Tenants increasingly share homes, some forever, as rents rise, benefits slashed and with little looming hope of plentiful new homes any time soon. So you need to ensure that you are compatible with your new family – for that is what they are. There is no point embarking on a new life as a vegan housemate lost like some slaughtered lamb in a household full of rabid carnivores, or a silent, yoga-postured, meditating aesthete where competitive partying is the way of life – indeed, the law.
I wrote about how the incoming newbie tenant can screw up an interview, so now it’s the housemates turn. How do you behave when looking to fill your desirable vacant room? Some things are best sorted out first. A friend visited prospective new home, and found it to be filthy, with several un-emptied bins (‘…we couldn’t be bothered to empty it,’ they offered, with truth in jest.) But, as she reasoned, at least she was forewarned, choosing not move in.
If you’re sneery, arrogant and hostile, then in turns extremely patronising, looking down on the applicant’s musical choices, their job, their hobbies, you will get what you deserve that way – a like minded flatmate, that is - a total arsehole, just like you.
But then, some other housemates interviewed a newbie, sitting in stony silence, as he rattled on of his love for clubbing and gay bars, his new boyfriend, banging house, his questions about their preferences all greeted with astonishment. If you are pious, christian abstainers, why not make this abundantly clear in the ad to save everyone’s time?
There are other faux-pas, such as taking notes, on a clipboard – shared with fellow interviewers while giggling loudly – then saying ‘…don’t worry – we’re always like this, don’t mind us.’
The fact remains that this is happening to everyone – even to older tenants, because of rising rents and benefit cuts is another occasion for humiliating applicants. One correspondent was met with sniggers, ‘notes’ being taken and shared, and the question ‘…exactly how old are you?’ snorted by chortling twenty-somethings. One of those things that they will remember with horror, when as adults, they fall from the housing ladder through poverty, divorce, bad health or terrible luck, when the words ‘Exactly how old are you…’ won’t seem so funny.
The nicest story was the happy house, where prospective new co-tenants were met with coffee, smiles and homemade cake, shown around, asked gentle questions to ascertain how they’d fit in, and made to feel welcome, not as if they were being held in custody suspected of murder.
Best of all, was the friend merrily sipping tea and chatting with potential flatmates, eventually told they were waiting for one other resident to appear.
Finally he arrived, and was introduced to her with the words: ‘…meet Herpes Dave.’ She was half-way into asking ‘But why is he called…?’
Yeah.
Tuesday, 11 June 2013
Monday, 3 June 2013
Labour - Please Wake Up To Housing
And the winner of the ‘No Shit Sherlock’ award goes to… (shuffles with silver envelope… serious face for annoying pause…) The Labour Party!
Hooray! It’s richly deserved, and they’ve worked hard to grasp the facts, but they won the prize for the following remark:
‘Labour has come to a settled view that it was a mistake in the mid-80s to switch from directly subsidising social rents and building homes to giving tenants the money to pay higher rents.’
I know! Bless their little cotton socks. Aw.
Here’s the situation. The Labour government started the appalling process of cutting rent paid to claimants when they introduced Local Housing Allowance. Someone in their ranks – an idiot SPAD recently graduated from McKinsey I expect - spotted that the benefit bill was rising, and even though most of that comes from pensions, chanced upon rising housing benefit.
So they had fantastic idea: imposing a ceiling on housing benefit, to persuade//cajole/force on pain of being homeless, so tenants would choose cheaper homes. There is so much wrong with that stupid idea, born as it was during the buy-to-let boom which was intentionally ramping up rents as if this was a good thing.
In some circles, rent paid to claimants as Local Housing Allowance is referred to as ‘Landlord Benefit’ because it’s paid to rentiers, not tenants. It’s like another way for the state to cover adequate to downright generous income those no longer working.
That’s why the (Labour supported) Benefit Cap is so misguided. People live where the jobs are, jobs which might be insecure, part time and low paid, and workers claim benefits, which cover the cost of their rent, to allow them to work. The money they receive does not go on hats, or champagne.
It is another form of state subsidy to the rich and to business – in the form of letting agents. The people who suffer are tenants, fighting at the bottom of the market to find a place they can afford, without paying stupidly high fares.
So build more homes. In London/The South/Everywhere, on brownfield sites. Build homes people need – one bed homes with plentiful storage and space to dry laundry, and family homes. Provide proper sound insulation, and separate rooms, to get round notions of ‘spare room’ so that tenants can have some safe space for people, like children of broken relationships, to stay, which is hard in the mania for open-plan. Somewhere to stow a bike safely, no communal post rooms, and not three floors squeezed in where there should be only two.
The need for these provisions explains why tenants cling desperately to rooms deemed ‘extra’ for bedroom tax valuation.
We might also need overcome a distaste verging on horror for high-rise housing, and learn again to build higher, ending short term economies, like saving on bricks by building small roomed dwellings.
Rents will be cheaper, people will have actual choice, and private landlords will profit less when the benefit bill no longer swallowed up by benefits covering stupid high rents. Labour it's great that you're awake, but now you need to listen.
Hooray! It’s richly deserved, and they’ve worked hard to grasp the facts, but they won the prize for the following remark:
‘Labour has come to a settled view that it was a mistake in the mid-80s to switch from directly subsidising social rents and building homes to giving tenants the money to pay higher rents.’
I know! Bless their little cotton socks. Aw.
Here’s the situation. The Labour government started the appalling process of cutting rent paid to claimants when they introduced Local Housing Allowance. Someone in their ranks – an idiot SPAD recently graduated from McKinsey I expect - spotted that the benefit bill was rising, and even though most of that comes from pensions, chanced upon rising housing benefit.
So they had fantastic idea: imposing a ceiling on housing benefit, to persuade//cajole/force on pain of being homeless, so tenants would choose cheaper homes. There is so much wrong with that stupid idea, born as it was during the buy-to-let boom which was intentionally ramping up rents as if this was a good thing.
In some circles, rent paid to claimants as Local Housing Allowance is referred to as ‘Landlord Benefit’ because it’s paid to rentiers, not tenants. It’s like another way for the state to cover adequate to downright generous income those no longer working.
That’s why the (Labour supported) Benefit Cap is so misguided. People live where the jobs are, jobs which might be insecure, part time and low paid, and workers claim benefits, which cover the cost of their rent, to allow them to work. The money they receive does not go on hats, or champagne.
It is another form of state subsidy to the rich and to business – in the form of letting agents. The people who suffer are tenants, fighting at the bottom of the market to find a place they can afford, without paying stupidly high fares.
So build more homes. In London/The South/Everywhere, on brownfield sites. Build homes people need – one bed homes with plentiful storage and space to dry laundry, and family homes. Provide proper sound insulation, and separate rooms, to get round notions of ‘spare room’ so that tenants can have some safe space for people, like children of broken relationships, to stay, which is hard in the mania for open-plan. Somewhere to stow a bike safely, no communal post rooms, and not three floors squeezed in where there should be only two.
The need for these provisions explains why tenants cling desperately to rooms deemed ‘extra’ for bedroom tax valuation.
We might also need overcome a distaste verging on horror for high-rise housing, and learn again to build higher, ending short term economies, like saving on bricks by building small roomed dwellings.
Rents will be cheaper, people will have actual choice, and private landlords will profit less when the benefit bill no longer swallowed up by benefits covering stupid high rents. Labour it's great that you're awake, but now you need to listen.
Tuesday, 28 May 2013
Why Not Move?
The most stupid comment made to tenants enduring bad housing, be it the epitome of horror found in mercifully rare ‘beds-in-sheds’ to the underlying and constant low-level misery and insecurity of perpetual renting, is: ‘Why don’t they just move?’
Even one famous doctor publicly celebrated for debunking stupidity and a famous advocate of evidence based science, tweeted how he couldn’t see the problem with people being forced to move… because his friends moved. Presumably he has peer-reviewed stats, not just anecdotes. People must imagine tenants teleport from one home to the next, their belongings moved by kindly furniture pixies.
Moving house is consistently placed in the top ten on those presumably spurious ‘most difficult life event’ charts – and that’s just for owners. Renters face moving on every six months, either because they were turfed out on a whim, or when rents were raised so much they couldn’t pay. We know all about moving. We are experts.
But why is relocation so daunting? Because this ‘new start’ is unlikely to arise for any of the ‘good’ reasons, such as finding somewhere more spacious, or closer to friends and relatives or a better school. No. It’s more likely to be away from all those amenities.
Worse is the worry – will a landlord/letting agent take them on, or will they be forced to spend months using the temporary measures detailed in my previous post, at the mercy of rentiers, the crazy world of the internet and vile agents.
Then there’s the expense – two lots of deposits, one in stasis ‘protected’ while rentiers plot to keep most of it. There are vans, removal firms, storage etc to hire, and the hassle of finding new schools, doctors, and informing utility companies that you’ve moved.
Now imagine the close and genuine possibility of doing this annually, or even in extremes every six months – and yes, oh ye doubters, this happens. You will find friends become less willing to come along and help out. You will find unpacking less appealing, along with redecorating – what’s the point when you’ll likely be moving on so soon?
When you’re affluent and on the up, moving is a wheeze, an adventure, albeit a stressful one. You might be stricken with anxiety about the options available, but then at least you have the luxury of choice. When you are less flush with money, you take the first place you can find within your budget – and in places of high demand like London, suitable homes in your price limits are few and far between.
Then there’s the unbearable tension of the cross-over point, that exquisite time of roughly one month where impoverished renters pay for two homes, as they must sign on the line and cover two lots of rent to ensure they keep the flat. All while paying sundry sums to grasping letting agents eager for random fees. It might not sound like much, but the outlay cripples tenants in popular places where there is little opportunity to find somewhere cheaper, especially in hot-spots like London.
So when you read this blog, or other rare stories documenting the plight of generation rent, don’t say – ‘…why not move.’ It just makes you look stupid.
Even one famous doctor publicly celebrated for debunking stupidity and a famous advocate of evidence based science, tweeted how he couldn’t see the problem with people being forced to move… because his friends moved. Presumably he has peer-reviewed stats, not just anecdotes. People must imagine tenants teleport from one home to the next, their belongings moved by kindly furniture pixies.
Moving house is consistently placed in the top ten on those presumably spurious ‘most difficult life event’ charts – and that’s just for owners. Renters face moving on every six months, either because they were turfed out on a whim, or when rents were raised so much they couldn’t pay. We know all about moving. We are experts.
But why is relocation so daunting? Because this ‘new start’ is unlikely to arise for any of the ‘good’ reasons, such as finding somewhere more spacious, or closer to friends and relatives or a better school. No. It’s more likely to be away from all those amenities.
Worse is the worry – will a landlord/letting agent take them on, or will they be forced to spend months using the temporary measures detailed in my previous post, at the mercy of rentiers, the crazy world of the internet and vile agents.
Then there’s the expense – two lots of deposits, one in stasis ‘protected’ while rentiers plot to keep most of it. There are vans, removal firms, storage etc to hire, and the hassle of finding new schools, doctors, and informing utility companies that you’ve moved.
Now imagine the close and genuine possibility of doing this annually, or even in extremes every six months – and yes, oh ye doubters, this happens. You will find friends become less willing to come along and help out. You will find unpacking less appealing, along with redecorating – what’s the point when you’ll likely be moving on so soon?
When you’re affluent and on the up, moving is a wheeze, an adventure, albeit a stressful one. You might be stricken with anxiety about the options available, but then at least you have the luxury of choice. When you are less flush with money, you take the first place you can find within your budget – and in places of high demand like London, suitable homes in your price limits are few and far between.
Then there’s the unbearable tension of the cross-over point, that exquisite time of roughly one month where impoverished renters pay for two homes, as they must sign on the line and cover two lots of rent to ensure they keep the flat. All while paying sundry sums to grasping letting agents eager for random fees. It might not sound like much, but the outlay cripples tenants in popular places where there is little opportunity to find somewhere cheaper, especially in hot-spots like London.
So when you read this blog, or other rare stories documenting the plight of generation rent, don’t say – ‘…why not move.’ It just makes you look stupid.
Monday, 20 May 2013
Extremely Bad In London
How do people live in London? How do they afford it, let alone tolerate the conditions? More to the point, how do claimants find a place, and what do they do when they can’t? I lived there a long time ago, and had trouble with finding not just a home I could afford, but a place close to work, and friends. I found it daunting at first, and then impossible, so I left.
Nowadays, it’s worse. Poorer tenants go to extraordinary lengths to pay ridiculously inflated rents, enduring insecurity and cramped spaces, taking several jobs in different travel zones, which is costly and time-consuming.
It’s this bad – this is how people manage to survive, desperate to stay in London and the south as that’s where the jobs are. There are extremes, like temporary-into-permanent sofa-surfing. Or sleeping in parks or bus stations - even on the night bus when things go badly wrong. All of these examples are real and happened to friends, acquaintances or correspondents.
One friend stayed in a converted garage. I say converted – I mean there was a bed and shelves. It was cold, and what was intended to be an emergency measure lasted for almost one year, with her belongings damp and infested with mice. Lovely. But better than the streets.
Another slept surreptitiously in their work studio, which was cheaper than hostels. But he lived in a constant state of anxiety, afraid of being discovered.
Others sleep in kitchens and walk-in cupboards, even to the extent they are sublet and actual rent is paid – for living in a cupboard.
Some live in rooms divided with temporary cardboard partitions, scared that the owner or agent will visit and evict them.
Then there’s two people sharing a bed when on shift work – one during the day, the other at night. I don’t have to explain why this is infantilising, demeaning and dehumanising, do I?
Some stay with partners, returning home to parents at weekends. Doesn’t sound that bad, but it’s the sense of transience – of living like a child under precarious security, of having no refuge, which is what a home should be.
I’ve heard of people working in London, but keeping their home at the other of the country and commuting back, which is exhausting and destroys relationships.
Then there’s sharing bed all the time, when not in a couple. Imagine no privacy or your own space, at first convincing yourself that this it’s short-term ‘…just until we’ve saved enough to buy,’ or even – and this is shocking – saving enough for the deposit required to rent.
Try living in an HMO (house in multiple occupation) full of couples, all too poor for one-bed flats, using one tiny kitchen with a punitive roster for cooking time and the bathroom, where the lounge is used as another bedroom.
Worse perhaps is a combination of all the above, with possessions stored in lockers at coach stations and storage centres.
This happens. Moving to London seems like a great adventure, and these measures might seem exciting, but when they go on for months – even years, it’s not living, it’s existing. The answer is rent controls and more building. And better pay. And…
Nowadays, it’s worse. Poorer tenants go to extraordinary lengths to pay ridiculously inflated rents, enduring insecurity and cramped spaces, taking several jobs in different travel zones, which is costly and time-consuming.
It’s this bad – this is how people manage to survive, desperate to stay in London and the south as that’s where the jobs are. There are extremes, like temporary-into-permanent sofa-surfing. Or sleeping in parks or bus stations - even on the night bus when things go badly wrong. All of these examples are real and happened to friends, acquaintances or correspondents.
One friend stayed in a converted garage. I say converted – I mean there was a bed and shelves. It was cold, and what was intended to be an emergency measure lasted for almost one year, with her belongings damp and infested with mice. Lovely. But better than the streets.
Another slept surreptitiously in their work studio, which was cheaper than hostels. But he lived in a constant state of anxiety, afraid of being discovered.
Others sleep in kitchens and walk-in cupboards, even to the extent they are sublet and actual rent is paid – for living in a cupboard.
Some live in rooms divided with temporary cardboard partitions, scared that the owner or agent will visit and evict them.
Then there’s two people sharing a bed when on shift work – one during the day, the other at night. I don’t have to explain why this is infantilising, demeaning and dehumanising, do I?
Some stay with partners, returning home to parents at weekends. Doesn’t sound that bad, but it’s the sense of transience – of living like a child under precarious security, of having no refuge, which is what a home should be.
I’ve heard of people working in London, but keeping their home at the other of the country and commuting back, which is exhausting and destroys relationships.
Then there’s sharing bed all the time, when not in a couple. Imagine no privacy or your own space, at first convincing yourself that this it’s short-term ‘…just until we’ve saved enough to buy,’ or even – and this is shocking – saving enough for the deposit required to rent.
Try living in an HMO (house in multiple occupation) full of couples, all too poor for one-bed flats, using one tiny kitchen with a punitive roster for cooking time and the bathroom, where the lounge is used as another bedroom.
Worse perhaps is a combination of all the above, with possessions stored in lockers at coach stations and storage centres.
This happens. Moving to London seems like a great adventure, and these measures might seem exciting, but when they go on for months – even years, it’s not living, it’s existing. The answer is rent controls and more building. And better pay. And…
Monday, 13 May 2013
Cult of Insecurity.
The new insecurity began in the Private Rental Sector, with its six month tenancies, LHA (private housing’s bedroom tax, introduced by kindly Labour) and notice to quit issued on a whim. Now it’s creeping into social housing.
The new proposals were drawn up by people drinking vats of Chablis on their verandah, who own homes and enjoy the confidence that stems from not having worry about little things like food or bills. People who do not understand that poverty is caused by a lack of money, not a dearth of aspiration. Rich people who believe that shooing stinking plebs out of council housing will ‘nudge’ them into becoming company directors. Corrupt people who let their rich friends buy housing stock and rent it out to richer people (as you might call anyone lucky enough to have a job) which happened after right-to-buy.
People like National Idiot Boy In Chief – Grant Shapps, who is still peachy-keen to end tenancies for life (presumably, errant owner-occupiers might soon face being forcibly moved out of Esher when they are naughty.)
Amazingly, the often enlightened Scottish government has raised the spectre of probationary tenancies, where tenants have a year to prove they are lovely. So let’s look to America, where a maximum income ceiling already blights life in their council housing aka ‘projects.’ Anyone who by means of luck, education, business-skill, or promotion earns more money, subsequently loses not just their home, but their neighbourhood, thereby undermining a sense of community. Destabilising cohesion mimics the unsettling nature of the PRS, where many tenants live constantly on edge.
Then we have the housing association behaving like a Victorian mill-owner, by insisting that new tenants sign up to be good citizens. This means accepting ‘lifestyle goals’ like exercise, healthy living and contributing to the community, but tenants who don’t wish to sign are advised that they might wish to live elsewhere. So much for freedom of choice. My advice is to sign, then present their own similarly worded document for housing officers, insisting they renounce Prosecco by the crate, on pain of losing their job.
Then there’s the bedroom tax, where social tenants face losing their beloved two-bed flat, even when one of those ‘spare’ bedrooms is just a box-room used for storage (the clue is in the name – box rooms, that is storage, ie for boxes.)
It used to be accepted that a secure home was not just desirable, or a treat for good little citizens, but an absolute right. PRS tenants can currently be forced to move every six months. This happens far too often, and the problem is that even if private landlords choose not to turf people out on a whim, they can if they want to.
Don’t let this happen to social housing too – don’t mess up people’s lives. In the bad old days, bad old men would ‘joke,’ boasting about keeping women ‘barefoot and pregnant,’ so as to maintain masculine power and control. Perhaps working people are being kept ‘insecure, hungry and poor,’ so as better to maintain corporate control.
The new proposals were drawn up by people drinking vats of Chablis on their verandah, who own homes and enjoy the confidence that stems from not having worry about little things like food or bills. People who do not understand that poverty is caused by a lack of money, not a dearth of aspiration. Rich people who believe that shooing stinking plebs out of council housing will ‘nudge’ them into becoming company directors. Corrupt people who let their rich friends buy housing stock and rent it out to richer people (as you might call anyone lucky enough to have a job) which happened after right-to-buy.
People like National Idiot Boy In Chief – Grant Shapps, who is still peachy-keen to end tenancies for life (presumably, errant owner-occupiers might soon face being forcibly moved out of Esher when they are naughty.)
Amazingly, the often enlightened Scottish government has raised the spectre of probationary tenancies, where tenants have a year to prove they are lovely. So let’s look to America, where a maximum income ceiling already blights life in their council housing aka ‘projects.’ Anyone who by means of luck, education, business-skill, or promotion earns more money, subsequently loses not just their home, but their neighbourhood, thereby undermining a sense of community. Destabilising cohesion mimics the unsettling nature of the PRS, where many tenants live constantly on edge.
Then we have the housing association behaving like a Victorian mill-owner, by insisting that new tenants sign up to be good citizens. This means accepting ‘lifestyle goals’ like exercise, healthy living and contributing to the community, but tenants who don’t wish to sign are advised that they might wish to live elsewhere. So much for freedom of choice. My advice is to sign, then present their own similarly worded document for housing officers, insisting they renounce Prosecco by the crate, on pain of losing their job.
Then there’s the bedroom tax, where social tenants face losing their beloved two-bed flat, even when one of those ‘spare’ bedrooms is just a box-room used for storage (the clue is in the name – box rooms, that is storage, ie for boxes.)
It used to be accepted that a secure home was not just desirable, or a treat for good little citizens, but an absolute right. PRS tenants can currently be forced to move every six months. This happens far too often, and the problem is that even if private landlords choose not to turf people out on a whim, they can if they want to.
Don’t let this happen to social housing too – don’t mess up people’s lives. In the bad old days, bad old men would ‘joke,’ boasting about keeping women ‘barefoot and pregnant,’ so as to maintain masculine power and control. Perhaps working people are being kept ‘insecure, hungry and poor,’ so as better to maintain corporate control.
Tuesday, 7 May 2013
Do Letting Agents Get It Yet?
Letting agents – do they, like - get it yet?
Are they finally getting the message? The boos and raspberries about their bizarre, random, money-sucking fees and dubious soul-crushing behaviour have reached such a high level that even Labour are listening. Well, I say listening, when I mean making discreet harrumphing sounds and demanding ‘transparency’, which will hardly have those letting-leeches quaking with fear.
Say it loud - do letting-agents get it yet?
Several London based community private tenant groups, like Digs-Hackney Renters are following Edinburgh Private Tenants Group and staging humorous performative interventions and protests outside notoriously loathed firms like Foxtons. Dressed as the Monopoly board character, complete with lustrous false moustaches, they blockaded the office and were cheered on by passers-by – fellow victims, no doubt. Foxtons were so scared they replaced their staff with bouncers for the day.
I shall repeat the question – do letting agents get it yet?
Every one who encounters them in any way, from landlords, to councils, and of course and especially tenants are sick of their antics. They really are universally despised, for undermining security, shameless profiteering, bare-faced evasion of repairs and justifiable expenditure, but especially for STILL driving those hugely irritating, logo-tastic smart-cars.
But still I wonder - do they get it yet?
They must change their ways. Stop refusing to house claimants. Stop escalating rent prices. Stop being ill-informed and incompetent (my own benighted Landgirl was informed of an important change in regulations not by her soon-to-be-former agents, but by me.) Stop enabling and encouraging those harmful rarities beloved of headline writers, namely rogue and dodgy landlords, to harass and intimidate tenants with spurious ‘inspections’ so as to scare them out in lieu of legal notice.
Do they get it yet?
You are being outshone, rendered irrelevant and obsolete by online portals who charge a little for a lot. Tenants despise you, councils hate you, and yet you appear like Japanese knotweed all over the nations High Street, with high-tech water coolers, high-end magazines, and spurious claims in your windows (and yes, the Scottish agents who falsely claims to be licensed by ARLA - I mean YOU.)
Do you get it yet? Charging for photocopied forms, bullying tenants who ask reasonable questions and refusing to budge when you know they are correct in law. Any party that enacts effective legislation to reign you in will win votes – and there are so many renters in the UK.
Anywhere near to getting it? Letting agents have always been with us, but why are there so many now? Slyly oozing into the ears of nervous buy-to-let landlords like slippery snakes – ‘You can trust us. We only want to help before flipping the whole renting process into web of complication which only ever works to their benefit is their major sin.
Seriously: letting-agents, you are simply a wasteful, harmful anachronism. People never know from one month to the next whether they will have a home, you push up rents and form a layer like scum floating at the top of and contaminating the property market infecting daily life for millions. Do you get it yet?
Are they finally getting the message? The boos and raspberries about their bizarre, random, money-sucking fees and dubious soul-crushing behaviour have reached such a high level that even Labour are listening. Well, I say listening, when I mean making discreet harrumphing sounds and demanding ‘transparency’, which will hardly have those letting-leeches quaking with fear.
Say it loud - do letting-agents get it yet?
Several London based community private tenant groups, like Digs-Hackney Renters are following Edinburgh Private Tenants Group and staging humorous performative interventions and protests outside notoriously loathed firms like Foxtons. Dressed as the Monopoly board character, complete with lustrous false moustaches, they blockaded the office and were cheered on by passers-by – fellow victims, no doubt. Foxtons were so scared they replaced their staff with bouncers for the day.
I shall repeat the question – do letting agents get it yet?
Every one who encounters them in any way, from landlords, to councils, and of course and especially tenants are sick of their antics. They really are universally despised, for undermining security, shameless profiteering, bare-faced evasion of repairs and justifiable expenditure, but especially for STILL driving those hugely irritating, logo-tastic smart-cars.
But still I wonder - do they get it yet?
They must change their ways. Stop refusing to house claimants. Stop escalating rent prices. Stop being ill-informed and incompetent (my own benighted Landgirl was informed of an important change in regulations not by her soon-to-be-former agents, but by me.) Stop enabling and encouraging those harmful rarities beloved of headline writers, namely rogue and dodgy landlords, to harass and intimidate tenants with spurious ‘inspections’ so as to scare them out in lieu of legal notice.
Do they get it yet?
You are being outshone, rendered irrelevant and obsolete by online portals who charge a little for a lot. Tenants despise you, councils hate you, and yet you appear like Japanese knotweed all over the nations High Street, with high-tech water coolers, high-end magazines, and spurious claims in your windows (and yes, the Scottish agents who falsely claims to be licensed by ARLA - I mean YOU.)
Do you get it yet? Charging for photocopied forms, bullying tenants who ask reasonable questions and refusing to budge when you know they are correct in law. Any party that enacts effective legislation to reign you in will win votes – and there are so many renters in the UK.
Anywhere near to getting it? Letting agents have always been with us, but why are there so many now? Slyly oozing into the ears of nervous buy-to-let landlords like slippery snakes – ‘You can trust us. We only want to help before flipping the whole renting process into web of complication which only ever works to their benefit is their major sin.
Seriously: letting-agents, you are simply a wasteful, harmful anachronism. People never know from one month to the next whether they will have a home, you push up rents and form a layer like scum floating at the top of and contaminating the property market infecting daily life for millions. Do you get it yet?
Monday, 29 April 2013
Flatmate Fail
With many people too poor to buy and forced to share, flatmate interviews are increasingly problematic. The worst kind of attitude is blinkered and restricted, but of a discreet kind – ‘we won’t know who we want to move in until we meet them’ hides a multitude of prejudice.
Yes, it’s best to be clear from the very start about quirks, rules and standards when sharing. But when people are desperate for a home, and finding an affordable room in a to rent can be rife with anxiety. You’ll live with these people, and will see them every day, encountering their absolute best and also their very worst. Everyone will try and behave, but the mask, eventually will slip.
So here’s how to utterly screw up such an interview or panel, without even trying too hard, and screw it up so badly that residents and so prospective housemates run screaming out of their own house clutching a crucifix (please note – that would be a bad thing.)
1. Be a claimant, and admit it. Give up now. Just sound the interview over klaxon, whereby the prospective tenants drops through the trapdoor – straight onto workfare, no matter how affable or employable. They assume you will hang around, scrounging and weeping.
2. Do as my friend did, and dispute the need to not eat meat in a vegan house – mind you according to her they were rude and self-righteous (not every vegan is so afflicted, I am aware).
3. The desperate ‘older’ sharer, who kept aggressively mentioning her age then repeating – is that a problem? It was, and that’s both wrong and horrible, but common.
4. Being male when women were wanted and vice versa, and the email is sent by an applicant bearings a unisex name. Not much you can do about that, but wastes everyone’s time.
5. ‘Joshing’ with female potential sharers about them doing all the housework. And saying ‘only joking’ when you clearly aren’t joking as evidenced by your ‘comedy’ tie with a naked woman on it.
6. Prospective new tenant arrives and the flat is filthy – or maybe it’s best to establish the nature of how they will live early on. Having said that, the tenant who inspected the flat and ran his finger over the mantle piece with some disdain was rejected.
7. Applicant/supplicant waits outside and overhears tumultuous row between tenants, but enters flat and wades right in. Yes, they did get the room after everyone saw the funny side, but stayed briefly due to... tumultuous rows.
8. Arrive late, smelling of booze, in state of ‘wide-eyed disorientation’ and ask repeatedly what the resident’s favourite club is, and how often they have parties – do the neighbours call the police when they do, and who does all the cooking.
9. Notice the pet cat, and scream, loudly.
10. The flatmate (male) who sat sipping tea whilst farting openly and without inhibition did not get the room, although the tenants did enquire politely if he might have hearing problems, along with other health issues.
http://rentergirl.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/theyre-all-mad.html
Yes, it’s best to be clear from the very start about quirks, rules and standards when sharing. But when people are desperate for a home, and finding an affordable room in a to rent can be rife with anxiety. You’ll live with these people, and will see them every day, encountering their absolute best and also their very worst. Everyone will try and behave, but the mask, eventually will slip.
So here’s how to utterly screw up such an interview or panel, without even trying too hard, and screw it up so badly that residents and so prospective housemates run screaming out of their own house clutching a crucifix (please note – that would be a bad thing.)
1. Be a claimant, and admit it. Give up now. Just sound the interview over klaxon, whereby the prospective tenants drops through the trapdoor – straight onto workfare, no matter how affable or employable. They assume you will hang around, scrounging and weeping.
2. Do as my friend did, and dispute the need to not eat meat in a vegan house – mind you according to her they were rude and self-righteous (not every vegan is so afflicted, I am aware).
3. The desperate ‘older’ sharer, who kept aggressively mentioning her age then repeating – is that a problem? It was, and that’s both wrong and horrible, but common.
4. Being male when women were wanted and vice versa, and the email is sent by an applicant bearings a unisex name. Not much you can do about that, but wastes everyone’s time.
5. ‘Joshing’ with female potential sharers about them doing all the housework. And saying ‘only joking’ when you clearly aren’t joking as evidenced by your ‘comedy’ tie with a naked woman on it.
6. Prospective new tenant arrives and the flat is filthy – or maybe it’s best to establish the nature of how they will live early on. Having said that, the tenant who inspected the flat and ran his finger over the mantle piece with some disdain was rejected.
7. Applicant/supplicant waits outside and overhears tumultuous row between tenants, but enters flat and wades right in. Yes, they did get the room after everyone saw the funny side, but stayed briefly due to... tumultuous rows.
8. Arrive late, smelling of booze, in state of ‘wide-eyed disorientation’ and ask repeatedly what the resident’s favourite club is, and how often they have parties – do the neighbours call the police when they do, and who does all the cooking.
9. Notice the pet cat, and scream, loudly.
10. The flatmate (male) who sat sipping tea whilst farting openly and without inhibition did not get the room, although the tenants did enquire politely if he might have hearing problems, along with other health issues.
http://rentergirl.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/theyre-all-mad.html
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