'No DSS' found to be discriminatory

[HorseFlyOfExtraordinaryLength]

letting agents and landlords are discriminating against women
Having had direct experience of this I am very pleased to hear that it is not legal and letting agents should not be using this reason to say no to prospective tenants.
Moreover lenders shouldn't be restricting buy to let mortgages.
Whether it actually has any effect on the ground is yet to be seen

@JuanSheetIsPlenty thanks for the clarification on the 30x rule. I have to disagree on the wisdom of making landlords (or even employers) part of immigration enforcement because that isn't what they are trained to do. Thus, to protect themselves, they may be forced to discriminate against anyone vaguely foreign-seeming. This is really in nobody's interest, except maybe large institutional landlords who have the resources to cope with increasing regulatory overload.

@AwdBovril and how do the Government benefit from that?
And where is the personal accountability?

I’m a single mother but also a landlord. Generally my buy to let mortgages don’t allow benefits recipients as tenants. I don’t care myself either way as long as they can afford the rent. But I wouldn’t violate my mortgage conditions to help someone else I don’t know. On a societal level it may or may not be right but I need to support myself and my family.

In reality the ruling doesn’t make much difference. Landlords can still do affordability checks which will exclude many. It’s not private landlords obligation to house people. IMO the government should be providing housing or ensuring it is provided.

Why anyone would willingly go through the stress of being evicted, end up in a hostel temporarily and have an impact on their credit rating just to be on the list for a council house and with no guarantee they’d get one or it would be the “nice flash” one they’ve seen down the road?

Like I said- it’s location dependant. Lots of places it wouldn’t be worth it. Where I am- you’d stand a good chance.

@zsazsajuju

I’m a single mother but also a landlord. Generally my buy to let mortgages don’t allow benefits recipients as tenants. I don’t care myself either way as long as they can afford the rent. But I wouldn’t violate my mortgage conditions to help someone else I don’t know.

If it’s no longer legal than your mortgage condition won’t stand any more.

Lots of places it wouldn’t be worth it. Where I am- you’d stand a good chance.

I’m afraid I’m very sceptical of that claim. Given the shortage of social housing I struggle to believe there is an excess of very attractive council properties that could be given out to people who aren’t necessarily in need.

I don't understand why it is discrimination? It's up to the landlords if they want a tenant on benefits / without benefits. At the end of the day, they want the rent paid each month (or whatever date agreed) without fail. Life is unfair. I have mental health issues but I have to still go to work because the bills has to be paid and food needs to be put on the table for my family.

@GothamProtector you're right, bollocks to trying to recoup the expenses from irresponsible tenants.

I’m afraid I’m very sceptical of that claim.

That’s fine. We don’t all have knowledge of the situation in all locations. I don’t know the situation where you are either.

@GothamProtector we don’t have a mortgage on it but good point about the LL insurance. I will check!

I don't understand why it is discrimination? It's up to the landlords if they want a tenant on benefits / without benefits.

There's nothing wrong with landlords discriminating, unless it's discrimination against those with a "protected characteristic". Eg "no blacks" isn't allowed. Nor is "no single mothers".

A policy of not accepting tenants on benefits disproportionately affects some groups with protected characteristics, eg single mothers. It's called indirect discrimination. You can Google it.

There's nothing to stop landlords implementing affordability checks though. They just can't have a blanket ban on benefits claimants.

@JuanSheetIsPlenty nice to have debated with you without it getting personal or insulting. Wish you all the best

“Why anyone would willingly go through the stress of being evicted, end up in a hostel temporarily and have an impact on their credit rating just to be on the list for a council house and with no guarantee they’d get one or it would be the “nice flash” one they’ve seen down the road?”

This is what the council told us to do when our landlord decided to sell and we couldn’t find anyone else to rent to us. Fuck that; it would have ruined our lives. We’d have also ended up stuck in a b&b for lord knows how long.

We had to move 200 miles away to a place we could survive on Dh wage alone (he commutes for two days a week, managed to negotiate working from home the rest of the time).

If the government paid all rent benefits direct to landlord and guaranteed rent, 90% of these issues with go away... This was removed so as not to infantilise claimants.

This is not the reason why it was changed. The reason it was changed was that in the event a claimant has a change of circumstance and doesn't report this, an overpayment is made and then this has to be clawed back directly from the landlord, which obviously landlords don't like, especially if the tenant is long gone and they have no recourse to get their money back. When the payment is made to the claimant, if there are any overpayments which need to be paid back the tenant is responsible for that.

Claimants in certain circumstances (e.g. learning difficulties, addiction recovery, history of defaulting on rent) can ask for the HB to be paid directly to the landlord instead, at least that was how it was explained to me - I don't know if this still happens under UC or not, or how often it was even granted in the first place.

shirley

Not rtft, but excellent news. Of course, people will still find a way to discriminate anyway, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

I'm a LL, I favour single mothers with one or two dc as tenants. Mainly because I've been one myself, I was fortunate from a financial pov, however I'm aware many aren't, and on the whole they get a shit deal benefits wise compared to couples and/or those with several dc.

The only occasion I had any problems was when an excellent long term tenant lost her job through no fault of her own, and housing benefit completely fucked up her claim repeatedly. She still tried to pay as much as she could from the pittance she received, but I firmly believe if any ll can't manage with a couple of months rent paid late, they shouldn't be a ll. As soon as they paid her the outstanding benefits she paid me.

My nightmare tenants were a couple where only one worked. They didn't look after the property and then seemed surprised that as a single working parent I wouldn't accept the excuse they didn't have time. Then when the dp had to take a lower paying job they started falling behind with rent, and they had the nerve to ask me to drop the rent because he couldn't find anything better and she was a sahm.

What did they do to not look after the property?

In the end, people have to live somewhere. Wages are low. House prices are overvalued by a silly amount in the UK so there are many renters. About 1 in 5 households will eventually be on UC. So, either we build vast amounts of social housing (reducing the size of the private sector so adverse for private landlords) or private landlords will have to start letting to UC claimants and take the risk (also adverse for private landlords). Something has to give.

purple if that's aimed at me, mainly being slovenly and lazy, and allowing dc free rein.

Eg despite the garden being easy maintenance and being provided with a lawn mower, they let it become an overgrown eyesore. Never opened windows or vents so minor damp issues. Frequently forgot to put the bin out on collection day so it was overflowing and apart from the smell and sight not being particularly pleasant for the neighbours, the foxes frequently spread it across several gardens.

Crap housekeeping. I'm not an avid cleaner myself and know with dc accidents happen. I have other tenants with dc and various pets and think of them as people's homes, not soulless property investments that should resemble show homes, so my standards aren't unrealistic. But draw the line at leaving grime so it can no longer be cleaned off. Things like dc spilling milk on the carpet and just leaving it, food burnt onto the hob to the extent domestic products wouldn't move it etc.

Not reporting minor problems, so instead of a 5 minute job it became a big expensive urgent one. And the minor problems were nearly always down to accidents on their behalf, rather than maintenance issues. Damage beyond normal wear and tear, eg cracked bathroom tiles, big dents in wooden fixtures etc.

(landlords) have a responsibility to make sure they aren’t housing people who have no legal right to live there. Just as employers have a responsibility to make sure their employees have a legal right to work there.

And how are landlords supposed to do this? It's not like there is a single passport stamp or visa that proves eligibility to live and work here. There are God knows how many visas, with different time limits.

How on earth is a LL meant to keep track of this, particularly if they have lots of different tenants from a variety of countries and potentially complicated circumstances and visa issues. How would you determine whether a tenant who is appealing against a deportation order is allowed to stay, and how would you know when the appeal is being heard and what the outcome was?

The whole LL immigration check debacle is going to become infinitely more complex with Brexit - who is allowed to stay and who isn't?

@FlowerArranger
The honest truth is that LL will favour those with s simple British passport.

My recent tenants have been British passport holders so beenbwasy. Previously I have had many other nationalities-but now I would be very nervous about checking eligibility of those previous tenants and I am used to doing right to work employment checks in my job! I had some fantastic long term Greek tenants, post Brexit I’d be unsure whether I can a accept them or not so will need to take advice (which is unlikely to be free!)

I rent a property through an estate agent. They do consider applicants who get housing support so long as it doesn’t make up most of the rent

If it becomes illegal for mortgage lenders or insurance companies to discriminate, so that there were no official grounds for turning down anyone on benefits, I suspect that a good many LLs would simply sell up.

Which could be a good thing, if more on the market then meant purchase prices coming down.

However, given that there may then be a greater shortage of rental properties, I dare say some LLs would merely raise the rent so that it would be unaffordable to anyone not employed in a reasonably good job and verifiably fulfilling the x 30 condition.

What it comes down to in the end, is a severe shortage of affordable social housing. And before anyone raises the old Evil-Thatcher- did-it theme, I would just point out that Labour had 13 years in which to abolish Right To Buy, during many of which property prices were soaring well out of reach of so many.

But they didn’t - I suspect because they thought it would lose them votes.

I am approaching 40, I have two children and a cat, I have always worked and been in the same stable job for 11 years. I am in an unhappy relationship but cannot find anywhere to live because despite working, I would need some UC to top up my income and every time I look everywhere says no children, no pets, no benefits. What am I supposed to do? The assumption that I’m a work shy loser who will trash their house is ridiculous. I have a decent deposit and a job, I don’t have rental history as I’ve been living in a house with a mortgage for years. I’m a responsible working adult and I cannot find anywhere to live! What on earth am I supposed to do? There’s no council stock here and CAB said going on a housing list was pointless and I would have to use private landlords but nobody will let a property to me and frankly, if I had 30x the rent to not include any benefits, I wouldn’t need to rent, I’d be able to afford a mortgage! It seems like you can only rent a property if you’re part of a couple who are both working.