Shelter ask for Landlords views

Reply to the comment left by ameliahartman at 17/06/2019 - 01:50
Am I missing something? You have given all the reasons why you yourself should not be supporting Shelter. As you say the law is flawed, surely you and Shelter should be supporting the Landlord and not be taking advantage of the situation.
Shelter should be thanking Landlords and fully supporting them for being there to shelter homeless people and not doing their utmost to drive them out of the sector. Shelter is a “Charity” where their business structure is geared to utilising Landlords to provide the charity by a well-established way of having Landlords provide free accommodation for as long as possible.
Amelia, surely since you say the law is flawed, you and Shelter should be doing your utmost to close all the loopholes and support the Landlords. No Landlords = No accommodation = More Homelessness.
Sorry to say this, but your argument is totally flawed and you have pointed out all the reasons why Shelter should be wound up.

Reply to the comment left by Mark Alexander at 17/06/2019 - 07:30This is powerful evidence Mark . To overcome and work with Shelters apparently entrenched anti LL position appears maybe to be a step too far then even if they were to be seen publicly to change their approach / direction and perception of LL`s ? Sometimes beleaguered organisations can turn it around with massive PR input . Sometimes not
I guess the question is then for me is are they mortally wounded in the collective eyes of LL`s to turn this around or should they be given a chance to rectify . Or should they be sidelined and progressive LL`s look to align themselves and have talks with other bodies who are not so perhaps politically motivated . I have had in the past fleeting encounters with the likes of Crisis , Salvation Army and with local Winter Night Shelters where i am . But i dont know their true ethos and motivations . Apart from that I work largely on my own with my own council to house the homeless. They too have a significant negative approach to LL`s. I have tried over the years but always get shunned . But I never give up . I am meeting with the Director of Housing soon to address the conflict. We both need each other in truth
Our collective PR needs some addressing maybe, as to get to this stand off position takes two to tango. But from my biased perspective I dont see the RLA , NLA sound off against tenants in fact they seem very mild in comparison to Shelter .
Its the `making money out of homelessness ` bit which can of course bug many . I appreciate that. On a larger stage i can see that irks Shelter but on a local level Ive lost count of the times when my hand has been shook from the desperate people who come to me from hostels, tents, B&B`s, sofa`s , the streets . They are so very very grateful I put a roof over their head.
Shelter doesnt seem to appreciate me
But there is beauty in all `beasts`

Reply to the comment left by Jonathan Clarke at 17/06/2019 - 09:14
Of the big Charities you have named, the salvation Army are the best in my opinion. However, their religious roots do not appeal to a lot of people. They are, however, my Charity of Choice, even though my Nan, who wore the Sally Army Uniform with pride, never approved of alcohol.

There are many local Charities that support homeless people and do it very well, as you know, but they don't have the same level of political sway as the likes of overpaid gobshites at the top end of the Shelter hierarchy .

Reply to the comment left by Mark Alexander at 17/06/2019 - 07:30You telling me about Selective Licensing causing Homelessness.
Here is a part of email I had send off to Nottingham Selective Licensing Brainbox's yesterday, not a few days goes by without Selective Licensing making mine & my tenants lives worse.
Licensing creates a problem where there wasn't a problem before.
Please tell whoever these words aren't nice, Nottingham have a big problem housing people at the moment, which Licensing aren't seeing as you're at the opposite end of the spectrum, & these words do nothing to make Landlords think they want to work with Nottingham Council. Especially when a Landlord has done nothing wrong.
"If the licence is refused you will not receive a refund, you will have to reapply for the licence and you will have to pay first part of the application again.
"If the Council does refuse your application you will receive details of the reason why it has taken this course of action."
I know of no other organisation on the planet that sends words out like this, making/forcing/insisting the person pays the WHOLE LOT again! When he has done nothing wrong.
I get this applied to me & the tenant of that particular house will be paying this increased cost. They know this. I wish to sell a lot of 'em, but can't cause it's tenants home, & tenant has to pay for all outgoings.
What organisation would act like this? £360 for nothing? And do the whole lot again, when the authority has all the info? All this doing is making more Landlords sell & the end loser is the tenant. The good tenant in the good house with the good Landlord. Yet this scheme was supposed to help tenants, but has done nothing but make lives much worse for the majority of Nottingham tenants who already had good houses.
Some of u officers, U, Tom, Waqar, Wiqas, Paris, u need to be raising your voice & saying when u think some'at is wrong. As at the moment, u getting the flak for this, yet it's not your fault. Someone else with no compassion for either tenants or good landlords is sending out ridiculous hatred stuff like this.
I know a few other Landlords who have also had wrong admin by the council & only get it corrected when they have to contact Councillor Linda Woodings.

Thanks for alerting us.
From their questions it looks like they are aware that 'we' don't like them.
The only places to air our opinions was in the 'Other' option of each question. So I did it there. Happy to share what I wrote:

"I don't think that anyone becomes a landlord to provide homes for people. It's a by product. Maintaining a BTL is hard work and costly and is a business. I want to provide a good home for my tenants as long as they are good tenants too. I think this answer option reflects Shelter's bias toward private landlords."

"It is extremely unfair for landlords/ladies to be presented in the media (and by Shelter) as greedy and inhumane. Most of us are hard working and fair and all we want is to provide a good home for a fair return. Properties in the UK are expensive to purchase and maintain and some tenants (certainly not all) don't appreciate it. To have to deal with that plus bad press from the media and Shelter, plus vengeful government regulations, makes it hard for us to keep our businesses going. The only reasonable consequence is the reduction in available stock and higher rents."

"For Shelter to take a balanced approach and support both landlords and tenants in making sure this market is not overly regulated and unfairly taxed will support both landlords and tenants. "

I have also completed their questionnaire and I hope I have left Shelter in no doubt of what I think of them and their activities, without any f*****g and blinding. But I have not completed the relevant boxes on the TWO occasions when they ask for my name and email address. It would not be too difficult for them to trace me and make my life as a landlord difficult if I did so.

Reply to the comment left by Michael Bond at 17/06/2019 - 10:18
Hi Michael, I left them my name and email address if they want to contact me. I'm not afraid of them and I was respectful. But I don't need their newsletters...
I must admit, I don't get the sentiment expressed by many of the comments above - are we seriously afraid that an organisation like Shelter will hound us personally?

Reply to the comment left by paul landlord at 14/06/2019 - 15:50I totally and utterly agree with you Paul.
In the many years of being a "good" landlord with the usual mix of excellent tenants right through to appalling ones, on 3 or 4 occasions, Shelter has become involved. They totally and utterly reject that a tenant who has completely trashed a house and is subsequently in thousands of pounds of arrears has done anything wrong! Paper shifting, biased blatantly towards a tenant , unhelpful and unsympathetic towards a landlord they are, in my opinion, are a waste of time.Why do they not spend some of their money building affordable housing rather than a monolithic structure which achieves little but promises much.

Reply to the comment left by Rick Stanley at 17/06/2019 - 10:44
Rick - sorry to hear you have had such bad experiences and that Shelter have acted as they have. Have you responded to the survey and cited these cases? Shelter probably have the info in the archives, but your experiences offer very powerful responses to the survey so that Shelter (or more likely a company running the survey and analysing the responses for them) has that information at the forefront when reviewing the survey replies.
You have the opportunity to deliver very powerful messages to them, and I hope that you (and others with similar experiences) will do likewise to get really get the message across about how Landlords feel about them.
I think we should also ask Shelter when and where the survey responses will be published.

Reply to the comment left by Clint at 17/06/2019 - 08:39
And for every non-paying, ‘bad’ tenant being assisted by Shelter to remain at all costs there’s a potentially excellent well behaved tenant willing to pay that is being blocked from utilising that property.