Test case for landlords under EU Human rights act possible?

Reply to the comment left by "Julie Ford" at "06/07/2015 - 15:46":

Hi Julie

I have been a CAB adviser (caseworker), a council homelessness officer, a private landlord, and a tenant, indeed usually three of these at the same time!!! (I've also been homeless, and been reliant upon welfare benefits) so I know how it is from all angles.

I agree that tenants should know their rights, but they should also know their responsibilities and be held to account if they don't keep to those responsibilities. Unfortunately, at the moment, tenants are not being held accountable for breaching their responsibilities (e.g. not paying the rent), as the law is so slow and cumbersome that it takes about 6 months to evict a defaulting tenant, and if they are on benefits then the law does not give landlords an effective way of recovering their losses.

You may believe that advisers (council, CAB, Shelter, etc) would not advise tenants to stop paying their rent, or advise them to stay in the property until the bailiffs come (even though this will cost the landlord more money and leave the tenant in more debt), but I can assure you that this does happen, SOME advisers would and do give this sort of advice. Such advice does not actually help the tenant, it just delays the eventual outcome, with everyone suffering more for the delay (e.g. more debt for the tenant, more losses for the landlord, more cost to the public purse/taxpayers).

Landlords want good tenants, and tenants want good landlords, (this then keeps the costs down, and helps to keep the rent levels down), so all the advice agencies (CAB/councils/Shelter/etc) would be doing a bigger service to society if they encouraged good landlords and good tenants, rather than helping bad tenants avoid paying and thus causing the landlord to suffer financial losses.

Reply to the comment left by "Jay James" at "06/07/2015 - 16:23":

Are you a tenant?

Reply to the comment left by "Andrew Holmes" at "06/07/2015 - 19:12":

I can only speak for my own role, as all CABs are individually funded separate businesses so bureau practice may not be identical across the board.

When a tenant comes to me as a Housing Specialist they are NEVER told to stop paying rent!

The rent, among other things is the tenants contractual obligation and they are told this in no uncertain terms.

Many tenants leave my office in tears with a flea in their ear.

I also attempt on every occasion to speak with a landlord as I am fully aware there are 3 sides to every story, rarely have I spoken with a LL who hasn’t ripped into me on the phone, verbal abuse is a daily occurrence in my job as is physical violence,
especially when I am telling a tenant its Sky TV or the roof over your head???

I am not there to stop the eviction or make the LLs life hell…. If the tenant has failed to pay rent because a flat screen TV was more of a priority, then I simply tell them their right to remain in the property, to pay the rent and most importantly turn up at the court hearing….

Never once have I advised a tenant to turn up late, personally I would see that as showing the tenant wasnt bothered, something a judge isn’t going to take lightly. Considering, on discretionary grounds all a judge is looking for is reasonability, he may see the bad manners of turning up late reason enough to award a possession.

However if non-payment of rent is due to circumstances out of the tenants control, such as a mistake at the benefits office or simply the fact they were not aware they could apply for Discretionary housing payments, then I will assist a tenant with preparing for court in the attempt to keep them in their home and the rent paid

I do not assist tenants who I feel may be involved in fraudulent activity, all advice would at that point cease as we cannot be seen to collude with fraud.

I advise landlords too….. and it still shocks me just how uninformed private LLs are… deposits not protected, incorrect S21s, no gas certs and disrepair issues that beggar belief

it is very sad that daily I see this great divide of animosity between LLs and tenants, something not seen in any other client / customer domain.

wow some people really dont like the fact other people have valid opinions.... do you really feel the direct abuse to me is valid?
did i personally attack anyone?
did i bad mouth landlords?

NO.... disgusting behaviour on a public forum.... shows alot about a person

Reply to the comment left by " " at "07/07/2015 - 08:15":

Hi Julie

That all sounds reasonable to me (your conduct), but unfortunately not all advisers are the same, and particularly those in local authorities who have a vested interest in delaying the (almost) inevitable homelessness application.

You say that landlords "rip into you" but have you considered WHY they may do that? Sure, a few may be bad landlords, but 99.9999% of landlords are decent people who want to keep good tenants, so if they "rip into you" then perhaps it is because they have heard too many lies from their tenants and they see you as simply believing the tenants' lies. (or maybe their experience of other advisers has always been negative).

I advise my tenants to go to the CAB and Shelter at the earliest opportunity, because if it is a problem with benefits then they can get help, but tenants ignore the advice until it is at the eviction stage and then use the CAB/Shelter as a means of delaying the eviction (sometimes maliciously, sometimes out of genuine desperation). The problem is that the CAB/Shelter/Council has no power to change the tenant's behaviour (get them to be good tenants that pay the rent and look after the property), so the bad tenant stays a bad tenant, but is still assisted by the CAB/Shelter/Council to cause as much financial damage to the landlord as possible. I have seen and experienced this time and time again.

You asked Jay if he is a tenant, well I am a tenant now and have been since 1997, so I can speak as a "tenant" as well as a "landlord". I offer a lot of help to my tenants, I even provide floating support to them, which is great for the good tenants that need a bit of help with their benefit claims and debts etc, but a bad tenant usually remains a bad tenant and in those circumstances I want them evicted (or leave voluntarily) as quickly as possible.

Each bad tenant I have costs me money. I am already a "not for profit" organisation, so the cost of evicting a bad tenant and carrying out the clearance, cleaning, repairs, etc, means there is less money to spend on improvements for good tenants, and/or provision of additional housing for other homeless people. The higher my costs, the less I can provide, and the more I have to charge for what I do provide. It is a simple equation.

For every one bad tenant the CAB/Shelter/Council/Solicitor prevent or delay being evicted, they are denying the housing of two good decent tenants (as well as driving up the rents that have to be charged, and thus the cost to the nation of providing Housing Benefit.

Next time you are advising a tenant who has not paid their rent (perhaps to pay for a holiday, TV, Sky subscription, iphone, etc), please remember that you may have the knock on effect of denying two other families a home (in order to protect this one bad tenant).

I am very sad to see that Julie has deleted her member profile, she has also declared that she will not be posting on this forum again.

Why am I sad about this?

Very simply, debate is good but personal attacks are not!

Maybe we have our MP's to blame for making personal abuse and humiliation in public acceptable based on their behaviour in the House of Commons? We must all remember, not everybody is as thick skinned as an MP and whilst we all share different perspectives it is WRONG to make personal attacks on a public forum.

I have known Julie for several years through Social Media and on various forums although I don't recall having had the pleasure of meeting her in person. What I can say though is that my perception of her has always been that her heart is in the right place and I have nothing but respect for her integrity. I believe what she is saying about the advice she offers to tenants but I also share the same perspectives on the more generalised practices of some of the employees of agencies offering advice to tenants, i.e. Citizens Advice, Shelter and Councils.

Julie could have been a good ambassador for landlords within Citizens Advice but I suspect the personal attacks on this forum by landlords will do nothing to encourage that.

PLEASE FOLKS - keep personal abuse out of professional debate.

.... and finally a message to Julie, I am very sorry that you were offended by some of our members comments and thank you for sharing your opinions so professionally, many of which I was very pleased to read.
.

Dear cup cake, you'd never make it as a landlord, better you sit in the comfort of a politically correct environment and report everyone who looks at you sideways or dares tell a joke you don't approve of.

We landlords are abused regularly by the press, MP's, Local authority bludgers, CAB and shelter employees, judges and of course tenants, verbally, physically and financially.

We don't go off and cry and complain and run away because this is our livelihood and our futures are wrapped up in this shitstorm of crap we have metered out to us on a daily basis, and there is nowhere to run and no one batting our corner effectively.

Im offended this person dares to suggest we aren't telling it as it is, well we are,just as it happens and the difference is Julie Cup Cake, we don't have an agenda like you, all we have is our investments and our metal.

You can aggrandise and be as knowing and self righteous as you like, anywhere you like, but don't expect us to cow tow to political correctness and mamby pamby people and organisations who are rescuing everyone just to keep a job and all at the expense of landlords.

Run away to a safe wee place where people will clap and cheer you with insincerity as they are too scared to tell you the truth.

We will continue battling against all of you and the bad tenants and be polite and reasonable despite the crap thrown at us, because we have to.

Being offended is subjective, you decided to be offended, I did not offend you.

Mark - Either remove me from this forum or leave me on, but don't delete/edit my comments again, I hate big brother, you are not the arbiter of free speech, we live in a democracy and most of all, I find it offensive 🙂

Reading through these comments, it is clear that this is a highly emotive subject and landlords are very angry indeed about the advice to commit fraud being given out by legitimate authorities to bad tenants.
I sincerely hope a test case is brought against a local authority and/or CAB that will put a stop to this perversion of justice once and for all.
I also hope a heavyweight undercover journalist will do something soon to expose what all landlords know is going on.

And to cap it all I read on Inside Housing last month that some housing associations are going to have to consider a means tested approach to allocating social housing, refusing housing to tenants who can't afford the rent, which could mean anyone in receipt of housing allowance. Where exactly do they expect these people to go? Oh yes, of course, the PRS!

Reply to the comment left by " " at "07/07/2015 - 08:15":

Hi Julie,

Not sure you will get this now you have deleted your member profile but thought I would send it anyway just in case.

If you had started your communication with the more balanced approach that you replied to my comment with, I am guessing the landlords on this site would of got a far better picture of yourself.

To open with "I can not imagine any organisation advising tenants to stay in a house until the bailiffs arrive," sorry if I have slightly misquoted you, was always going to annoy landlords who have had this happen to them on many occasions, in fact it has been on TV with tenants saying it.

Nobody is saying every CAB or housing association representative acts in this manner, just as not every landlord fails to protect deposits, complete gas safety checks and wrongly completes S21 paperwork. However there are those out there that with out a doubt advise tenants in this manner and these are the ones that give you and your colleges a bad name, annoy landlords and do not portray the system in a very good light.

Most landlords rely on rents as their main source of income and even those who do not can not afford to house tenants for free, it has a massive impact on peoples lives when tenants stop paying rents and as such is very emotive, stressful and a long drawn out bussness that needs rectifying as soon as possible.

I hope you decide to join the site again, as a landlord it is very useful to see how the "system works" and all its avenues, but landlords do get touchy when their living is interfered with by third parties wrongly advising tenants, but I take on board that you state that this is not how you operate.

Andrew