Is anyone else angry that landlords very often say 'NO CHILDREN' when advertising?

[darcymum]

Somebody I know is looking for a place to live at the moment and is finding it impossible because no landlords want to take a tenant with children.

I was telling another friend this and she said she was evicted when she was pregnant because the landlord didn't want children.

I was so mad about this I started a petition-

petitions.number10.gov.uk/Childlands/

I know children may not be the most careful tenants in the world but they have to live somewhere.

What do others think?

i have signed it darcy!!!

FWIW i was a much worse tenant BEFORE i had the kids; i was one of these "young professionals" landlords like - i had a good job in a bank and plenty of cash, but regularly had all night parties and random rfiends staying all the time etc. and once i trashed a flat before i left because the landlord was such a wanker.

now i have kids though i keep my house lovely and wouldn't dream of doing any of the above!

Agree with expat, problem arises from the way in which people choose to view property as an investment.

Housing/shelter is one of the most important human rights. A good landlord would ideally have an alturistic outlook, and be able to recognise that whilst there are tenents living in a house and paying rent, it is the tenants home.

I've been a private tenant and we were constantly harrassed by our landlord, who would unlawfully enter the property to check up on us randomly, and illegally refused to hand our deposit back.

Thankfully, we are now in social housing, where, to all intents and purposes the house is our own, for as long as we want it. We were lucky to get a nice house and a good social landlord.

Maybe it would be better if those that wished to invest in property did it through buying shares in registered social landlords, providing a return on their money with little hassle - and a cash injection to a sector that is woefully underfunded by the authorities.

Hip hip hooray! Good for you mummee09v only 4,997 to go.

Did I say 4,997 make that 497! not nearly so bad.

well, investing in a buy-to-let property is, florence, an investment.

you can both gain and lose money.

again, the problem is with how property is viewed in this country: as an always-guaranteed-profit-maker.

'it's our pension'.

i really hope you're diversifying then, and that's wise advise no matter what you're investing in.

we're in social housing, too.

thankfully don't need to worry about the ol' 2 months notice dropping through the letterbox any day.

because that's just as shitty a way to live as life on any council estate, IMO.

and with lending going the way it is and people starting their professional lives with more and more debt from training, you'll see a lot more people forced to rent for life in the next generation.

maybe then things will change but for now, i can't see the point, tbh.

Its not leading that's the problem its house prices.

No, darcy, IMO, it's neither.

It's the cultural mentality of this country that housing is principally or even entirely an investment vehicle which will always appreciate and/or be profitable, and not a basic element of human need.

So long as this is true, there will be no change in tenancy laws.

Go on, sign my petition.

um, no.

i agree with u darcy - house prices are ridiculous. i laugh when i read stuff about house prices falling because they are stil damn unaffordable. to me anyway. and me and DP aren't exactly poor, we earn over 35k between us and still cant afford to buy.

it seems the only way people can get a secure place to live is to be in a situation where they are offered a council / housing association house, or earn loads of money to afford a mortgage for some overpriced shit property.

anyone in the middle is SCREWED!!!

something needs to be done so ordinary, middle income folk can afford to get on the property ladder.

sorry i meant we earn £25k - if we earned 35k we probably would just be able to.

'something needs to be done so ordinary, middle income folk can afford to get on the property ladder.'

here is the mindset:
a) that there even is such a thing as a property 'ladder', which implies that your home is essentially an investment vehicle which will appreciate in value, therefore it should be possible to trade in for something of greater value after purchasing it.
b) that all people are entitled to home-ownership.

this is part of why house prices are indeed ridiculous and why tenancy laws will not change anytime soon, because that would require a paradigm shift that will not occur until a much-greater percentage of the population find themselves entirely unable to afford to purchase a home as a place to live. ever.

Will the council/ housing associations house you if you earn that much?

social housing is not based on income, darcy, it is based on need.

if you are homeless, they have a legal obligation to house you.

now that may be in a B&B until you either find a private landlord who will let to you or a suitable property becomes available.

I was very lucky and bought years ago, we could never afford it now. But even people like us who might be rubbing hands in glee are stuffed when our children want to leave home.

why once the children leave home?

i mean, you'll still have your home, which is an asset.

Where are they going to live?

And our house might be an 'asset' but we still have to live somewhere so if we sold it we would just have to buy somewhere else. No better off

I suppose we will be able to pay our care home bill when we are older.

well, they will have to rent housing if they cannot afford to purchase it and you cannot afford to provide them with enough assistance to do so.

And what if they have children and can't find a landlord to take them?

Go on, sign my petition.

expat - what you said @ 16:37 and 17:26 I fully agree with. There is a huge fallacy about houses as investments. Indeed, it is a large part of the reason we got in the credit crunch. Our obsesison with housing has destroyed our economy and diverted useful capital hat could have been invested in businesses that provide jobs.

then vote for people who support a change in tenancy laws.

sell your 'investment properties' and use the money to buy your kids a house.

Who supports a change in tenancy laws then?

If we want a change in tenancy laws then we have to lobby for them, which is what I am trying to do.

well, I think it's interesting as the anti-dis legislation is all based on the same EU laws, but in Ireland you are not, for example, as a restaurant allowed to say no children (personally I have a problem with this, because if you have paid for a babysitter to look after your children to have a grown-up meal, you'd be pretty pissed off to have to listen to someone else's dc wail!). It is ageist. But doesn't seem to be a problem in the UK. Not sure whether it's not been tested or whether it's been decided a different way.

By extrapolation (and maybe it's been tested, but I don't practise in Ireland any more and can't remember) you would not be able to say no children when advertising private accommodation. I have more sympathy with this in that people do have children (continuing the human race etc), who do have to live with their parents. All very well to say that one lld doesn't want children in their house, but if all the lld are saying the same thing, it makes it a little tricky to find somewhere to live. I do understand the arguments about some properties not being suitable for children, and the liability would have to lay with the person who chose the property, I suppose. However, are you really saying that no child can ever visit the property?

I will mull on this further before signing any petition!!