal with it effectively . They need a Julie to call on. There will be one in their area like there is one in mine. It would be helpful if you provided a link to them all . I recruited mine from a charity . I know one local charity who pay for their volunteers to receive UC training and then give support for free

You side stepped the majority of my other points
You are though deeply immersed in the commercial angle of tenancy support so my words unfortunately fall on deaf ears .

I think I best leave it there