Eviction - Council Rehousing

[buspool]

Been served a section 21 notice

Nice landlord - paying low rent for years but I've 2 kids so not leaving til council rehoused me.

Council told me to wait until court order in place and bailiffs coming and then they'll rehouse me

BUT

does that mean I have to accept the property they offer me at that stage even if it is a flat in an area I don't want to live in??

If I don't accept it then??

Just wondering whether it is better for me to keep bidding on properties now and to ask council to give me higher priority so more likely to get a house with garden

Any tips on how I should play this please?

Can't afford private rents round here so not an option

That social housing cost works out at £550pcm

The LHA rate works out at £650pcm

I'm unsure if the £500pcm rent OP pays is before or after the proposed rent increase. Either way, it's on a par with social housing. If she's saying she can't afford it, then she's equally admitting she can't afford social housing either! The LHA rate probably won't get her a house with garden, or a house in good condition, but neither with acquiring a council place necessarily get her those things either.

OP do you realise the HAs will look into your finances to check you can afford to rent from them, if you don't get full housing benefit? There's not much privacy, some of them want to know all your income and expenditure. If you're upto your eyes in debt, you'll have to get something sorted out to enable you to afford rent.

I understand if you want the security of a council place and the knowledge that the rent will never rise above the housing benefit amount. If your priority is obtaining A Council Place and you're willing to go through what may be several years or even decades, depending on how oversubscribed your area is of potentially hell on the homeless scheme, then carry on complaining about your rent, refuse to pay it and get evicted, see how far it gets you and whether you're accepted as homeless or not. If you're determined not to stay where you are then I guess you have nothing to lose except you reputation, which counts for a lot if you're private renting. If you want A Specific Council Place though, you're on a hiding to nothing. Everyone with more than one DC wants a 3bed with a garden. Chances are you'll be giving up what you've got for something lesser.

If the issue is that you're working and your rent isn't completely covered by LHA due to this, that won't change in social housing. Your HB will be reduced because you work, just the same as LHA is, so you'll still have a proportion of rent to pay out of other funds.

Social housing only really makes a difference financially to either people claiming maximum LHA but unable to find a private rental within that amount, leaving them to top up the rent themselves. Or people who don't earn all that much, but earning too much to claim LHA at all, in an area where private rental is expensive, so in their case having the cheaper rents of social housing is the difference between them being able to afford to live in that area or not (eg a not-far-off-minimum-wage earner in London). It's not a way to swap your low private rent for a council place at a similar rent with a view to a property upgrade. That's a crazy dreamers way to look at it.

In my area, the average wait (so some are waiting longer, probably the picky ones) for someone who is adequately housed currently and struggling to afford the rent, is over a decade.

@buspool

You said ' So was speaking to landlord last night and turns out the section 21 isn't valid as he didn't give a copy of the gas safety certificate when I moved in. Safety checks were carried out (and are every year) as my friend lived in the house before me and remembers this just now one can find the certificate. '

so you remember being present in the house whilst these annual gas safety checks were carried out ?
surely you were given a copy, and surely the landlord was sent a copy.

and...won't the company that supplied the plumber have a copy ?!!!
or at least proof that the gas safety check was carried out and paid for...

Its the check from before I moved in we don't have a copy of from 2018. I know checks have been carried out every year since I've been in. My friend lived here before me and told me checks were carried out every year but no-one can find the certificates. The checks were carried out by Homeserve but that stopped in 2019 and landlord said they can't access their old account on Homeserve so hit a stop.

Look thanks everyone - I get what you're saying. Living here has meant I've extra cash in my pocket due to low rent and a house. Is it so bad to want the house you want (with the garden) and to keep that extra cash in pocket? I've a rough couple of years with illness. I get what everyone is saying. I'll keep bidding on houses and hope landlord gives me more time to move out.

If landlord puts rent up by £100 but I keep paying same amount I do now would that count as me not paying my rent (and could get me evicted)?

Yes it could, and you’d be intentionally homeless and possibly kicked off the housing register.
its not wrong to want a lovely house and to be able to save money. It’s wrong to try to play the system when you don’t need to and take resources from people who genuinely need them.

We issued a s21 to our tenant 18m ago. She was in a similar position to you.
I'd recommend you bid on properties so that you have a chance at finding somewhere before you get evicted. Eviction can take a while, but keeping on good terms with your landlord is key.

The council called us and asked if we could give our tenant a bit more time. She had been allocated a new build and it wasn't quite ready. I was happy to do this and even though in the end it was 4 months later than planned, it was better for us all. She kept paying the rent.

Once your s21 has finished, it is important that you keep paying the rent. If you end up in arrears then this will go against you for affordability for your next property.

Carry on paying what you are and Any extra on top that you can afford. Also apply for discretionary housing payment they can often help towards your rent if it becomes unaffordable.

Rent arrears don't automatically mean intentionally homeless. But you do have to proove you could not afford the extra rent. So they would want to look at your bank statements. So if they see it wasted on take aways. Kids clubs. Ect they could say you could have cut back and afforded the extra rent.

Thanks @Specialneedsnana

If landlord puts rent up by £100 but I keep paying same amount I do now would that count as me not paying my rent (and could get me evicted)?

The LL could get you evicted for it, definitely yes. He's allowed to choose the rent, within reason. There are laws about what rent is allowed to be and if he hasn't put it up in so long and is still not putting it up to market rate now, then I very much doubt he is breaking those rules. You could challenge the rent raise through the fair rents scheme (or whatever it's called) but obviously that's going to piss your LL off, so as you currently have a good relationship it might not be worth it. Perhaps there's a helpline where you could ask someone what the likely outcome would be before deciding whether to raise a complaint? IDK.

Whether the council considers you voluntarily homeless or not, if you're paying the old rent but not the new raised part, IDK. Maybe it would depend on your finances as PP says and whether you really can't afford the raise, as opposed to don't want to pay it. That's what makes the most sense, otherwise everyone could claim not to afford their rent. You might be able to Google search the law/council rules around it, it'll probably mean wading through pages and pages of a PDF document to get to the bit you want.

As I mentioned before though, you're on sticky ground claiming you can't afford it when it's within the LHA rates for your area and is possibly cheaper than a council place too. HAs can evict for rent arrears too and they're going to reject you for the properties you want on affordability grounds, if you're openly admitting you can't afford the rent.

If your argument for not paying increased rent is "I'd rather have a council house for that price" then you're admitting to making yourself voluntarily homeless, aren't you? IDK the ins and outs of your circumstances but if you want help off the council you need to demonstrate a need for that help. Being fed up of paying private rents or wanting a garden isn't a need, it's a want.

The charity Shelter could maybe answer some of your queries about rent/LL/eviction/the law. They operate from a perspective of "how not to be evicted" though, not from a perspective of how to obtain a council property.

There's nothing wrong with you wanting what you want just so long as you don't actually expect it to happen. If you're pinning your hopes and plans on a 3bed house with garden from the council, you're going to be chronically disappointed and unhappy, which doesn't help your quality of life at all.

Council properties don't exist just to house people who don't want to pay private rents, there's just not enough of them to go around. The majority in private rents don't want to be there, a lot would rather be in council home or buy somewhere.

There's nothing to stop you from continuing to bid on what you want and maybe you'll get lucky one day, you never know. If you do decide to use the homeless scheme and get given a permanent property you hate, there's also nothing to stop you giving it up and going back to private rental to get a house with garden, if that's what you want.

If you had to choose or die, what would you pick - a 2bed terrace/flat without garden from the council or a 3bed with garden from a private LL? (Going to assume you don't pick death!). Because if you'd rather have any council property than no council property and if you could manage in a 2bed, you might be more likely to get somewhere sooner by bidding on those, than by bidding on the 3bed semi with a private garden that the world and his brother is also bidding on. Same with checking the banding of properties before you bid, if you're bidding on the ones in your banding you're more likely to get them. Basically what I'm saying is, if you really want a council property and you want it sooner than later, then don't waste your bids on unrealistic dreams.

I know life can be shit but there's no point doing that old person thing of being shocked at the price of eg bread because "back in my day it was tuppence ha'penny and now it's £1.50!!!", if all the loaves of bread are £1.50 and have been for some time. Moaning won't change anything and if they want bread they have to pay the price and that's that.

I dread what's going to happen if the CoL keeps rising and more and more people can't afford to survive. I can see there being mass homelessness and people living in slum tent cities like a 3rd world country.