HMO rubbish - has any community solves this problem?

[Emi1e]

For years a few of us permanent residents have endlessly tried to deal with rubbish-related problems associated with HMOs. We report to local councillors, we report to the council, we litte-pick, we deal with the bins, we educate new tenants, we try to win them over, we provide written guidance in their first language... but the problems continue.
Has any council or community found a solution to this?

The main issues are temporary residents:-

• not following rules regarding bin use, so they don’t get emptied.
• using front gardens rather than back gardens to store their bins and excess rubbish.
• fly-tipping.

Landlords:-

• renovating student properties every summer so that the street is full of ripped out houses, mattresses, skips etc.
• saying tenants’ rubbish is a council issue, not theirs.

Blocking up rear access so some tenants can only use front gardens for bins.

• (Basically making their fortune at the expense of the residents and taking no social responsibility).

In this weather the stench is horrible and it’s getting me down.

Anyone?

What does HMO stand for?

This sounds so frustrating. Is there any way you can complain to the University/College about this if it is student properties causing a problem? They sometimes have a Community Liaison officer who you could speak to.

House of multiple occupancy. HMO landlords must be licenced, worth taking up with the licensing authority?

@hedgehogblues
House of multiple occupation
Basically a house share or “bedsit” where multiple tenants share the same house - a bedroom each but share facilities like bathroom/kitchen

@Hedgehogblues it stands for Houses of Multiple Occupancy

Does this help? www.rla.org.uk/landlord/guides/waste-storage-and-disposal-conditions-for-licensed-hmos.shtml

HMO = House of multiple occupancy. So each bedroom is let out to a separate tenant and they each have their own rental agreement.

The only way I've seen this issue solved is to make each tenant pay a small weekly charge which pays for someone to go in and clean up and take care of all the problems with the rubbish. Not possible to do that retrospectively, though, so I am not sure what you can do.

using front gardens rather than back gardens to store their bins and excess rubbish

There's no reason to use back gardens rather than front to store rubbish, so it sounds like you actually have rather extreme ideas of what's appropriate, so I suspect your other ideas aren't particularly relevant.

The only thing that will work is legislation and massive fines for the landlords, and also additional council services such as double black bins for HMO properties (paid for via additional HMO registration fee)

Also this... apparently the council already have powers: www.landlordlawblog.co.uk/2018/01/16/landlords-tenants-bins/

I would keep on (and on) at your councillor.

I was with you until you moaned about bins in front gardens, who doesn't keep their bin in their front garden???? I certainly have my bins in my front garden as does every other owner occupier on my road, we are detached properties, hardly a rough area. I'm now guessing there's a bit of exaggeration here.

@GrannyClanger the uni is supportive, but all they can do is what we can do and email the landlords. However those landlords who care are proactive and don’t allow their properties to get in such a state.

@sirfredfredgeorge Hopefully I’m not an extremist! Bins were traditionally kept at the rear, and some of us still do. Our back gardens are far more secure so less available to bin raiders and fly-tippers. Storing bins in the tiny front garden attracts these problems and brings the smell closer to people.

I am completely baffled as to why the council doesn’t enforce, and am met with questions such as, “well how many days has the bin been left out for?”.

And thanks for the links, I will check them out.

I was with you until you moaned about bins in front gardens, who doesn't keep their bin in their front garden?

In these streets, with this kind of housing, most of us do.

Yes, you can record complaint at the council licensing dept then when the HMO license comes up for renewal they will take the complaints into account.

Yes, you can record complaint at the council licensing dept then when the HMO license comes up for renewal they will take the complaints into account.

And I don’t want to play “yes but...” but I could cry when I read that and even briefly considered the further time and effort on my part that that would require. Seriously I could cry.

I mean, why hasn’t someone from the council, Uni, local councillor etc mentioned that to me in the last three years?

In my experience the council won't care. It took years of complaining and campaigning before ours agreed to introduce planning permission for HMO and even then it was only for 6 bedders. So obviously the landlords just make 5 bed properties.
These kind of properties ruined my old neighbourhood. They shouldn't be allowed to saturate areas in the way they do.

No, the balance has tipped too far @notso. I’d rather that these big old terrace houses became individual flats.

It’s just landlords making big profits at the expense of everyone else and the taxpayers picking up the costs of dealing with fly tipping, rats, crime etc.

I only lived in a HMO during my master's (I rented differently during my undergrad) with a house of Erasmus international students and other post-grad that I didn't know prior to moving in. In general HMO's on the street were a mixture of groups of undergrads and groups of international students (there was a high percentage of Chinese students at this uni). There was definitely a different between how UK students dealt with rubbish and how the international students did, likely down to their understanding of how our system works. I also had the same issues with other people who hadn't long being in the UK who didn't live in HMO's on the street.

Although we were correctly sorting our bins (recycling and landfill) others on the street would use ours if theirs were full or if they hadn't been collected due to incorrect sorting. This meant they were incorrectly sorting into ours as well impacting our collections and presumably others on the street. No one in our HMO had access to a car so we couldn't dispose of any overflowing waste and had to hope that the bin men would also take them even if the bin wouldn't close of if a bag was left on the floor however this rarely happened to us unless someone else used our bin.

While I was living there I also applied for a larger bin however was told it was only available for families with children under 5 (due to nappy waste). I think this would solve most HMO's waste issues as 5 adults (or more) living independently of each other do produce a lot of waste no matter how well you recycle what your able. Improved recycling programmes would also help, especially if they took in a greater range of materials.

Bigger/more bins or more regular collections and better education, maybe working with the uni to facilitate this.

I was with you until you moaned about bins in front gardens, who doesn't keep their bin in their front garden?

Anyone who has a choice to put it somewhere else surely? I realise that not everybody can choose if there isn't a way to get the bin easily to the back of the house. But leaving the bin at the front looks awful IMO and surely leads to problems of people using your bin, idiots tipping it over, animals scavenging etc.

When DD was a student the way to get their bins from the back to the front was often blocked by a local business so they had to carry the bin through the house. They still found that preferable to leaving it on the front all the time.

I'm a bit surprised you haven't been able to find out you can complain about HMOs! That really does sound horrible regarding the rubbish.

However, if I were you, what I would do is look for something that identifies the rubbish as belonging to which flat or where its come from.

I manage a few HMOs and got hauled up in front of the HMO Unit for a hearing. A new neighbour had moved in and immediately complained about rubbish in the communal hallway. I was pretty certain it wasn't from the HMO I managed as it had been unoccupied and not undergoing any renovation for the summer and it had been cleaned and all rubbish removed long prior to this. The flat next to the complainers' was however being renovated. I went through the rubbish and found letters addressed to that flat, plus other stuff with identifying details for a firm of joiners and took that with me to the HMO hearing. It turned out that the complaining new neighbour had made up most of his complaint, on the basis that he had found out there was an HMO in the building, and it was fairly embarrassing for him.

Please bear in mind that some HMOs are very well managed and its annoying when we get the blame for stuff that has nothing to do with it and have to waste half a day attending a hearing. That neighbour could quite easily have looked through the rubbish himself and found out where it had come from. Because an HMO does bring in so much money, its often my HMO owners who arrange for things like front door painting or cleaning, because they want to attract well paying tenants.

Good luck with getting your problem solved OP - definatley try to identify where the rubbish is coming from via envelopes, etc..

I'm a bit surprised you haven't been able to find out you can complain about HMOs! That really does sound horrible regarding the rubbish.

Well, I am logging it - with the uni, with Fix My Street, with the councillors. I just didn't realise I could log it with an HMO committee. I'm fairly sure that they don't come up for renewal though as so many neighbourhoods are dealing with this. We're lucky in that we don't have any "half-way houses" as our HMOs.

However, if I were you, what I would do is look for something that identifies the rubbish as belonging to which flat or where its come from.

I don't have to spend my time rooting through someone's rotting rubbish - it's in their front gardens, it's spilling out of bins on the pavement with their number on etc. etc.

Hmo is houses of multiple occupation
Mainly student lets
They are tenants paying rent
Supposidly adults with tenancy agreements
Over 18 so legally responsible
Landlords are not social workers
So like anyone else report waste management issues to the council
Hmo's are licenced so if thete is a gailure to provide suitable bins or a breach of obligations under the tenancy agreement the council will contact the registered fit and proper person to deal