Room in student house without a window

[Evalina]

DD's in her second year and has moved into what is otherwise a nice student house. However her room has no window. It has 2 doors, one into the hall and the other into a kitchen/lounge. So she has no natural light and no direct ventilation. She does get some light (and reduced privacy) through the frosted glazed door between her and the kitchen, but if she opens it to get air, then she gets cooking fumes and noise too.

We have raised it with local council HMO office who are not being very responsive, although they have spoken to landlord who has put in a brighter lightbulb! Landlord has said to DD's housemates that he knows loads of people at the council, and that if he's told to do anything it won't happen until next summer, so DD is wasting her time complaining about it. He's also said his wife is having a baby and is stressed at the thought they might have to pay to sort it out. As a result DD's housemates, who all have nice rooms with proper windows, are telling her to drop it, even though they have all declined to swap rooms with her.

I believe the problem could be fixed for less than £5k, which given collectively they are paying £38k in rent for the year is not too shocking.

Not sure what else to do really. Anyone got any advice?

Agree Shelter might be worth a call and dc could speak to her SU housing officer especially if they got the house via an ad there.

I'd think the LL is bullshitting about the other tenants - or he's made out the work would be very disruptive - to get himself off the hook.

If you can make the work and its timing look easy, the housemates argument would fall by the wayside. But still no obligation on him to do the work.

How does your dd feel about this?

Reading your posts it seems like you are very invested, doing all the chasing around and phoning up.

Are you sure your Dd is as concerned as you seem to be? A lack of window wouldn't bother me as a student- its relatively temporary, you can go to the library for a change of scene, and the room sounds a decent size.

My mother has done this to me- ranting on and on until I felt I had to do something to shut her up, as the ranting was more stressful than the percieved problem. I once spent a lot of time writing letters about a parking space she felt i should have in my block of flats when i didn't have a car.

i honestly thought it was illegal to let a room as a bedroom if it didn't have a window.

look here

"Ventilation
All habitable rooms should be ventilated directly to the open air by an opening window."

this is depressing

katy that is depressing!

friend of mine recently went abroad and rented out her London flat - she's got a room with no window and was told by the agency that it would have to be let as a 1 bed. I mean, that's good, and it's what we expected because she bought it as a 1 bed....but I am shocked there's no legal definition. Yet another shitty thing about our housing.

OP I suffer with very bad SAD and the interesting thing is, on a grey day, natural light is no help at all, but on a day that is bright, your daughter will miss all the light that brings. If you can afford to extract her from there - possibly by finding a replacement tenant? - then I would. These flatmates don't sound like "friends" in any case.

It does bother her, and she has asked for me to help, I have encouraged her to speak directly to the LL, the HMO office and the university, but it's not having any effect. (I have had no communication with the LL myself at all, or the university so far).

I have spoken to the local councillor now, who has just graduated from the university himself so seems keen to understand why it's being approved, and is going to look into it.

She is doing a full on course with lots of reference books so says it's not practical for her to work at the library. Plus she works late into the night so would be walking home alone in the early hours.

I am going to look at getting her some of the lamps suggested, as they may help with the light. Not sure that there is much scope to do anything re ventilation other than to work with the door open and some noise cancelling headphones.

She will need to get her friends onside about having the work done and collectively confirm to the LL that they would like it done. However, I suspect that he will then find another reason not to do it, but it would be good to at least put that to him.

Thanks for all the advice, is helpful. I think she needs to get to a point where either something is going to be done, or she accepts that it isn't.

The nihe link is good and says the right things, but does it just cover Northern Ireland? I haven't been able to find an equivalent page for England, which is where she is.

The university's student union should have an accommodation office, which will help you to deal with things like this: www.warwicksu.com/advice/housing/

I am looking but this doesn't help at all

University accommodation office line has a message saying they are too busy to add calls into the queue. Do really think I need to let DD decide what to do now though, and encourage her to take it up with the university guild herself.

Will see what the councillor comes back with - suspect he will just confirm that it is legal and there is nothing to be done. Perhaps he will lobby for changes in the future though.

It is really depressing, and I imagine there are lots of students in similar and much worse rooms across the country.

So if you have DC looking for student rooms, please add a window to the list of things they should check for!

I think if this were me, and given that you think being without her friends would be more detrimental to DD, I would be at the stage of saying to her - this isn't so bad and putting all energy into making the room as nice as possible, the fan (poss 2 , one by each door to get some airflow when they can be left open ) , the salt lamp, daylight lamps and general low level cosy lighting. As ops have said - over the winter the light won't be such an issue anyway if she has long contact hours, and when it starts to be the end will be in sight. I also agree with a pp that the LL is probably saying different things to different people to put off doing the work, from what you have said I wouldn't be banking on it happening. Would a large screen over the bit of the kitchen she wants the LL to block off work so that she can leave that door open with the skylight open - won't help with noise (but headphones) or cooking smells ( but I bet they get through to the rest of the house anyway unless the kitchen door into the house is religiously closed - and I'm willing to bet it isn't). I think you're right she has to decide her priorities now. Also if she is going to share with these people next year some agreement she gets a good room next time round. I assume the other rooms paying the lesser rent also have some compromise - possibly not as great but some. I think, if it were DS, I'd be wheeling into massive , if faked , positivity at this point. However, 1. he probably wouldn't be quite so bothered and 2. if I bought him two fans he'd probably put one either side of the bed and pretend he was in a prop plane. She's drawn the short straw even if if not literally, but someone was going to. It isn't forever. Easy for me to say as it isn't my DD , but my two penn'orth , for what it's worth.

Or ask the LL if you can put some hooks in the ceiling in the kitchen / sitting room bit so she can curtain off the skylight bit.
I'll shut up now

I really don'tknow what you expect the LL to do? Your DD as an adult signed a contract for the house as it was!

I agree that this sounds dodgy as hell, but I honestly think you and her would be best advised to take the path of least resistance, because the landlord will just make her life hell. Could you afford to offer to pay to have something like this installed?
www.velux.co.uk/products/sun-tunnels
You can even get ventilation
www.velux.co.uk/products/sun-tunnels/accessories

I agree you shouldn't have to, and it's galling that this would be improving the landlords shit property at your cost, but I honestly think it might be worth taking the financial hit as a lesson learned. Your daughter could then get the hell out at the end of the tenancy.

You could also consider getting the door vents the other poster suggested, or upgrading the window above the lounge door for better ventilation, or installing a fan in the window.

Finally, maybe a wall mounted cheap monitor or TV would make a decent fake window to make it a bit less claustrophobic? If that and a ventaxia in the window would sort it, that might be your most effective and lowest stress solution.

She has options.

1. Stop stressing about the mistake and get on with life. Work around using the bedroom as only a bedroom - study elsewhere etc.

2. Get the housemates to agree a swap at Christmas (and probably Easter for the next poor sap). I think this is the fairest option.

3. Move out.
   3a) Move out and continue to pay her share of the contractual rent. (shit - but if she will suffer so much then it is only money)
   3b) Move out and tell the housemates to sod off for her share. Landlord has a contract with all of them, so jointly liable and he can chase all of them. As they are still resident they will get the aggro. They could then chase your daughter for her share (legally). How far it gets, who knows? Also there could be a counter claim on the legality of the room as a bedroom (and an argument that the whole tenancy is void).

Put this to her.

She can then demand from her housemates that they must agree to a switch at Christmas.

If they won't do it then I'd go for option 3B! The friendship is screwed anyway.....

option 4 - they put an extra desk in one of the other 5 bedrooms and she studies in there and sleeps in the windowless cave
option 5 - she gets herself a boyfriend (girlfriend?) who has a window.

tbh I would halve the rent and tell her 'friends' that they have to make up the difference for this inferior room.
maybe they want to swap then?

When I was a student (Scotland in the eighties) we used to fight over the boxroom as it was warm due to no windows. The large rooms with bay windows were unpopular due to no heating.

Option 6: she starts sleeping with whoever has the nicest room! Housemate relationships. Nooooooo

If they're on a joint and several contract then it's likely they are renting the entire house as a group, not bedrooms as individuals, so your DD didn't commit herself legally to stay in that particular room. Her 'friends' have thoroughly screwed her over here, when it comes to assigning rooms (unless someone has a compelling reason to require a specific room e.g mobility problems preferring a ground floor room) everyone should draw straws IMO.

If I were your DD, I'd be telling the housemates who thought I should 'put up and shut up' that if they were so adamant that the room was habitable I would be swapping rooms with them immediately, so they could demonstrate to me how un-awful living in the pit was.

DD has now shown me a screenshot of a message from one of her friends, where she says that the Landlord said to a couple of them that he could do it over the summer (so not before) and it would just cause disruption in their last few weeks (ie exams!) and that it wouldn't benefit them so did they want it done? The message mentioned that "he is a man with a newborn baby and family and it would cost a lot of money and you wouldn't benefit from it anyway so we said we didn't want to do it" The HMO officer confirmed this LL has several properties, all probably generating similar amounts and that money definitely isn't an issue (not sure how he knows this but still).

So there is no way he is going to do anything unless compelled.

On the plus side I contacted the local fire service (thank you mummymeister for posting the fire guide), to ask their advice, as the guide was quite complex. I spoke to a lovely firewoman who said that no, it wasn't acceptable to have a bedroom separated from a kitchen with just a glass door, and that from how I described the layout she felt they'd be wanting it to be replaced with a wall. She knows the HMO officer and was going to give him a call to discuss it. Hopefully this will have some impact.

DD is going to discuss with her friends the options, and try get them on side.

If I were the landlord I'd just downgrade to a 5-bed offering, rather than faff around installing windows.

If your dd's housemates refuse to swap then they are no friends. The end.

When I was at university my 2nd year house share went pear-shaped. One of the sharers turned out to have a bad drugs problem and was very aggressive and scary. I went to my old hall of residence and related my situation and they immediately gave me a room, saying they always kept one or two spare for emergencies.