Social responsibility and ethics in businessFollow

A landlord in the UK with 1,000 homes is evicting all 200 tenants who are on housing benefits



So, why link this, why do I care? Because I'm a filthy liberal that's why.

The decision of the landlords to evict those on housing benefit makes good business sense (for them), but makes little social sense and shows little responsibility on their part for the country they live in.
We have a housing shortage in the UK, not enough private homes let alone council run and so some people need to be housed in the private sector. By restricting the available housing, they (and others like they) are making a subclass. They have not created the issue, I could go into length about the selling of council homes, the ridiculous house price situation in the UK etc, but throwing petrol on a flame is just repugnant.

Maybe I'm a freak of nature, maybe I'm just freakin' weird but I have always ensured I live life with a modicum of care to those around me. I have performed volunteer work when I have had time, I help others and contribute to charities. Having been a landlord in the last few years I have been mindful, flexible and understanding of my tenants and their needs. I do not go all out for me and ignore the rest of the world around me. I accept I need to contribute to the society around me. I reduced my last tenants rent ... did not raise it.

So, the point to all this? The landlords are jackasses. I would not make the decision they have. Money is not everything in life. It frees you, it enables you but from experience, you can only use so much of it to bring joy.

I am really fed up of the world chasing currency. What happened to the wider ideals of chasing down goals, ambitions and being the best at what you do, giving to the society you are in and building a better future? What happened to dreams? Is it all just a pound, Euro or dollar now? ***** that. I'm very dissapointed.

Now .. to sip a glass of wine .. bah humbug

Mixed feelings. I think that it's a lame thing for him to do to just lump everyone into one generic "welfare mums don't pay their bills", but It sounded to me like he's just tired of all the extra work that goes into preparing housing over and over for tenants who don't stay\have to be removed.

It's not just that they default on their rent. After he goes through the lengthy process of having them evicted, he has to prepare the home to be rented again which includes fixing anything they broke, hiring cleaners, replacing appliances, then he has to show the place again... It's a lot of work and while I have sympathy for folks who need housing benefits, just because they qualify for those benefits doesn't mean they get to just not pay their landlord.

As an aside, he isn't the first according to the article. It sounds like he held out for a long time and just kept getting burned.

Edited, Jan 4th 2014 4:21pm by Torrence

Why, because they're not letting people live in their property for free? The article makes it sound like there was a long history of them getting burned and the decision wasn't made on a whim. We converted our basement and part of the garage into a full apartment and have been renting it out for years, and if the tenant didn't pay we'd kick them out as well. And if it happened often enough we'd simply stop renting it out altogether.

The guy is not a Social Worker; he's a commercial landlord, ergo his purpose is to generate profit. His approach makes 100% commercial sense.

The fact that he is allowed to trample over the basic needs of vulnerable families simply shows that the regulatory framework has been diluted to nothing. Historically a landlord could easily evict tenants who defaulted on payments or were disruptive - and quite right too. For small scale landlords, the process was clunky but effective. For large scale landlords (particularly corporate landlords) it worked ok, but they lobbied the government hard for the right to flip their entire housing stock if an economic opportunity presented itself.

Following some hefty donations to the Conservative party, and the presence of a number of big-scale landlords in the cabinet, they got their way. Now they can scoot everyone out if they can attract better terms from a different clientele (be it immigrants, councils, charities etc.)

Sadly, the current government is apathetic to the needs of the less wealthy citizens when big business has a stake.

Blaming the landlord is ridiculously naive.

And due to the financial crisis lots of building projects have been canceled and that takes a while to pick up again.

Clearly, we need some lebensraum. Someplace nice and sunny, say.... India?

So knowing next to nothing about UK housing law, I'm assuming there's no protection against this kind of thing

Depends what that means, against a lot of hassle and inconvenience, not that much. Against homelessness or joining the next passing Pikey camp, yes, there's a lot.

It rains 377 days a year in Ireland, nobody wants that.

Here we have renter's insurance, too. You get paid whether the tenant pays or not, with the added bonus of having the option to evict and start the process all over again.

The renter pays it.

Two different types of renter's insurance: The stuff the renter purchases (which tends to be dirt cheap since it only covers the possessions of the household, not the structure - it's as low as $10 a month here when bundled with car insurance) and the landlord's renter's insurance, which covers the buildings and for an extra fee, as lolgaxe said, tenants who fail to pay up and have to be evicted before their lease expires as well as various other things.

I think that insurance is primarily to cover any legal fees in case the landlord has to go to court, though. Landlords have a specific set of obligations - they have to provide 60 days notice for eviction for failure to pay rent, and if the tenant has proof of payment that the landlord just misplaced, they'll get sued. (That happened to a friend of mine a long time ago. She had receipts from each time she'd paid rent, but the landlord lost her check twice and instead of asking her to write a new one, tried to evict her. That didn't end well for the landlord.)

Edited, Jan 6th 2014 12:49pm by Catwho

I think maybe fascinations are a very personal thing.

Damn, they do, and probably don't do anything so different than what I'm doing now.

Hmmm...



You don't like spreadsheets, databases and statistics?

Tsk, tsk...