Lobbying body Generation Rent has launched a new campaign called Vent Your Rent, for tenants to express their feelings and find out about the “renting crisis” in their own area.
Some disturbing stories posted up on the first day, yesterday, include one where a tenant – single, ill, on benefits, with no guarantor and unable to work – claims to have paid out hundreds in fees to a landlord masquerading as an agency.
This tenant, who admits she does not look good on paper but says she has never been in arrears and looks after properties, says she has constant unannounced visits from the landlord and fears she will become homeless.
Meanwhile, Generation Rent is urging renters to ensure that they are registered to vote in the election by midnight tonight.
The organisation has not suggested which party renters should vote for, but has worked out which parliamentary seats could be decided by private renters on December 12 – constituencies where there are more unregistered private renters than the number of votes that the last MP won by at the 2017 election.
Such seats include Kensington, where the last MP (Labour) won by 20 votes and where it is estimated there are almost 9,000 unregistered private renters.
Other seats include Southampton Itchen; Richmond Park; Crewe and Nantwich; and Newcastle-under Lyme.
Private renters are statistically less likely to be registered to vote than home owners – 58% compared with 91%, according to the Electoral Commission.
Comments (7)
Perhaps we should set up a ventyourbadtenant campaign to add some balance, or just add a few real life stories to their feed…
I have three stories from this week alone that would get added to this and would be one in the eye for anyone who thinks that it’s just bad landlords that we need to worry about! Not bad going seeing as it’s only Tuesday!!
Gates left open and cattle able to escape/quad-biking down a private part of the estate/off-roading all over a farmers fields next to the rented property/nicked hay from bales stored in a farm building opposite the rented property.
One tenant who has been in there for a month…
I see in the section on their site headed ‘we demand open – ended tenancies and an end to section 21 evictions’ it states that the number of private renters made homeless through no-fault evictions is 7 per 1,000 (0.7%)
They refer to s.21 evictions as ‘no-fault’ because it is highly emotive. But a decent landlord would never evict a decent tenant for no good reason unless the landlord wanted to sell up and leave the sector. Unfortunately, many landlords are doing just that, largely as a result of government lobbying by Generation Rent and Shelter. I tried to evict a tenant who hadn’t paid rent for 5 months. I didn’t succeed in the eviction because she kept paying just a few £s towards her arrears, which were mounting by £550 per month, while I still had to pay the mortgage, service charge and ground rent plus legal costs. When she finally disappeared, I found the apartment had been trashed, requiring full refurbishment, which delayed me letting for a further 2 months. My cost was £5,000… and my story is not unusual! What does Generation Rent have to say about that?
Labour-supporting Generation Rent needs to take responsibility for the outcomes and unintended consequences of its ill-conceived actions.
Incidentally, most of the [hypocritical] Labour front bench own multiple properties, and ‘Labour Party Properties Limited’, a venture that owns 19 buildings across the UK, declared zero tax in 2018 despite profits of nearly £630,000. And it last paid any money to the Treasury in 2003! More than half of the property is rented on the open market while other buildings are leased to local Labour parties. Rental income in 2018 was £2.6 million but this was offset by deferred losses, property expenses totalling £1.7 million and admin costs of £265,000. The administration costs included a £102,000 interest charge… from the Labour Party. Experts say the administration costs appear unusually high!
Clearly, noses in the trough by the few, and do as I say, not as I do!
I’ve just completed the link for my area. According to Vent Your Rent my area is pretty average compared nationally. The headline of their manifesto “demands rent down to 30% of local income”. No detail on whether that is 30% of one person’s income, or 30% of household income. Big difference. If it’s sole income then they would have our local rents drop by 31%. If it’s on household income then rents would RISE by 38%. Considering by their own assessment we are a national average area, which is it, up or down?
Typical shoot-from-the-hip headlines and muddled thinking from Generation Rent.