Living next to asylum seeker HMO, ask me anything

[JapanesePotWeed]

As the title says. I live in a Victorian mid-terrace, wall-to-wall, garden-to-garden with an asylum seeker dispersal HMO. They were moved in nearly two years ago, replacing a multi-generation family that were living there before.
There is another HMO directly opposite my house, where asylum seekers get rooms once they are approved to remain but don't have an income to support themselves.

Not AIBU but more like AMA. I'm wondering what people would ask me if they really could ask anything. Does anyone actually want to know what it is like? I hear a lot of political point scoring in the media regarding this topic but no one actually talks to people like me!

Some older terraced properties have a communal roof space. That means you can get from one end of the terrace to the other by walking through the roof space.
It's also possible to enter other properties via the roof hatches if they aren't secured from below.

Is your house big enough to be turned into an HMO? Could you do the same and then use the rent money to finance a move . . . unless the council are prepared to buy it from you.

I'm sorry you're going through this - it sounds truly frightening. What part of the country are you in (obviously roughly)?

@nearlylovemyusername

Politics...Not really. More so I've developed distrust and acute dislike towards authorities. I want to ignore the lot of them and campaign for much tighter oversight of the shared housing market, larger and regularly imposed fines for bad landlords who run houses in poor condition, more police presence on streets like mine... But I also think it's too late and no one will be able to fix this mess. There is a certain tipping point when the number of HMOs and the decline in building conditions makes recovery impossible. Like the clearance of slums in the 20th Century. We are heading that way. Many inner-city terraced streets won't come back from this. I'm sad, it used to be beautiful here 😢

I'm in the North East. Isn't it awful though that things have been allowed to get that bad, that the Council have to buy a resident's home to allow them to escape?

I have been toying with an idea to hand my house over to asylum seeker contract - it still could be a family home, housing a refugee family. I'd have to rent elsewhere. But then I become a landlord with it's own complications - tax, etc.

I feel for you OP.

4 or 5 HMOs on my terraced street - opposite and a few doors up (all appeared within last 5 years since I moved here) a couple of which are leased to the council to people like ex offenders, rough sleepers, mental health, and asylum seekers - all men aged 20-50 by the look of them. I was threatened by one resident that he would kill me and my kids and burn our house down :( witnessed a violent attack outside my house. Blood stain still on pavement. Hear drug deals daily, see people wandering up and down trying to get drugs, people pissing in street. People watching us as we sit in garden. Fly tipping and rubbish outside the houses, nobody cares. The loft thing is terrifying and I need to check now!

(No wonder we can’t sleep)

It's absolutely dreadful. Dreadful that swathes of family homes are creating areas which are frightening for women to live in alone. The fact the council are willing to buy it from you says it all - I've never heard of that so I would grab that opportunity and make sure they pay market value before the HMO started accepting refugees. Completely accept that becoming a landlord is tricky - we have a number of properties we rent out and it's becoming more and more complex. Best of luck x

OMG,yes. It is just like my street. Can't even get the police to come out in 999 situations - they hear the street name and just glaze over. And it used to be a nice street with families, a chapel and a small primary school!

On the positive side - if you want to do anything bad, you can have your fill because NO ONE would complain. Could blast music all night, deal and do drugs, dump your white goods in the street, buy an XL Bully, go out stark naked, climb all the fences in the gardens, remove your front door, can have a disposable BBQ in July and break hose pipe bans - NO ONE will notice or judge or Mumsnet report anything!
Can't beat them - join them! That's my option C on the list 😂

Handhold.

Same happening where I live, I have a similar situation to op with two houses on my terraced street housing 5/6 men.

The back alley outside my home has been taken over and treat like an extension of the house, they set up plastic sofas and chairs, bbq, caravan out there at the moment too.
Same nocturnal pattern OP mentions, it’s happening now as I speak. Every night and the antisocial ones will just laugh in your face if you ask them to keep the noise down.

They dump their rubbish in the bushes at the end of the street or in other peoples back yards.

I’ve had men staring in windows several times, face pressed against the glass type of staringC I keep my curtains and blinds closed all day now, most of the street do.

Reports to council etc have done nothing. Police dont care, and it very much does feel like communities like mine have been pushed under the bus, not just by people who think everyone is lying about it, but also by the local thugs with their own domestic violence convictions who treat Tommy Robinson like some kid of god. Both types of men have me feeling scared and vulnerable, it’s just I get don’t get called racist when I say I’m scared of the ex convicts or the young lads with knives on bikes with balaclavas.

Have you or your neighbours ever raised the issues with your local MP? If so, how did they respond?

I don't have neighbours - it's terrace, after terrace of some kind of transient tenants.
In fact, one of the short term tenants, who was staying in a house for contractors came up to me and said it looks like the world has ended and I'm the last human left amongst zombies!

I'm making a list and at the moment I'm up to 102 houses being some sort of house share out of 129 properties. 5 owner-occupiers. 1 family Council house. Still have to establish the rest.
Once I have the full ugly picture, I'll try to make some noise about it, what with the Council elections coming up...

A side note - we have always had Labour and Lib Dem (current) Councils. A local Lib Dem Councillor said in a recent meeting that if anything, cities need MORE HMOs and he thinks that Victorian terraces are unsuited for family living anyway so it is only right to have no families in them.
😱😱😱
No words

Shocking. As is your statistic covering the number of properties that have been converted from family homes to HMOs

I'll bet that Lib Dem councillor and his family don't live in the streets which are all filled with refugee men. Awful, awful.

Christ, it sounds very dystopian. (If that’s the right word?)