Petition against Shelter CEO receiving CBE

Absolutely. Since when do people receiving a huge salary from public and donated money who also have a very negative impact on a problem they are supposed to be alleviating - in this case, homelessness - deserve an honour? It makes a mockery of the whole thing. How can it even happen? Who makes these decisions?

This is an example of what is wrong with the system. This individual pockets a huge salary 4xtimes national average. Shelter has a £60m turnover but houses nobody. Furthermore this charity had trustees who were directly involved with the companies who supplied the death trap cladding for Grenfell. To add insult to injury Shelter not alone failed to provide accomodation for Grenfell survivors but also failed to assist them financially unlike other excellent charities. This is all a matter of record.

Shelter do not provide any housing whatsoever. Instead, they spend a substantial chunk of the money they receive as donations demonizing those that do!

Shelter also support several people who don’t deserve support, ie anti-social behavior which ruins otherwise decent areas, those who spend housing benefits of drugs and alcohol, those who cause criminal damage. If you donate to Shelter, please understand that YOUR money might well be spent on keeping such people in a home that others are far more deserving of. Also bear in mind that less private individuals will invest into housing if their worst tenants are supported by Shelter.

If you donate to Shelter you may actually be contributing to the shrinkage of investment into additional housing.

Increasing housing supply is the only way to reduce demand, the knock on effect of which will be lower prices and improved standards when supply of rented housing outstrips demand.

This is totally at odds with my experience of Shelter. In my experience if you have made even a minor mistake as a tenant, they will NOT support you, but will turn you away, using that as an excuse not to help you. To give you some examples. My friend had a clause in her tenancy agreement telling her not to change the locks, but she did so because her insurance company told her that the lock on her front door wasn’t sufficient for her contents insurance. She supplied her landlord with a copy of the key, he acknowledged receipt, and he never said anything. But when trying to evict her through Section 8, claiming she was guilty of anti-social behaviour when it was another tenant in the block, he brought up the clause regarding the key and on the basis of that, the solicitor from Shelter refused to help my friend any longer, and abandoned her! Even gave the reason in writing! Fortunately my friend found another solicitor to help her and she found a witness who testified to the Judge who was really guilty of the antisocial behaviour and my friend kept her home. But that’s one example of Shelter abandoning a tenant in need. In my area at least, they won’t be associated with the slightest negative case. They will only support those tenants who are the most squeaky clean, and it’s been that way for at least the last five years. I tried taking advice from them a couple of years ago, and they told me not to bother fighting an injustice unless I had “watertight evidence” to prove what I was saying that was impossible to obtain. A colleague of my friend got back from holiday in Zambia to find that even though she had been paying her rent as usual, she had been illegally evicted and somebody else was living in her home! She had two children, and was on the street, and Shelter did help her to obtain justice against the landlord, because it was an open-and-shut case. But they didn’t help her to find anywhere else to live, despite being called “Shelter”. I don’t know anyone who is a fan of them, to be honest, tenant or landlord, so to give Polly Neate an honour? What for? All she does is talk about “greedy landlords” and “poor homeless people”, but when we contact her charity, her staff don’t want to help us. If a homeless family approached her on a Christmas Eve in the street, would she give them shelter at her house for Christmas? Of course she wouldn’t. She would tell them where to go and buzz off.
I strongly suggest that you guys find someone quickly who actually DOES give shelter to homeless people in their home, and nominate THEM for that honour in Polly’s place. Happy New Year Polly.

Giving the award to Mary Jane Fiona (Polly) Neate, Chief Executive of Shelter, is inappropriate because since she took over in August 2017 Neate repeatedly lied that Section 21 evictions cause homelessness, as part of her campaign to abolish them. In fact, Shelter’s own report had said that the cause of homelessness is poverty - the inability to afford to rent another property. It’s obvious, given a moment’s thought.

However, Shelter itself does deserve recognition for services to Homelessness - increasing it, that is. The abolition of Section 21 that Shelter has campaigned for will not abolish homelessness but will create lifetime tenancies. The lifetime of the tenant that is, which might exceed the lifetime of the owner. The threat of this will drive hundreds of thousands of landlords out of the PRS, reducing supply and increasing homelessness (which is the business that Shelter is in, of course). Eminent economists have already predicted that this will happen.

The CBE award could make it look as though the Establishment endorses Shelter’s attacks on the private rented sector and letting agents with lies and bullying which she and Greg Beales instigated. I hope not, I hope it was just an ignorant mistake.

Let’s for a moment say that Shelter were a fantastic homeless prevention charity and the CEO fully deserving of an award, why would the other (far, far better) homeless charity’s CEOs not also deserve recognition? Sure, the average general public believe Shelter does great work, but I can’t understand why the awards for work with the homeless would stop here…and to a CEO that hasn’t been in post all that long.

I totally agree with Mark. Who else agrees?

Reply to the comment left by JB at 31/12/2019 - 11:47
I fully agree with Mark Alexander and the others.

I have not checked, but I hope that some people at Crisis would receive honours first. They do practical things for the private rented sector and maintain a great database of knowledge assisting councils and landlords with real, practical schemes to help the deserving homeless.

The whole honours system ought to be broken up. It is an old anachronism. Only people on low or modest incomes who do great work in their communities should be honoured. We should not see already well recompensed folks being honoured for just doing their jobs (or in the case of Polly Neate, making things worse).

David Lawrenson
http://www.LettingFocus.com
Unbiased advice in the PRS

Shelter Birmingham have issued a denial about Robert Jenrick’s alleged visit on Christmas Day where “hot food and drinks as well as entertainment, services, clothing and a safe and warm place for vulnerable people to sleep” were allegedly provided.
https://www.property118.com/jenrick-spends-christmas-evening-at-birmingham-shelter/#comment-119823

A spokeswoman said “The people who donate and bequeath £40 million a year to us (minus the £12 million cost of collecting it) do not expect us to squander it on providing accommodation to homeless people. They expect it to go on the salaries of its 7 directors and 1,300 employees, who only offer advice, with a bit of anti-landlord lobbying on the side. This story is extremely damaging to us. If people lost trust in what we do with their money, and stopped giving it, 1,307 people would lose their jobs, and may become homeless.”

Don't forget 'LandLord' is a dirty word and the lowest of the low but provide homes! Shelter are heroes in everybody's eyes yet provide nothing! The system is rediculous but it's the 'nature of the beast'! Write to the top.