I was writing the most recent rentergirl post when I realised something disturbing: it wasn’t funny. No gags at all, not the slightest hint of an eyebrow raised in discreet amusement: no guffaws. Not so much as a stifled giggle.
Now I like a laugh (I’ve even written comedy professionally for broadcast, a genuine low point in my life, but that’s another story.) Some past rentergirl posts were amusing, even if I say so myself but it hasn’t been that way for ages, and I think I know why.
Rented housing in particular is a catastrophe inflicting an undeserved, relentless cascade of perpetual misery to all cursed with enduring its deathless embrace. A teeny-weensy bit melodramatic, perhaps but think about this: even if you are best pals with your chummy, helpful landlord who charges a fair rent and is top of your xmas card list, you never know how long you can stay. Assured Short Term Tenancies (AST’s or accursed short term travesties) lasting a meagre six months are the bane of every long-suffering renter’s life.
Another factor sucking joy from every benighted renter’s soul is housing benefit. People on imposed short term contracts, or made redundant find that when work dries up, or has vanished, they must sign on – yes, Mr Big City Big-Shot – even you are not immune to the dole.
Claimants scrabble to find work, and need enough to cover rent in order to avoid moving, which is costly. In any case landlords don’t want those nasty ‘scroungers’ (©Condems/Daily Mail) they want ‘grafters’ (©Blue Labour.) Sadly, Housing Benefit is set to be effectively abolished, replaced by a ‘housing component’ allocated for rent under strict and unrealistically low limits. This is going to be like a watching a slow, massive pile-up in close-up – albeit one that was predicted and preventable. That’s not to mention current odious and unworkable housing benefit caps.
Even less amusing is housing minister Grant Shapps: a man who might – to use a technical term – accurately be described as an idiot. He wants us to live on boats. Or help people buy houses when (I’m try hard not to shout but failing: that’s what caused this mess to start with!!)
Still, I want to be light hearted. My own situation has been far from a constant fountain of joy interspersed with intervals of unbridled happiness since…well, forever. But what’s to become of us renters?
Rented housing is a nightmare of repossessions, evictions, insecurity (landlords can and do give notice on childish, irrational and vengeful whims which renters cannot contest) ramped and escalating rents, shoddy standards, even landlords from hell (a rarity, but they exist) not enough suitable homes to go round, housing benefit caps, substandard newbuilds/euroboxes, the smallest homes in Western Europe, no more social housing, buy-to-let amateurs/right-to-buy chancers, letting agents (untrained and unregulated) who charge complex, fanciful, astronomical fees and have slowly eaten all the houses.
I want to laugh. I want to smile. But it just isn’t funny. Not funny at all.
Anyway: here are some more amusing posts. I used to laugh…(I'd post them as links, but Safari won't play ball.)
http://rentergirl.blogspot.com/2009/10/just-rentergirl-who-cant-say-no.html
http://rentergirl.blogspot.com/2007/09/penthouse-superiority-in-my-newbuild.html
http://rentergirl.blogspot.com/2010/05/on-your-own.html
http://rentergirl.blogspot.com/2007/08/theyre-all-mad.html
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16 comments:
Dear rentergirl,
I feel the same.
Theres no laughing from me.
I completely understand.
I have not laughed in years.
Yet I am irreprehensible.
The screw is turned tighter until there is no lifeblood left. Then you are stamped on a little bit more then spat on.
But who am I?
I am nobody.
It's all starting to feel really, really oppressive. I am wondering though if you might be EJ Thribb?
The European country where renting is most popular – i.e. where owner occupation is lowest – is also the wealthiest country: Germany. So the popularity of renting in Germany is presumably not down to German’s inability to buy. So what are the Germans doing right that we are getting wrong?
Ralph, I don't know: although it is less wondrous there now, with rents (especially in Berlin) rising to fast that tenants are demonstrating on the streets. I will say again: flats are homes: tenants can decorate and always provide their own furniture, and the culture encourages longer occupation. No AST's.
But surely that little Shapps fellow with his mad ideas greatly adds to the gaiety of the nation, no?
Be thankful he's not the minister in charge of the DWP (if it is still called that these days). He'd be floating ideas like having the long-term unemployed be turned into compulsory organ donors so that they can help 'give something back' - even if it's only a kidney or a lung.
But to get serious for a moment aren't owner-occupiers with mortgages and insecure jobs in an even worse position than renters? At least renters can get HB. If you've got a mortgage and have lost your job and can't get another you'll be looking at repossession soon enough.
On the matter of ASTs they were introduced as the old Rent Act tenancy regime had lead to the stifling of the rental market. People were reluctant to let their properties when they might not be able to get them back as there was a statutory right for the tenant's relatives to succeed to the tenancy on his or her death. As I recall the Rent Act regime came to be held in such general low regard by the courts that they were happy to find that obviously sham 'holiday lets' were still valid.
The AST regime has worked insofar as it has facilitated a supply of private sector housing which is available to meet demand. Perhaps all that needs to be done is for the minimum six month term to be made a minimum two year term (maybe even three years?) - but that might be unattractive for the tenant who does not wish to be locked in to a two or three year tenancy. Maybe just give the tenant a right to a certain number of new sixth month tenancies after the expiry of his first one?
I don't think that six month terms are that popular with landlords. They don't want the aggravation of having to find new tenants every six months. If they've got a decent tenant who is paying the rent on time they'd much rather they stayed for at least a year.
Another thing that's wrong with the system is that social housing has become a ghetto for the poor with the primary route in being via homelessness. Back in the '60s and '70s the textbooks contemplated that local authorities would be the main suppliers of rented accommodation for all classes of folk and that the private rented sector would fulfill only a very minor role. Not worked out that way, has it? We now have a situation where both the middle classes and those of the working class who actually work are largely excluded from public sector housing unless they can somehow cheat and wangle their way in - but why would they want to given that a great many of their neighbours will be jobless unfortunates with varying degrees of 'social problems': an unfortunate result of the rationing of a scarce resource where those with the greatest needs enjoy priority over more ordinary mortals. It's a system designed to funnel life's failures in to 'sink estates'. Might not 'sink estates' become better places if more professional people (or even ordinary working people) were permitted or encouraged to live there? But we'd need to build lots and lots and lots of new public sector housing so that local authorities don't have to ration out their housing stock primarily to life's 'unfortunates'. And I can't see that happening. Instead the government want to introduce insecurity of tenure into local authority tenancies. That's only going to make the problem worse if tenants who 'no longer need public sector housing' are put out of it so that they can be replaced with a fresh batch of unfortunates.
Now I'm feeling miserable, dammit.
Six month tenancies are valued by letting agents who charge fees for renewal every six months (even in Scotland - where such fees are illegal.) And AST's can be left to 'roll over' but the affect is that tenants are always just two months from being given notice on a whim. I think the assumption should be that that landlords need good reason to give notice (and check it, unlike the 'I'm selling up/a relative is moving in' scam currently used.)
Social housing should be affordable, well designed and not like 'mixed' estates where homes social homes are smaller and less well sited than than the private ones.
I was with you until you started on about working people being excluded from social housing. That is not the case. The reason is right-to-buy being bought by working people - and funds not put back into building more homes.
Thanks for reading
So I'm not renting any more.
Six weeks post-move, a phone call from the old landlord complaining about "bills" arriving at old address. All my post has been redirected.
I call Npower. They confirm that the gas and electricity accounts were in credit when they were closed and that we should get a cheque.
whaddya know? landlord seems to think I should keep paying power bills on a property I don't rent any more.
Back in the '60s and '70s the textbooks contemplated that local authorities would be the main suppliers of rented accommodation for all classes of folk and that the private rented sector would fulfill only a very minor role. Not worked out that way, has it?
No, because we stopped doing it. Obviously the solution must be to double down on the policy that got us into this mess. clap louder!
I wish I was surprised. A landlord once tried to charge me a holding fee for a shared student houses, which we only found in the Sept...ie he hadn't held it.
Like all tenants I too am ground down with the constant insecurity of ASTs. I know they were created because of an imbalance that disincentivsed PRS landlords to get involved but the pendulam has swung too far the other way.
Of course there are nightmare tenants out there who take advantage of protections built into the law to take advantage, I know, its my job to protect them, but landlords always have the ultimate sanction of being able to take someone's home away for any perceived slight or just because they decide to sell up.
I've got 2 and a half months left on my contract and I know the landlord is going to whack the rent up so I am already looking for my next home, the third in just over a year.
Figures I read a while back on Citywire showed that every 3 years 50% of the local community have moved because of landlords cancelling ASTs. The government keep banging on about communities but how do you sustain a community when half the population are on the move all the time?
As for social letting I do agree with Chris mainly. I can remember back before Thatcher and her chinless zombies raped the country that social lettings didnt have the same image. I remember many people at that time rejecting the right to buy on principle because they believed in the ethos of social housing, remembering the key humane role it played thruoght the depression and at the end of the second world war. In the rush to turn us into a nation of homeowners (again) this has been largely forgotten and social tenant = rioters or feckless nutbags in the minds of so many
All good points Ben, to which might I add - may the fates save us, every one from AST's.
As a tenant who's had to move more times than I can count, I'm all for longer tenancies. However, I really wouldn't want that to happen without wholesale reform of 'renting' - who would really want to be trapped in a two-year tenancy with a landlord who won't do repairs, when there's currently no real way to ensure the quality of what's supposed to be your home? Two years stuck with a leaky roof, a dodgy boiler, draughty windowns, a creepy landlord or bits falling off the house? Two years staring at acres of magnolia paint that a picture hook might apparently 'damage'? No thanks.
Whilst I hate short-term tenancies, at least I know that if it turns out that if my landlord (or letting agent!) is terrible, I can move on in a maximum of six months, painful to the pocket though that may be. Ultimately, I can probably walk away feeling a little relief that it's not my house that's rotting away ...
I'm all for longer tenancies but it's been bad enough to be trapped for six months in some of the places I've 'lived', let alone for longer.
Let me be clear, I would advocate that the presumption is for a longer tenancy on the tenants say so, that is, they can leave with two months notice. Landlords would still presume that tenants will have an agreement for years, unless they are 'bad.' And the reasons for eviction/ending a tenancy must be policed. You are right that sometimes tenants wnat to get out.
Let me be clear, I would advocate that the presumption is for a longer tenancy on the tenants say so, that is, they can leave with two months notice. Landlords would still presume that tenants will have an agreement for years, unless they are 'bad.' And the reasons for eviction/ending a tenancy must be policed. You are right that sometimes tenants wnat to get out.
@Rentergirl
>Let me be clear, I would advocate that the presumption is for a longer tenancy on the tenants say so, that is, they can leave with two months notice.
How is that different from (say) Rent Act tenancies, succession rights aside?
And if, as you seem to be saying, it is only on one side (hence no reason for LL to do it in comparison to say a 2 year AST which guarantees both sides), how will you persuade LLs to accept it rather than simply leave the market, putting us back in the 1970s with poor quality property and a shrinking PRS?
>Landlords would still presume that tenants will have an agreement for years, unless they are 'bad.' And the reasons for eviction/ending a tenancy must be policed.
That's already policed in any fixed term or non-AST tenancy (contracts excepted), in that the process can only be done legally through the defined Court process.
ML
Notice is never 'policed' and to actually evict a tenant landlords say they are selling the place or 'need it for a relative.' In fact, they don't need a reason: they just can turf renters out, and they do. And I am ALL for a return to the 70's: the law of perverse and unintended consequences means that tenants have absolutely no security whatsoever at all. And it's letting agencies who ignore the idea of long, rolling tenancy as they then try and charge for unnecessary renewals.
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