To think it's disgusting the amount of landlords who won't accept DSS?

[7hup]

My friend is 36 and just been kicked out by her boyfriend because she had a mental breakdown and multiple suicide attempts .

She's just been released from hospital and has been given a B&B room as temporary accommodation.

She has to claim universal credit as she is in no fit state to work.

Council said if she can find private housing they will cover her first month's rent/deposit/fees.

No where takes housing benefit.

It's unfair.

There's no council accommodation and no private landlords will accept it.

She's 36. No children. No pets. Doesn't drink. Doesn't smoke. Is quiet and polite. Keeps to herself. Clean and tidy. She just needs a home :(

Its working people too. My Dsis has a kid and can't move out of my mums because she works only 16 hours because of her son so would receive housing benefit. So she can't move either.

Even on Spareroom. Co. UK in our area there are 674 rooms.

ONE takes DSS. And is dou le the price of similar rooms

It's so unfair :(

Plabom You seem like a good LL.

My crap landlord left me with no heating for 3 weeks during snow. I had no hot water and DS was freezing, when I asked for it to be fixed I was told to go and buy storage heaters and they'd reimburse me. I didn't have a car and had no money and they just said that's unfortunate.

I was given no compensation and as it was march when it snowed I was told there was no obligation to sort it quickly.

I read somewhere à year or so ago that 80% or more landlords only owned one property for rental. Of all the landlords I know, not one bought a property specifically for that purpose. In the vast majority, they became so as they got with a partner also owning a property or as a result of their parents passing away.

The No DSS rule. Does it include pensioners.

www.bigissue.com/latest/the-number-of-homeless-pensioners-is-the-highest-its-been-for-a-decade/

Howls with laughter!

I've put two children through university. The deposit is horrendously overpriced for a reason.

The cleaning up job on them leaving is also bloody hard work.

But the deposit back is key.

@floandme Because there needs to be two clear months of rent arrears before you can start proceedings at all so if you have someone clever they keep that just under so that it's month 3 before you can even issue the notice. Then you have the 14 day period. Then here it was 3 weeks before a court date could be obtained. Then they get 14 days to leave from the court after you get possession, but don't so you have to go back again (which involved another wait) for the eviction notice. Then get the baliffs involved.

I do not blame landlords but I do think those with a good track record deserves a chance.

My next door neighbour is a dss tenant, she has not paid her rent for 11 months and was being evicted. The council ended up paying the 5000 to the landlord. The garden is literally a tip, the back is covered In dog shit, the front looks like a rubbish dump, they are literally asbo tenants. I got attacked by her feral 15 year old last week when I asked him to pick the rubbish he had just thrown into my garden up. On top of being attacked, he and his friends snotted all over my front window and when we cleaned it up did it again.

Police report was done, they were warned, but they won't be moving as long as the landlord is getting his rent again.

Oh and myself and 2 other neighbours have reported them to environmental health, the council paid for the first clean up last year during the summer which cost us taxpayers 600. So yes I understand why good landlords will not accept dss.

Do bare basics not include shelter anymore then? What exactly does bare basics mean then? Access to fresh water?

There is a housing access problem in this country. I don’t think private landlords should shoulder the burden (although I wouldn’t be unhappy for mortgage/Insurance restrictions to be banned) but I do think that there should be a concentrated effort to increase social housing stock.

Benefit cheats and people who don’t want to work are a tiny minority compared to those trying to do the right thing but are completely priced out of our current economy or those truely unable to support themselves (the sick, disabled and elderly).
I don’t want to see people homeless on the streets but we’re rapidly heading that way.

the root cause is the failure of govt to properly and fairly regulate the housing market
now we're backed into a corner with grossly over inflated property prices

From what I read though B&B accom is likely to be for at least a year - because there's no social housing, and no landlords will accept housing benefit.

People are trapped in unsuitable B&Bs longterm.

Arf at those piously going on about people needing to take responsibility. That just sounds like you are deliberately missing the point and have no realistic idea of how difficult things are when you combine grave mental illness with poverty and no family able to take you in.

The woman in the OP sounds like she was seriously mentally ill, had made suicide attempts - she is vulnerable. When people are vulnerable they need support in order to start taking responsibility for themselves.

There's that saying that you can get the measure of how civilised a country actually is by observing how they treat their vulnerable members of society. We're failing spectacularly on all fronts at the moment in the UK.

Yet mysteriously there's plenty money for MP breakfast allowances or second homes, or bungs for the DUP.

Unfortunately the few have made it hell and tarnished all that follow. At the end of the day the LL have a business to run.

@Placemats, I think the history books will put it in the same category as no blacks, no Irish

Seline that's absolutely awful. Honestly. I'd have had the issues fixed within 48 hours and worked with you to sort a solution in the meantime - those sorts of situations are what insurance is for. I don't understand how anyone can be that uncaring, especially when they're responsible for your house being in livable condition.

I have friends who rent and they have similar stories - faulty electrics, rising damp, excuses for the LL keeping big chunks of their deposits completely unfairly.

that kind of thing frequently happens to HA tenants too.

I haven't RTWT but councils DO generally have a list of private landlords that will accept benefits. The properties are usually much more expensive but they are there.. not many, but some.

I've been a benefit tenant for years now. I have always paid my rent on time and had my housing benefit paid directly to me. ImE it's easier as usually the housing benefit doesn't cover the full rent anyway and I always have to make it up to the full amount.

I moved into the house I'm in now in 2014. The first benefit payment went directly to me paid in the form of a cheque. I passed the cheque along to the landlord, he cashed it and then told the council I hadn't paid! Luckily I had photocopies and so did the council so I could prove that it had been paid and on time - however that was a lousy trick to pull.

I'm sorry for your friend, OP, but all I can think is calling up the agents and registering with them so they can let you know as soon as something acceptable comes up. The truth of it is there aren't many HB properties anymore but hopefully that will change in time. Some people can't help it and ImE it's usually down to the insurers not the individuals.

Unless it's that ridiculously fat bloke down south who owns most of Kent. He's just an arse who hates everyone that's poorer than him

@placemats t reminds me of the No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs sign.

no, it doesn't.

I am one of those mentioned on that list. You do that a most grave disservice posting that comment.

I remember those signs, I read them! That was purely and simply a race issue built upon ignorance, colour and creed discrimination. This situation is different albeit equally distressing.

Lack of social housing/mental health provision and people's ignorance/racism two separate issues.

The full eviction process can take on average 7 - 8 months according to Shelter.

Some people are being very unpleasant about those in receipt of housing benefit

The unpleasanteness wirks both ways.

OP called posters elitist cunts lets not forget.

After a horrendous experience with a DSS family (who we bent over backwards for) I would certainly think twice now before letting to DSS again.

Years later we are still feeling the financial impact.

References aren't worth the paper they are written on and even regular property inspections didn't protect us from the thousands and thousands of pounds worth of damage and theft that was left behind when we finally evicted them.

It's a shame, and we have had other lovely DSS tenants, but my experience has (rightly or wrongly) made me incredibly wary.

@icannotremember

I really wish there were far, far fewer private landlords, especially those who've used a BTL mortgage and then can't accept tenants in receipt of HB if the mortgage provider says so. We need a massive programme of social housing creation in this country- housing is far too important to be the investment vehicles of a bunch of amateurs.

😂** a bunch of amateurs.

As much as your snide digs at LL's are amusing, I would love to know why you take such umbrage to people who take out BTL mortgages and to LL's in general?

I didn't become a LL to house people in need, I became a LL for financial reasons. It's an investment for my DS. What is wrong with that?

Not quite what this is about but would someone like myself (luckily I have a housing association place) who works full time and have done my whole life but as my ex left me with three children and wages are crap gets £10 a week housing benefit not be able to rent privately?

Looks like the system is about to change w8th universal credit going directly to landlords. www.simplelandlordsinsurance.com/landlord-hub/news/universal-credit-reform
Maybe that will give landlords more confidence in renting to HB claimants.

Not a chance. Why? Because everyone knows how unstable UC is, how the award can stop or vary at any time and there might be no idea when it will be resumed. Sanctions are common as are cock ups. I think UC puts off LLs even more.

The other issue is that, well, a lot of LLs don't want tenants who are there all the time. Back when we were renting, a lot of places were 'no children'. Well, that's unfair but that's life.

I’m a landlord to DSS recipients. Our first tenant was amazing, our second tenancy has been more difficult (late rent/damage).

It was very difficult to get insurance. I would continue to rent to DSS tenants if we weren’t moving back into the house but I totally understand why people don’t. It is so frustrating when your tenant isn’t paying rent.

that kind of thing frequently happens to HA tenants too

Some HA’s are shocking. A friend of mine with a terminal cancer diagnosis survived 11 months after a meeting with his HA about a wheelchair ramp being installed in his flat. It was completed the week of his funeral.

Effectively a whole swathe of people have been blacklisted from private housing. A list of people which will only keep rising as long as rents stay low and the government has to subsidise average workers.

Many LL's have taken on housing, a base social right as an investment vehicle. The banks are trying to protect their money by refusing BTL mortgages if tenants are claiming HB. The government won't do anything as they don't want to rock an increasingly precarious housing market. And all three of them are pointing fingers at each other and saying 'its not me its them'.

It makes no difference to me if you were once a tenant 'so you know what its like'. No. You absolutely don't. Renting whilst you look for a property is nothing like renting when you are on benefits. It is worlds apart.

I personally have no love for anyone who chooses to make a buck off the housing needs of other people.

no, it doesn't.

Yes it does @RiaParkinson71

Otherwise I wouldn't have posted on this thread.

I have personal experience of this, albeit in the early 90s.