Sharon Crossland
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Comments (7)
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Comment on: £1.8m to tackle 'beds in sheds'
Mr Shapps has done it again! He's got the snappy 'bed in sheds' soundbite and £1.8m in funding.
All he has to do now is focus on removing the so-called 'minority rogue' landlords (again you can call them criminal) from the PRS, and bring up to speed the amount of housing in that sector that does not meet the HHSRS housing standards.
Oh, sorry, I forgot. Not as easy! -
Comment on: £1.8m to tackle 'beds in sheds'
Mr Shapps has done it again! He's got the snappy 'bed in sheds' soundbite and £1.8m in funding.
All he has to do now is focus on removing the so-called 'minority rogue' landlords (again you can call them criminal) from the PRS, and bring up to speed the amount of housing in that sector that does not meet the HHSRS housing standards.
Oh, sorry, I forgot. Not as easy! -
Comment on: CIH: regulate private sector
If we are serious about driving out the so-called 'rogue landlords' (not the term I would personally use) we must stop focusing on the Scottish Landlord Registration system and return to the recomendations presented in the Rugg Review.
Her proposals were nothing like the Scottish system which requires landlords in the private sector to prove they are 'fit for purpose'.
What on earth is wrong with a simple licencing scheme that provides a unique licence number to be used in all landlord-related activities? If a landlord doesn't have one then why not?
Simples!! -
Comment on: CIH: regulate private sector
If we are serious about driving out the so-called 'rogue landlords' (not the term I would personally use) we must stop focusing on the Scottish Landlord Registration system and return to the recomendations presented in the Rugg Review.
Her proposals were nothing like the Scottish system which requires landlords in the private sector to prove they are 'fit for purpose'.
What on earth is wrong with a simple licencing scheme that provides a unique licence number to be used in all landlord-related activities? If a landlord doesn't have one then why not?
Simples!! -
Comment on: New power proposed to evict 'bad' tenants quicker
As usual, a lot of interesting comments here. Just wish Mr Shapps would pay the same level of attention (the rights and wrongs of his proposals aside), to the issue of anti-social behaviour in the private rental sector.
Noting that one of the comments raised the issue of tenants with mental health problems, I would like to expand on that by adding tenants with drink and drugs problems.
I have a situation on my own block with an alcholic tenant who has a landlord that is happy to get paid by the local athority but does nothing about the actions of his tenant, who incidentally has stated that he doesn't want to change. This tenant goes round to flats on the block and the surrounding neighbourhood begging which as far as I know is illegal with his appearance scaring people in the process. He brings other alcoholics to the premises and the most recent invitees have been the local vagrant, who was known to the police as a violent schizophrenic who, at the time we found him, wasn't on his medication. We are currently enjoying visits from a violent self-harmer who has already had to be prevented by my partner from stoving in the back of the head of this same tenant!
In recent correspondence with my own local authority, they admitted that the biggest problem they face in the private sector is with landlords not dealing with their tenants. They expect the tenancy agreement to be strong enough for the threat of eviction to work, whatever the circumstances otherwise we then enter the realms of eviction notices which we cannot serve ourselves as we don't have a contract with the tenant.
On the positive side, we have had some success with dealing with anti-social behavior by adopting a calm, measured and friendly approach in the first instance. It has been well received from those that simply don't realise that in a block of flats there needs to be some simple rules to be abided by and a bit more thought given to their neighbours.
However I personally feel that landlords should be responsible for the policing of their tenants because it is they who enter into a contract with them, whether it be social housing landlords or private sector landlords.
Whilst I agree that simply evicting anti-social tenants without a back-up plan is not the best way to proceed, it is surely understandable that those of us who are subjected to it get passed caring whether it gets moved somewhere else. Our own approach has failed miserably in dealing with the aforementioned because he is wired differently, as is the violent self-harmer and all the others that turn up here.
We too need the local authorities to become more pro-active on this issue as they are happy to place all kinds of tenants into the private sector without checks on whether the landlords offering their properties to them are 'fit and proper' persons'. These same landlords don't do any checks on their tenants and are hardly likely to be bothered about doing the job properly, let alone serve any eviction notices.
I also would like to ask, if landlords are not responsible for policing their tenants, then who is? I'm damn sure it shouldn't be us!
Kind Regards
Sharon Crossland AIRPM
Leasehold Life
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