[Ben Reeve Lewis looks into the future …]
Ouch!
Frazzy has been through the wars this week. First she went into Kings College Hospital to have a tooth out.
This involved cutting into the gum and an hour’s pulling. Black people’s teeth have deeper roots apparently.
Then whilst there the anaesthetic sent her blood pressure through the roof so they had to stop.
As a result she has had loads of blood taken for a variety of tests and had to go 16 hours without eating, while I constantly face-booked her photos of fry-ups and curries to wind her up.
As regular readers will know I am a recent recipient of hearing aids, having lost 40% of my hearing in the music business. None of us is getting any younger.
Time’s winged chariot …
Did anyone watch ‘Les Revenants’, the French series on Sunday nights about the dead coming back? I noticed that with subtitles I tend to turn the volume up for some reason. Frazzy puts on her glasses and turns the volume down.
See we’re getting old and cranky already and we’re not the only ones.
Retirement home worries
I read this week in Inside Housing that an Ipsos Mori poll carried out for Age UK amongst nearly 1,000 people over 50 revealed that far from looking forward to retirement 23% are constantly worried about being made homeless because they are struggling with their housing costs.
The BBC also picked up on the same story this time quoting Anita Hunt, a housing adviser in Lincolnshire:-
“Wages are effectively dropping, or they are out of work for the first time ever due to redundancy or ill health, and are floundering,”
I’m in the same business as Anita and I am seeing more and more people in that age group chiefly facing mortgage repossession.
Mortgage companies show their compassion …
The Council for Mortgage Lenders would have us believe that their company’s are going easier on people in difficulty. If that’s true why is the pile in my mortgage repo in-tray higher than it was two years ago?
And why was I in court a couple of weeks back getting a warrant of eviction suspended the day before a lock change with a 63 year old man who has less than £2,000 arrears and £170,000 worth of equity.
Lenders being more sympathetic? Altogether now…..”My arse”.
Prisk opens up the coffers
Us lot in housing advice land got a lovely personal letter from Mark Prisk the Housing Minster this week, tut-tutting about rogue landlords and saying gravely “This will never do”.
He has decided that if councils are to do what Shelter wants them to do and take more action against rogue landlords then we need more money to help. So he has made £3 million available to councils.
Now if I woke up one morning and went to the cash machine and saw £3m in my account I would be a happy man indeed, certainly not fearful of homelessness or housing costs but bear in mind there are 333 councils in Britain, that means less than £10,000 each on average.
A final solution?
What can we do with that? Probably the best use of it would be to hire a hit man to take out one or two of our repeat known offenders. Hows that for a radical suggestion Shelter????
The Guild of Residential Landlords also picked up on this initiative saying:-
“What is the head of a rogue landlord worth I wonder?”
What indeed?
Of course not all 333 local authorities will be putting in bids, I can’t imagine Rutland being awash with beds in sheds but I’ll bet most of the London councils will be throwing their hats into the ring.
I have been charged with composing our bid to get some dosh to take on a new adviser to deal with the growing problem of disrepair.
Most Environmental Health teams are concentrating only on prosecuting under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System.
Legal aid has been cancelled for disrepair cases and solicitors who know how to calculate damages in quantum are very thin on the ground, so there is a vast army of tenants out there living with broken doors, holes in the ceiling and rising damp and nobody to help them out.
Come on Mr P, get your wallet out.
Gay retirement
Back on the ageing thing I read with interest an article on Planet Property about a new housing market in gay retirement villages.
Apparently the Gay and Lesbian group Stonewall estimate that there are between 871,045 and 1,219,470 gay people over 55 in the UK. Is it me or is that the oddest statistic you’ve seen for sometime?
Why not “Between 800,000 and 1.2 million? Why are those figures so specific? Is there a register?
The article reports on the “Village-Canal du Midi”, development in South West France, where spokesperson for the Villages Group, Danny Silver says:-
“The great weather, French gastronomy and picturesque location provide perfect reasons to spend your latter years here across the Channel, coupled with increasing tolerance towards the gay community and the legalisation of gay marriage, The Villages Group – Rainbow offers the perfect opportunity to live out your days with pride”
South West France……that’s where Annecy is and Annecy is where they filmed Les Revenants. I’m not going there then, as attractive as it appears to pretend I’m Gay to get a place in the sun for my old age I’m not moving somewhere where that scary kid Victor lives, even if he is just acting, he’s spooky.
Bad news on bedroom tax challenge
Of course I couldn’t let a topical news review go by without acknowledging the housing news story of the week, the lost high court case on bedroom tax discriminating against the disabled.
To make up for my earlier jibes at Shelter I will reference their excellent article written by Kate Webb on the Shelter blog.
The High Court acknowledge that the hated tax does discriminate in some circumstances they held that the DWP under Iain Duncan-Smith had recognised this and had given an additional £25m to the Discretionary Housing Payment fund.
Ms Webb pointed out:-
“The danger has always been that the cash-limited pot simply will not go far enough to support all those that need it, and the discretionary nature of the fund means families cannot guarantee if they will be successful.”
Absolutely.
Of course an appeal will go in now but I do sense the establishment closing ranks on this one.
And so another newsround ends and I bid you adieu as Frazzy with her blood pressure and me with my hearing aids waddle off into the sunset like the silhouette on those road signs warning of old people crossing, worried about losing our homes and seriously considering posing as a gay couple and moving to France whilst hiding in the trees in case Victor comes around.
Rentergirl says
August 2, 2013 at 10:11 AMWhat happens to elderly, impoverished tenants, I wonder, who can only afford to share, and find that most shares prefer less elderly co-tenants…
Ben Reeve-Lewis says
August 3, 2013 at 10:54 AMHomeless Unit Penny. Over 55 makes them eligible for sheltered schemes by which I dont mean care homes, just small flats with emergency buttons. Even in London you can pretty much go top of the list if you put in for Sheltered.
The usual trouble with that is getting rid of a life-time’s accumulation of stuff which wont fit in but some of the older ones I meet are happy to downsize as it takes less hassle to look after a smaller property
Richard Watters says
August 4, 2013 at 8:47 AMMortgage companies compassion…
Their “compassion” is largely down to the fact that many of the defaulting borrowers have little or no equity.
Watch repossession rates rise as house prices rise over the next couple of years!
Ben Reeve-Lewis says
August 4, 2013 at 5:51 PMNot entirely true Richard. Only about 10% of my clients have flat-line or negative equity. That is what is galling about it. But if you are on £65 a week Job Seekers Allowance the equity is neither here nor there as you cant re-mortgage to access it so the only option for these people is sale
So many of my clients surviving on warrants suspended on terms of payments that are only tenuously affordable because the mortgage interest rate is low. A 1% rise will throw everything to the wind again and repos will rise along with homeless applications
Colin Lunt says
August 5, 2013 at 6:12 PM“Most Environmental Health teams are concentrating only on prosecuting under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System”
Ben makes a sweeping comment that is not in my experience correct and would be in breach of the enforcement protocol that was put forward by government about 4 years ago. Prosecution is the last and not the first action – but the existence of the legislation allows EHOs and TROs to use it as a lever that may encourage/educate/strongly persuade landlords that what they may have done is not lawful. A prosecution takes more time and effort over a long period to pursue which may or may not prove successful although some do result in prison for eviction offences and hefty fines for breach of HMO licensing (up to £20K) and landlords may find that they are subject to rent repayment orders.
In a recent post Ben suggested that Councils have an either or choice; prosecution (anti landlord)or (pro landlord) accreditation/partnership. It is a false distinction, they must be complementary. For “rogue landlords” they need to know that unlawful action can result in heavy sanctions. For “poor” landlords who may need to be kept on the straight and narrow the fact of EHO or TRO action may mean that they seek advice before acting (or failing to act) in the future. They may contact EHO and ask if they need to undertake a repair requested by a tenant or that they are worried about. A telephone conversation and/or visit may be much more productive than a reactive prosecution. The systems are complementary and not in conflict. The absence of a “stick” may mean that someone on the edge of legality may slip below par and then the Council has nothing other than hope to change actions. “Beds in sheds” can not be successfully eradicated by goodwill and encouragement and this government despite its general dislike of regulation, is seemingly backing the Shelter rogue landlord campaign
Ben Reeve-Lewis says
August 5, 2013 at 6:58 PMHey Colin, Thanks for your comments here. This is what I love about blogging, informed debate as opposed to just reading someone else’s opinions in an article.
The EHOs that I mainly know and train are London based, so they are overwhelmed by numbers of complaints. Yes they have selective and additional licensing for HMOs and the 29 categories of HHSRS complaints but we are all so over-stretched that we don’t really have much leeway to push the envelope.
Newham have had to employ an army of people to up their game and Southwark and Greenwich are also now seriously considering putting serious sums aside to go down the same route. Unless councils invest in employing staff to deal with existing legislation you can forget it.
Enforcement action resulting in prison sentences? Count them on the fingers of your hands against the 11,000+ complaints that Shelter bang on about and prosecution aren’t a matter of time or effort, or even commitment, it is purely down to the number of employees left in the job once local authority cuts are finished denuding services sufficiently to keep the CLG happy.
Rent repayment orders? A year ago us council mob were all for it as a low cost, low resource heavy method of policing the PRS but those in the vanguard showed that when faced with landlord opposition and judicial support we were pissing in the wind. That particular route is cumbersome and so unwieldy as to be less than useless on the frontline.
On your last point however Colin I agree totally. I still stick to my view that licensing/enforcement is an either or initiative and my approach has always promoted both but the trouble with Newham is it is enforcement driven only. There is nothing in there to induce a landlord to work with the council.
I have always said that I can achieve more as an enforcement officer by meeting landlord Dave down the pub and saying “Come on mate, what are you up to?” That is how I do my job, because I don’t have the resources to treat every legal infraction as a ‘Rogue landlord’ problem, despite the fact that Shelter and Newham would have us treat every landlord the same as Peter Rachman.
You cant base a procedural approach on enforcement without alienating every landlord in the country against your scheme. You can balance out partnership working with enforcement but the former must be in the lead. What is the saying? “Walk softly but carry a big stick”.