October 26, 2018

Rogue landlords making people's lives hell

located:	United Kingdom
editor:	Gurmeet Singh

The U.K.’s housing market, particularly the rental market, has become deeply troubling. Private landlords are able to exploit lax U.K. renting laws and continue to rent out properties even when they have been ruled unfit to do so. This has led to large amounts of properties in the country being unsafe for habitation. Nevertheless, people have no other choice but to rent from a growing number of petty and avaricious landlords.

By 2021, nearly a quarter of the U.K.’s housing market will be privately rented. This is a new and challenging idea for both Brits and people abroad. In Germany, for example, renting is considered normal as many people never own the property in which they live. In day's U.K. however, owning your own home has been a key priority and a life-goal. As such, normalising renting is an ongoing process, which is why it is so important that a fair, equitable and just form of renting is normalised.

Take the example of Gary Fixter. Despite sounding like a shady Martin Amis criminal, Gary Fixter is a landlord who has been urged by a judge to give up his properties as a result of collecting an annual total of £100,000 from renters while providing his tenants with dangerously unsafe properties. Not only are his buildings unhygienic and poorly maintained, Fixter has repeatedly ignored complaints and does not act on his legal responsibility to make the properties safe.

Or take Bernard McGowan, a landlord who has a £30 million property empire in the U.K. and who has been convicted six times for housing offences since 2014. And despite having failed the “fit and proper” landlord test in Brent, north London, McGowan properties continue to be rented. As reported by The Guardian's Simon Goodley, “Rogue owners are collecting rents – often funded by taxpayers via housing benefit – despite being convicted of housing offences and failing to pass the “fit and proper” person tests required by housing legislation in England and Wales.” 

Furthermore, it has been reported that in Liverpool a "tower block that had more housing prosecutions in 2017 than any other building" was in the ownership of 80 percent international investors who have been subjecting their tenants to unacceptable conditions, freezing temperatures and unfit infrastructure while "banking publically funded rents".  

With a quarter of the U.K.’s housing market set to be rented in the coming years, it is time the government acted to ensure safer properties for tenants and harsher punishments on rogue landlords who repeatedly abdicate their responsibilities. While MPs are making it easier for tenants to sue their landlords, the government must first and foremost ensure these properties are liveable and provide a dignified home for those inhabiting it. 

Image: Residential Landlords Association