Tenant can’t pay rent and advised to stay by Housing Association!

Hi Raj,

Professional assistance will nearly always save you time and money evicting a tenant especially when they are getting advice hostile to the landlord.

Please see >> https://www.property118.com/evicting-tenants/

If neither party was working and they had previously been good tenants, is it worth looking into seeing if they are eligible for housing benefit that would cover the rent? We can all sometimes end up with HB tenants through default. if good tenants it can be worth trying to work with people rather than against as it may be a temporary situation.

Worth pointing out to the tennants that if they follow the advice (from the 'Housing Assosiation'?) they will finish up with a CCJ and owing two or three thousand pounds in Court and Baliff's costs.
This will make it almost impossible to rent again or get a mortgage or other loan for some good few years.
Many Local Authorities won't let to people with rent arrears.
The debt will follow them and may make it difficult to get a new job (many require Credit Checks) and could be reclaimed by an Attatchment of Earnings Order one working again.
I read recently of someone who had taken this advice from Shelter and said it was the worst thing she ever did as it has blighted her future.
Well worth asking them to work with the landlord to find an answer, maybe Housing Benefit.
Hope that helps.

Can you obtain proof the Housing Association said this?

Bit confused about where a Housing Association comes in? Have the tenants approached the council and been referred to a HA?

Sounds more like Shelter to me.

Reply to the comment left by Hedley at 07/01/2019 - 15:29
Well yes, the council, Shelter and CA may well advise the two young women to stay put, but they aren't housing associations.
This House of Commons briefing, published a few days ago, is quite open about the advice councils having been giving, and why:
"This issue arose when private (AST) tenants applied to a local authority for assistance due to threatened homelessness. As noted above, on receipt of such an application local authorities, particularly in areas of high housing demand, often advised the tenants to remain in occupation until the landlord obtained a court order to evict, even though the tenants had no defence to the claim. Sometimes authorities required applicants to remain in occupation until a bailiff’s warrant was executed. Assured shorthold tenants could find themselves facing court costs in these circumstances.
It appears that local authorities adopted this approach to delay the point at which they were obliged to secure temporary/permanent accommodation for households threatened with homelessness."
https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN06856#fullreport

Reply to the comment left by Annie Landlord at 07/01/2019 - 16:08
Interesting...especially as they have been told time and time again to not do this. What on earth is the point in rules/laws/guidance if the very people that govern us completely ignore it? Been having another chat today about giving up this game (and likely this country too).

Routinely the front line at council homelessness tell people to stay put until the bailiffs arrive or until the bailiffs letter does. These people are very often junior and unqualified staff who have no real knowledge of the law. The opinions here are correct in that councils hope the problem will just go away.

If, however, it can be proven that the advice of council officers was incorrect in law and led to a landlord suffering damages in whatever way the council is liable. What is needed is for your organisation to find a couple of watertight cases and sue the councils concerned. We can crowdfund the costs and the resultant publicity will be life changing for this issue. It's only when the power is confronted that anything happens. If running around needs to be done I live in central London and can spend some time on this.

Reply to the comment left by Terry Fitzpatrick at 07/01/2019 - 19:25
Many advisers spout the tenant’s RIGHT to stay put, which is nonsense. The tenant has no such right. There is simply the lack of right for the landlord to forceably remove a tenant who BREACHES his tenancy agreement by not adhering to its requirement to leave the property at the appropriate time. The tenant has signed a legally enforceable contract and by staying past the notice date they are in breach. So how can a tenant be making themselves homeless by fulfilling the legal promise they signed freely before they moved in??? They are asking a tenant to put themselves knowingly into a position of getting a CCJ which will restrict their ability to house themselves and their families in the future. I see the problem they have of course, but if they worked well with private landlords in the first place they really wouldn’t need emergency accommodation as they’d have two months to help the tenant into private rented (especially if they had a workable deposit assistance scheme).