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?

If you make a profit you pay tax, most private landlords do not make a profit, once mortgage, insurance, gas saftey certificate, repairs/maintenance are paid. The profit comes on the sale of the property, then we will pay our dues as we should.

hatwoman a voice of reason...well said. Maggie sold off all the affordable housing and the people that bought made huge profits...wonder if they paid tax ?. I am being blasted for being a private landlord yet in a previous post I have stated one tenant in on housing benefit (single mum three kids) and she has been in the house for 5 years, she can be there for the next 20 should she so wish.

Beehive pretty much nailed it a while back: there's no route to housing other than 6 month tenancies or a mortgage.

And she's right, there's something very wrong with that, landlord/tenant disputes aside.

or an ever-decreasing number of social homes, more being lost every year.

maggie sold them off...and no govt since has reversed the effect of that - measures to increase social/affordable/whatever you want to call it housing have been half-arsed attempts to get the private sector to step in and to regulate said private sector. and in the meantime, renting is, unsurprisingly, seen in increasingly negative light when it comes to ways to secure a home.

Any of you lot getting angry signed my petition? or are you just going to shout about it and then do nothing?

Here is the link again to make it easy for you.

petitions.number10.gov.uk/Childlands/

Hatwoman makes a lot of sense -- if you're going to greatly reduce the amount of social housing available, then you need to make sure that all groups that might need housing, who are ipso facto thrown on the mercy of the private rental market, cannot be turned away or excluded if money is not a problem, regardless of having children, race, ethnicity/ national origin, age, sexual orientation, marital status, religion or language spoken, to name just a few of the potential prejudices a landlord might hold.

This works fairly well in the US - no system is perfect.

mathanxiety have you signed my petition then?

I was just looking and somebody else has a petition on the number 10 web site asking to prevent private landlords discriminating against pet owners. They have three times as many signatures as mine. Are children less important?

Am an Irish citizen, darcymum, but if moral support counts, you have it.

BTW, aren't British citizens actually subjects?

now i can see no pets policies. dogs are vile, for example.

You can still sign as long as you live in the UK

darcymum - i have now clicked the email link to add my signature; didnt have a chance to do it yesterday. but im on it now!!

i am also going to post a link on my facebook to try and persuade all my friends to sign. xx

I can see the no pets rule as well, people choose to have a pet (I've got a dog, she stinks) but nobody chooses to be a child.

Hurrah for mummee09v, want a free pedicure?

darcymum no but people choose to have children !

So does that mean you think only people who are home owners should have children?

darcymum no not at all, all I am saying is I think each tenant should be taken individually and no generalisations. We have had a house wrecked by people with kids, we have tenants who currently have kids and the house is fine and we have also let to a guy with a dog, he had all the carpets professionally cleaned when he left....

Anyone out there who smokes is on benefits has children a dog and lives in private rented accommodation?

A legal obligation to accept tennants with children would:
Put landlords off renting out property at all
Cause lanlords to waste people's time 'pretending' to consider families and then choose another tenant
Put up costs as all landlords would be forced to offer baby and childproofed properties.

It's a business decision: Private landlords have no great social obligation. Don't take it personally.

darcymum one of our tenants (well her boyfriend smokes outside)and their dog is crated when she goes out, HB and three kids ! She lives in an area where we know tenants stay for long periods (she has been in property for 5 years). Again we take each tenant on merit, we evaluat each situation individually on the follwoing criteria, the property and where it is, the tenant themselves, the amount of time they are likely to stay and their references.

no problem darcymum.

have had a lot of response on facebook now too so i am hoping lots will sign.

and i would love a free pedicure but i'm in leicester!! (saw earlier you were a bit far away lol!!)

we wasted our time looking at two privately-rented properties only to later discover the landlord didn't want kids.

thing is, one of them was in flats purpose-built to house the families of US military personnel working on a camp formerly located there.

the flats were three-bed, two bath, designed to house families.

but they'd been gradually bought up by pensioners who didn't want to hear children.

oh, well.

that property is still for let.

again, i think the problems lie deeper than just no children or no pets so i won't be signing the petition.

@hatwoman.. you don't think the governments since thatchers have had plenty of time to take the right to buy into account??

i think 19 years is plenty.