Councils encouraging law breaking

Reply to the comment left by "Mike " at "06/02/2014 - 12:07":

Mike that is an absolute disgrace & your saviour could be that video as they clearly did not tell you they was recording you or you would have said nothing, you need to report this & warn the company involved that you will be pressing charges against them particularly if the tenant ever does find out although that may be to little to late!!
I have no idea how these people think they can act this way & think that they can get away with it!!!
I also make sure I have witnesses in the room & put phone on speaker when you make or receive calls like this so that if they say recording can NOT be used you still have witnesses to turn to.
You can get some cheap & good legal advice from certain sites like lawdepo etc as obviously solicitors fees are far to expensive, but the data protection laws would be a good starting place to see if what they have done was in breach. Good Luck

Surprisingly, my housing benefit tenant whom i served a S21 Notice, left on the day the Notice expired, whethther this was due to the fact that I applied to a council for the rent to be paid directly to me as the tenant was getting paid her rent but was having nice holidays somewhere on my expens!

So when I applied to that Council to pay me directly her rent awarded, they knew why I was taking these measures, because by then she had run more than 6 months in rent arrears, so the council accepted my statement and were surprised that I let her go as long as that, but these arrears accumulated over a period of 3 years, like she would mis one payment and then I would continue to let the tenant live and she would start paying again and another 3 months or so another payment would go miss, amd thens he would continue to pay and so on,

Therefore the Council were aware that she had owed me lot of rent and were happy to pay me her rent directly, and then it is them who wrote to me saying that they will be stopping her benefit and so I shall not be getting paid any rent from 18th November 2013, hence I served my tenant a S21, and that was to expire on 8th February, giving her clear 2 months Notice, I must adimit I was expecting worst, but when I went to check if she was leaving, and yes I was so glad to see a large van being loaded up! (I had lost all communications with her, she woild not phone me to even tell me what she was going to do) and so I approached her and aaksed her what she was going to do with the keys and she said that she would be all day trying to move her stuff so when she finsihes late, she would drop the keys through the letter box.

Thank God and good riddence, never again I will put Benefit tenants. and I am not saying all benefit tenants are bad as, since we know Councils are largly responsible for advising them to deploy delayed tactics, and wait until all options have run out and then rehouse them! we all know some private tenants can make your life hell too.

Reply to the comment left by "Mike " at "21/02/2014 - 10:58":

Its such a shame as i have lots of friends that rent property & I would give blood to have them as my tenants, however I am with you and will NEVER take DHSS again, I also have it in my contracts that any housing benefit claimants must be paid direct to me & wont take them if they wont accept that. I am coming down hard now as councils are getting rid of bad tenants & wont house them but expect us to do just that..

I also no longer take DSS tenants specifically because councils advise tenants to ignore the s21 date and advise delay moving out for as long as possible. That means 20 properties not available to them in this time of housing need. Someone needs to quantify how many other Landlords do the same and make MPs etc aware of it. I don't think anyone realises how many Landlords and agents now do the no DSS rule. I would expect the councils advise to be neutral more along the lines of information and listing the pros and cons. One important point being if court / bailiff action is taken tenants will find they have removed themselves from the Private Rental Sector for ever which doesn't help either the tenant, or the council.

Mark / Property118 - can you do a poll on all your members?

Reply to the comment left by "Steve Gracey" at "21/02/2014 - 11:59":

It is very sad that we have to say no DHSS but councils have brought this on their self, The problem has been compounded by the fact that many councils themselves are evicting their own tenants with ASBO type enforcement meaning that they have them removed from their own borough & leaving them for us to pick up the slack but we have to fight back, the more complaints your MPs & local councils get from us the better it will be for all concerned, & then they have the cheek to wonder why some landlords are "bad" by doing illegal evictions etc, we need some right too!!
PS I do have some amazing tenants that have lived in my property for 10/15 yrs its just so hard to do the right checks & agents dont help or fulfil their obligations either, simply disappearing when the going gets tough, its a nightmare that none of us need x

you are fortunate to be able to chose not to take DHSS

they are our live blood here in Humberside

glut of houses and not enough tenants mean we have to take what we can and at the same time accept the abuse we get from out local government officers who want to drive us out of business because their political masters just want council housing and more of it

the answer is simple remove all housing functions from local authorities.

Reply to the comment left by "sharon underwood" at "21/02/2014 - 11:22":

Also Sharon we should not be responsible for any changes in the social tenants circumstences and the Councils claw back rent from us, why should we be the victim of councils own negligence and lack of mismanagement in making sure their claimants are claiming benefits legally, and meeting all the legal requirements and when they find out say 6 months later that one of the housing benefit claimant had lied or did not report a change in circumstence, they throw that responsibility on us, everytime I used to go to visit my house I used to see a guy there, and when I asked my tenant who he was, e.g. was he a lodger or her ex partener or may be a new man in her life, she used say to me oh he is just a friend visiting, and she kept a dog saying oh it is her mum's dog and she has gone shopping leaving it with me, as if I was stupid because i could see bags of dog food, littered the place and loads of dog poos in the garden, it wasn't dumped there all in one day! Social tenants are a nightmare, just don't take them any more until the Governement change their policy of claw back mechanism, and pay any outstanding rent by the social tenants wheteher or not they were entitled to it.

We should use the correct term. HB assisted nit dhss that ni longer exists. Also remember that money paid direct can be and us clawed b
ack

Thats correct Alan, so do you see why we should take a risk with HB tenants, if Councils don't do their homework properly and later on found the tenants were not enetitled to HB, you suffer, they are thieves, steal our money instead of claiming it back from the culprits, we get paid on their behalf. That is why no more council tenants for me from now on. Much rather keep the house empty if it comes to that i can't get private tenants for a few months instead of taking on a major risk.

I, too, no longer take dhss, sorry, HB assisted claimants.
But being in the south, Cambridge, I have the choice, unlike Jim in Humberside, time to sell and rebuy elsewhere, perhaps Jim !

And it's not just the landlords choosing, alot of mortgage companies specify NO HB claimants as tenants as well.

However, your working tenants are only one paycheque or one month away from unemployment if they get made redundant, and if you honour your mortgage requirements, you then have to evict them to compound their new nightmare world of jobseeking/unemployment.