To think renting as single mum is horrific

[Blueysmum12]

My bff is a single mum to two young boys. She works in a nursery and gets universal credits. She has a small dog who she got when she split with her husband and is her baby.

she’s lived in the same house for 6 years, rent paid every month on time etc.

the owner is selling their house and obviously she has to move. Between us we have rang 40 properties in this town and surrounding villages. Not one will accept her because she’s either on in universal credits and she has a dog.

the council rang today and said they suggest she takes anything and rehomes her dog because they will put her in a bnb for around 8 months.

I would have her dog, but I have a cat and a dog and 3 kids already, my husband isn’t keen.

I feel so bad for her. She’s lost weight, she looks an anxious mess.

:(

I could respect what you are saying @lisaJN1986 if your INVESTMENT wasn't being paid for by other people.

You don't need a pet to have a fulfilled life. You don't have a "right" to own a dog.
Buying a dog when in private rental accommodation, especially when on UC, is pretty short sighted / risky.

But @Untitledsquatboulder, not everyone can work their way up! There’s only a few spots at the top - that’s how the world works. What would we do without our care workers, refuse collectors, hospital porters, shop assistants? They can’t all just work hard and become managers. There is a ratio for a reason!

And I do have a mortgage actually. And I have the grace to know it is because I am LUCKY, not because I deserve it kore than my neighbour. I have worked hard all my adult life - I have ZERO children. I worked my way up to a very nice salary of £50k. And I STILL could only buy a house at age 40 because my parents could contribute to my deposit.

It’s been a long time since I read such an ignorant and unpleasant post.

You seem to be operating under the delusion that working hard in school and at your job is enough in this country?

What if I told you that some children work their socks off to get grades D-F GCSE?

That I know people who work 16 hours a day, hold down 3 jobs, and still struggle to make ends meet?

In this country some people can work all the hours God sends and it still won’t get them a reliable roof over their head.
£75k lifestyle?! You’re on another planet mate.

Your “I’m all right Jack and fuck the rest of you for not trying hard enough” attitude is quite abhorrent - much luck may it bring you when ill health and old age come knocking and your ‘nonsensical human rights’ are in the hands of the over-worked, underpaid and demoralised care workers.

It is certainly not true. Not saying you’re making it up OP. Estate agents lie all the time (I’ve worked on the “other side” of them for 20 years).

They lie so much they don’t know when they are lying.

No I think Lisa makes perfect sense. There is working hard and then there is working smart. There was a guy in my school who got F’s and U’s for all his GCSE’s. Didn’t go on to college or Uni. I suppose now a days you would say he had ADHD or something as he was always a disruption. Seemed destined to end up in benefits or in a low paid job. He comes in to the company I worked for 7 years after school and it turned out that he owned his own business selling and installing blinds. He had 2 shop fronts and very successful business. I asked how he got there and he said he got a job as a labourer and saw an opportunity to start doing blinds. After a few adverts in some of the local papers he had more work than he could handle so he started bringing in people to help. He wanted a better life for himself and future family so he got his head down and got on with it. Anyone can do it, you just need to try something and if that doesn’t work out then learn from it and try something new. The only thing that can really hold you back is yourself.

An exception doesn’t prove the rule. While yes anyone can do it, it is not true that everyone can do it because too much is beyond one’s control. For every person who tries and succeeds, there are at least 99 others who try just as hard and fail. Most people will try repeatedly and fail repeatedly. This is not them holding themselves back. This is most often due to outside factors such as lack of opportunity or everything under the header of bad luck. Such as a horrible boss, critical illness, robbed by an employee, conned by a supplier/partner, in an abusive relationship, drafted into a war, life changing injury, economic crashes, pandemics, stiffed by nonpaying customers, supply chain collapse (Brexit), victim of a violent crime, big corporate competitor undercutting you by selling below cost to bankrupt you, etc.

Yep that’s a fair point, not everyone can make it but some people seem to use that fact as an excuse for never trying themselves and then complain about their own existence while resenting people who have done well for themselves calling them greedy and selfish just because they have tried to make a better life for themselves and their families.

The dog must go. She can’t lose any opportunities for a home over a dog FFS.

Re: original Op. From a LL's pov it's all about risk. As a LL I will go for the least risky tenant.

As someone who has been in the business > 20 years I know least risk involves less people living in the property, no pets and working tenants - somethingI have learnt the hard way.

I go back on my word from my previous post and remembered that I do have a family living in one of my properties. They are expats on >£100k a year.

I admit renting is ridiculously hard for people with children, pets and on UC this is the combination a lot of private LLs shy away from unfortunately, and for this reason the government must do more as it's not the responsibility of a private LL.

My responsibility is to provide a comfortable, clean and safe property which meets all legal requirements and also to keep the property in a well maintained state and respond and fix any repairs promptly as and when they arise.

Agree. There are a few truly lazy people out there and they do exactly as you say- try and make others feel guilty for succeeding or mock them for trying. But vast majority are not like this in my experience. And some do get knocked back more times than they have the resilience to cope with so they give up. I guess I object to generalisations about the few, when they really should be about the many.

This sort of thing is why it annoys me when people say the British have an obsession with owning their own property. Your BFF sounds like she had been doing everything right but suffers because she is renting. (Yes, I know there are also risks with owning, but at least you have some control and leverage with the mortgage company). Keeping my fingers crossed for your friend OP.

Hi, not sure if this has been mentioned but the Cinnamon Trust will sometimes have somebody foster animals until you are back in a position to keep them again - I think it's situation dependent but it might be worth getting in touch with them? X

She’s probably done this but has she taken advice from shelter? Just because the landlord wants his property back doesn’t stop her having rights on that property my view would be to stay there and tell the landlord she shall move when they find her an appropriate alternative home

I volunteer for a rescue in the phones; we get similar calls every single day. For the first time ever, due to the cost of living and rental crisis we are full- even the waiting list is closed. We’re part of a chain but whereas a year ago we could juggle and we had volunteers who’d drive across the U.K. for a space, now everyone is in the same boat and that’s true of every rescue in the county.

Please, if you have ever considered volunteering, do it now- you will 100% save animal
lives and make it easier for humans in some of the worst situations. You need to own your home or have a landlord who’ll agree in writing, and rescues cover food etc.

Don't tell them about the dog if you don't need to. We had two cats and made sure they made no damage, kept everything clean and fresh and when we had our annual inspection I shipped them off to my sisters for the day and hid all their bowls etc.

Seriously?
Why should the landlord have to find her another home??

She doesn’t mean the landlord goes househunting for her, she means whoever it shelter she has registered her problem with finds her a home presumably it’s more likely to be the council though.

We have friends, a couple in their 60s, who have been given notice by their landlord after 6 years as excellent tenants.
They have a beloved dog and are struggling to find anywhere affordable, even not taking the dog into account.I work for a homeless charity and
I am afraid to tell them how low their chances are. They want a house but are only entitled to a one bed in social housing of which there are hardly any.
The housing caseworker won't even act until the landlord has gone to court to evict them after their notice expires,that's how bad things have got.

The estate agent is lying. That's outright discrimination. Its probably more likely that the homeowner assumes every so how parent is struggling through on UC and therefore won't pay on time.
Track record of paying should be a deciding factor on eligibility.
Can she apply for shared ownership? It often works out cheaper than private rent

Then she may as well buy a property... If we are flexing on other mums hardships...

I'll be totally honest that as landlord, I wouldn't want to rent to a single parent unless on a high income. The reason is because so many seek for the local authority to house them if given notice and that can take many months to get your house back.

I don't have any intentions to sell right now, if I did it would be for an emergency and having to wait for up to 1 year, going to court etc... is a worrying prospect.

That and as it happened to me before. Tenant was ok whilst relying heavily on tax credits. Then the children became adults, their tax credits significantly reduced and they couldn't pay rent any longer. I was very lucky that they left 2 months after not paying rent.

Sadly, the government has taken so much control off landlords whilst making also taking away any chance of savings, leaving only risks. This makes landlords more than ever risks adverse and as long as more secure applications are offered to them, they will turn down those deemed more at risk.

Arggg just noticed it's an old thread, grrrrr

Try gumtree or Facebook. Lots of landlords organise their own tenants. Does she have a guarantor?

I went through this from 2020 until 2022. I was a single mum with two kids and three cats when my landlord tried to evict us because she needed to sell. I could have lost everything and was told by the council to stay put which I did for two years, I then got a three bedroomed house.

Pets are family, I'm sick of people trying to make people give them up because "they aren't important". Of course they are!!.