Do you know how much faeces 30 dogs can produce over a couple of years? I have some idea because I recently helped my mother regain access to the small cottage adjoining her house, after she had rented it out to a nightmare tenant who caused incalculable damage.
It took nine months to evict the tenant after she stopped paying rent, having already been in considerable arrears. Reclaiming the property proved onerous and expensive, involving legal instruction and eventually High Court enforcement.
Upon finally entering with enforcement officers, some of us retched. We found half an inch of dog mess all over the floor and smeared across walls; empty bottles; an infestation of fleas, rats and every kind of rubbish. The stench was indescribable. The tenant had carefully slashed any furniture which couldn’t be removed, even cutting out light fittings, leaving bare wires exposed. The agents, whose job involves visiting dysfunctional properties, said it was the worst case they’d ever seen. My mother will have to fit a new bathroom, replace every carpet and most floorboards in the house.
The tenant allowed her dogs to breed, producing several litters, and kept the poor creatures in squalid conditions. She grew abusive, entering my mother’s property without permission to take items: an alarming intrusion since my father, who is bedbound with advanced Alzheimer’s, lives downstairs. We once caught her and her boyfriend attempting to remove a gate from the premises.
The ordeal took the best part of a year and cost more than £27,000 in legal fees, plus around £25,000 in rent arrears and unpaid utility bills. My mother will never rent out her property again. Nor is she likely to see a penny in compensation.
My mother will never rent out her property again. Nor is she likely
to see a penny in compensation
I don’t mean for this to be a sob story about specifics, but rather a cautionary tale about the state of UK renting. No doubt some would dismiss my mother as some sort of vampiric plutocrat. Landlords aren’t exactly flavour of the month these days. The Green party recently voted for a motion to ‘abolish landlords’, whatever that means. In fact, my mother went out of her way to ensure that her tenants were accommodated in every sense of the word, offering discounts during Covid and times of financial hardship. As so often, all it took was one abusive individual to ruin what had been a happy and functioning relationship for all involved.
My mum may have been especially unlucky, but the fact remains that the law allows tenants to trash a property, plead poverty and walk away, free of consequence, even if they have run up vast arrears. If you are similarly unfortunate, the state will not lift a finger to help you or defend your property – indeed, it may side with the lawbreaker against you.
At every stage the state betrayed my mother. Already, evicting a problem tenant takes considerable effort; by law, a landlord must keep supplying the property’s utilities even if the tenant hasn’t paid a penny for some time. Non-paying tenants are essentially encouraged, both by charities and local councils, to sit tight and wait for the bailiffs to arrive.
An official from Stratford District Council’s ‘homelessness team’ refused to advise my mother on any course of action beyond going to the law, presumably wishing to avoid the expense of housing the rogue tenant themselves. Naturally, they had no such qualms about taking my mother’s council tax payments. Warwickshire Police refused to help after the home intrusion. Whenever called to take a side or intervene, the state and its agents either did nothing or actively assisted the wrongdoer, via a combination of not wanting to confront the problem and, it seems, a perverse sympathy for lawbreakers. It mirrors the shamelessness of unpoliced crime more generally; the benefits to playing by the rules and trying your best within society have vanished.
County court bailiff delays meant that even after a ruling an eviction could take months, forcing my mother to go to the High Court. We were advised that it would probably be cheaper to pay the tenant to go away, but we feared we couldn’t trust her to respect any agreement.
Our tenant was eventually handed a Section 8 notice for substantial rent arrears, rather than a no-fault eviction, outlawed under the new Renters’ Rights Act. But I fear an already dysfunctional system has become even more dysfunctional. The new legislation massively incentivises tenants to take their landlords to tribunals if they feel their rent is too high, paving the way for a clandestine form of rent control. Worse, all evictions will now require court hearings. With the courts already rammed, including with desperate landlords trying to remove problem tenants, further delays look inevitable.
Fearing greater risk, landlords will presumably discriminate, demanding more rigorous credit checks and references. This will potentially harm freelancers, low-income households and new renters. Many landlords are simply exiting the market. Some welcome this, believing it will open up the property ladder, but a functioning rental market remains vital for those some way off securing a mortgage. The sector won’t improve with the departure of good landlords. It is a gift to those who don’t care about the rules, and will further secure the dominance of shabby backhand arrangements over safe and legal places for people to live.
There is already – rightly – a rogue landlords register. Those who let out property should enjoy comparable protection. This means faster eviction processes for genuine breaches and a system allowing rogue tenants to be flagged. The pendulum has clearly swung too far in the opposite direction when it allows the persecution of decent people. At present the social contract is nonexistent.
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