Hi Lynette,
Thank you for replying so quickly.
I’m looking for a 2 bedroom for myself and my son. We are currently facing homelessness as the place we’re renting is in serious disrepair and a dangerous health and safety violation due to faulty wiring and outdated fuse board, the plumbing to the flat upstairs keeps leaking and causing water damage to my flat in the kitchen and living room with water running down my walls in direct contact with plug outlets and dripping through my ceiling lights, and the wall is splitting in the front of the building due to subsidence letting in cold air in the living room, not to mention there is no heating in the flat (I had to buy my own storage heaters when I first moved in and due to the faulty wiring in the flat all of them eventually burned out and one nearly caught fire & so we just coped the last few years by layering up our clothing, blankets and hot water bottles but it always feels like we’re outside on the street), and to top it all off because of a shortage in HGV drivers the council wasn’t collecting rubbish on time for months and a rise in mice population and infestation happened so we also have that to contend with - the tenants called in the exterminators but the landlords don’t care or get involved despite the walls turning into Swiss cheese causing further damage to the property. I’m constantly cleaning mould from all the damp from the water damage as well as the mice droppings and the aftermath of groups of them dying after the exterminator visit but more just come back again after a few weeks. The building is really old and never been maintained in possibly decades (I’ve been here for 11 years and it was in a poor state when I moved in but it was all I could afford at the time that would allow children and me to work in London without having to travel far), it’s been just left to rot and all the patching up in the world is not going to help the situation. It needs serious and responsible people who care about properties and building work to do complete proper repairs and not halfway unfinished jobs. It is too dangerous for us to be here and it’s frustrating that the only correspondence with the landlord has been him asking me to leave so he can rent it out to someone else who will pay more, but he has made it clear to me he has absolutely no intention of fixing anything or carrying out any maintenance or even installing heating, I feel really sorry for the next desperate person. I’ve had to fix a lot of things on my own including my immersion heater for the hot water but there’s only so much I can do. He never visits the property and is difficult to get hold of on the phone and doesn’t respond unless it is to do with money, he apparently is collecting the rent on someone else’s behalf who lives in Africa.
The council were my last hope as I’ve tried going to estate agents who have all told me I’m not earning enough for a 2 bedroom despite the current rent I’m paying is the same amount if not more, according to them I would fail the external referencing company’s ridiculous requirements of earning at least 3 times the annual rent and also having a guarantor who earns 6 times the annual rent. It’s very hard finding a decent private landlord who doesn’t also use these wasteful external referencing companies or demand a year’s rent upfront. The council are taking their sweet time but we need a roof over our heads now. I’ve paid this landlord £111,025 in rent so far and pay for my own council tax and bills separately yet it’s all gone down the drain and amounted to nothing for me and my son except getting us sick.
Moving to another place is proving more impossible by the day as the good landlords of the past are all dying out and these career landlords just want as much profit as possible without any responsibility, they don’t even care about the conditions of the places they’re collecting money for. You’re the first landlord I’ve heard in a long time who actually cares about the place your renting as you want your tenants to take good care of it and you’re not putting money before human life, you are a rare treasure and speak like the good genuine landlords of the past when my parents used to rent.
I was really hoping to move back to the south coast where I was born but all the greedy career landlords from London have bought up a majority of the properties down there, turning family homes into rooms for multiple tenants and charging London prices, it’s disgusting. Lancashire seems lovely but it is very far. I really don’t know what to do anymore. I’m starting to hate England, I can’t call this place home anymore and it’s looking like my son has no future here, it’s just the two of us and I’ve tried to give him a good quality of life, but you can’t bring children up in poverty and expect there to be a happy ending. Receiving benefits is only a stepping-stone to help you get back on your feet, it’s not meant to be a way of life, yet if anyone hears you’re on benefits they turn you away without a thought and so how exactly does one better themselves if they have nowhere decent to live? You can’t work a high-end white collar job if you’re living on the streets and have children to care for. Greed is driving everything in the wrong direction and common sense has been lost. We have an inept government no matter the party who are one and the same, who vehemently hate and bully the citizens of this country and have no accountability which feels like we’ve got no real government at all but instead a mafia running things and stealing through taxation, made-up charges and huge price hikes and those wealthy enough who have managed to play the game extorting and scamming their way to a comfortable life can do whatever they want to those who are in desperate need of something as basic and important as housing. Where have all the good people gone?
Sorry for my long essay Lynette, I am just so frustrated right now and bleeding heavily. I am glad you are one of the good ones, I wish more people could be like you.