Attack of the Rouge Landlords
Those evil Rouge Landlords.
They’re at it again, terrorising tenants up and down the land.
At least in the imagination of anti-landlord campaigners.
Unfortunately, when Shelter did some research to try and find out how many there are, they found there weren’t very many.
Local Councils could only name 1477 out of approximately 1.2 million landlords in England and Wales:
While local authorities are aware of some 1,477 serial rogue landlords, in the past year only 270 were prosecuted, so many bad landlords are not receiving a clear message that bad practice will be prosecuted.
1477 represents approximately 5 rogues per Local Authority, and is far more amenable to the extensive tareted enforcement powers already possessed by Local Authorities than expensive Licensing. That is most inconvenient, when Shelter and various Local Authorities are trying to drive through very large scale landlord registration, at a cost of £500 to £800 per property, using fear of Rogue Landlords as the battering ram.
No wonder that statistic doesn’t get a mention on the campaign web page.
So how do the Rouge campaigners convince the public?
One approach is to follow Graham Jones MP (Labour, Haslingden and Hyndburn), and simply reach for the language of demonisation to keep your constituents good and scared.
Here’s friend Graham two weeks ago talking about something he calls “hardcore landlords” (whatever they are) on his blog, in an article celebrating “Selective Licensing”:
The local Conservative Council were lukewarm about it but bowing to public pressure brought forward a token scheme which ultimately lost a judicial review to hard core landlords out to defend their interests whilst costing the Council £000,000′s in legal fees.
Does anyone even know what a “hardcore landlord” is? And whether they are any different to a Rouge, or even Rogue, Landlord?
Are they some sort of bullet-headed Vinny Jones character – all 347 of them who fought the case – extracting money with menaces from helpless tenants, while Super Graham fights them with a lightsabre, clad in lime green fluorescent lurex?
Or perhaps they are little old ladies mainlining heroine before going out to terrorise helpless tenants with sharpened knitting needles, or threatening violence to make them wear cableknit pullovers?
Perhaps they all look like Bruce Willis, though they are more likely to be footballers.
If we click through we see that Kevin Jones is being economical with the actualité:
A selective licensing scheme enforced by Hyndburn District Council in Lancashire was quashed this week when 347landlords won their case against the local authority.
The landlords claimed the council had imposed the designated scheme without consultation or good reason to enforce licensing on the 1,326 properties affected. The council, who introduced the conditional scheme, in which landlords must pay for the application of a license lost on grounds amounting to failure to consult and not following guidance, making misrepresentations to the Secretary of State. As a result, Mr. Justice McCombe held that the Council’s decision to designate an area for selective licensing and the resulting designation were both an unlawful act.
Hyndburn Council are not alone in their actions, a number of local authorities up and down the Country have been accused by landlords for failing to consult and imposing licensing and planning on private rented properties.
I’d describe these ‘hardcore landlords’ a little differently:
“people who have been subjected to an unlawful process by Hyndburn Council, and who wanted their civil rights”.
It’s a little rich for Graham Jones MP to demonise the victims, when simple competence on the part of Hyndburn Council would have prevented a Judicial Review being necessary in the first place.
I don’t think this approach on the part of Graham Jones, and his fellow campaigners – and a depressingly large number of ignorant-as-two-short-cranks columnists – helps anyone, least of all tenants.
Here’s the full Shelter video:
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1
September 18, 2012 at 07:22 -
It all depends on how liberal the application Anna, done well it can really highlight a gal’s cheekbones…
Done badly, it tends to impart the Danny LaRue look.
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2
September 18, 2012 at 07:37 -
Oh oh… Sorry Matt, I should learn to read!
Isn’t it interesting to note that our so-called representatives, would rather spend £000,000 (?) on legal fees, rather than being all nice and socialist by redistributing our local taxes.
As far as national government is concerned… Have you seen the price of petrol, with its automatic “price levelling” system? These people are supposed to protect us from cartels, if they don’t, what is their purpose? Maybe, it is just to extract 80% of the price of a gallon, in order to spread the love… Not!
Oh gawd, there I go again… wiv me digression.
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3
September 18, 2012 at 10:19
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4
September 18, 2012 at 08:46 -
I am not a landlord, but to paint them all as a latter-day Rachman or Hoogstraaten (use Google, if you’re too young to remember) is ludicrous.
What about the frequently reported “Tenants-from-hell”?
They seem to exist in greater numbers than rogue landlords – and the landlord has very little legal redress against them. Were I the recipient of a lottery fortune, I would be extremely reluctant to become a landlord as although it seems like a steady secure income, I’ve seen (some at first hand) too many horror stories that to me at least, challenge the viability of such.
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5
September 18, 2012 at 09:08 -
As a token landlord a few years ago, renting out my home while working overseas, never again.
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6
September 18, 2012 at 11:59 -
With our own experience, let me say ‘Amen, binao!’…
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7
September 18, 2012 at 22:45 -
Me too, I became an accidental landlady when I was unable to sell my house in 2007 as the bank crisis unfolded. It had been my home for 12 years but I wanted to move near my son after my husband died. Never again, it cost me £4,500 to put the house back into saleable condition and I was heartbroken. It was let newly decorated, new carpets and in immaculate condition. I can’t even describe the state it was left in and this was rented to a young lady in the US Navy and how she managed to do so much damage I don’t know and it was filthy. So it is not always landlords who are rogue.
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8
September 18, 2012 at 09:17 -
I am one of many Kirklees recipients of a stencilled letter from our communist, sorry, ‘arm’s length’ Housing Department, suggesting that the addressee may be a demonic, Rachman landlord. Vilified capitalists, who dare to compete with the State in renting out housing, live in fear of the day when another group of public officials obtain ruddy powers of arrest and search. Some have been shamed into a life incognito but rumours of Kirklees posting jewelled daggers to landlords, has swayed my decision to remain on the Rouge database.
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9
September 18, 2012 at 12:42 -
I prefer Cerise Landlords myself. Or possibly an even darker shade of pink…
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10
September 18, 2012 at 13:23 -
I’m afraid you are wrong on this one, every landlord I have ever had, from the suited businessman to the little old lady turned into a rottweiler as soon as they caught a whiff of money. I haven’t rented after the deposit schemes came in, but before that every single time I moved they tried to steal the deposit for spurious reasons, it was just common place to fleece renters.
I would like to think that the deposit schemes improved things, but I notice on a fellow blog (nearly legal) yet another none protected deposit illegal eviction in court, which cost the LL 25K, so I guess not.
If landlords think its sensible to reference tenants , then what is wrong with the other way round?
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11
September 18, 2012 at 13:44 -
Landlord registration, at £500 to £800.
Does anyone seriously think this will be paid out of the landlord’s profits? No. It will come out of increased rents paid by their tenants or worse the money that might otherwise have been spent on the property. The fees themselves will go on shiny new offices at the council, stocked with all the best office furniture and computers, and staffed by a load of self-important busybodies who wake every morning wondering how they might make life difficult for someone else.
As always, my gut response to any initiative from from the council is to tell them to make the street lights work and empty the bins. Everything else is none of your business!
(and no, I’m not a landlord)
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12
September 18, 2012 at 16:07 -
One of my pets peeves when I was renting was kissing goodbye to my ‘deposit’ the second I handed it over. I suppose it was a deposit in a way – I deposited money into my landlord/ladys account. It certainly wasn’t a deposit in the sense of being returnable to me! There are some dodgy landlords out there and I am guessing the proper, no-messing-about scumbag landlords are the ones that wouldn’t bother with any registration scheme anyway.
Size of the problem and then find a proportionate solution. If there are a large number of damp-ridden, badly maintained properties with old un-inspected gas boilers emitting CO, landlords taking unrealistic deposits & finding spurious reasons to keep them, and any number of other things…. then go to it. However, Councils ( as landlords) must be subject to these kinds of inspection as well. And I suspect a number of their properties would fail. I certainly know of 3 blocks of council flats that would fail with flying colours! -
13
September 18, 2012 at 18:28 -
I think you mean “rogue”.
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14
September 18, 2012 at 21:39
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15
September 18, 2012 at 21:14 -
I’ve had twelve or thirteen rented properties, some landlords were better than others, but they all wanted their keys back just as much as I wanted my deposit back. Once I even managed to get the deposit back prior to leaving, on the basis that they might find it hard to sell the place with us still in it.
We also turned down one really nice flat as the landlord who was showing us round let himself into it when the sitting tennant was out. We figured if he was willing to do that to an existing tennant, he’d feel free to go poking around “our” place too.
It’s a bit like with employers. If you don’t like them, don’t moan about it, go find a better one.
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16
September 19, 2012 at 08:43 -
I am not known as a supporter of things European… EU actually… I love the various countries that I have lived and worked in. However, it does seem to me, that as in many things our government gets very little right. In some cities, I believe that the norm is to rent, and that the landlord is often some huge institution, like a university, hospital or church. They don’t bother with maintenance (apart from structural), the apartments are let out at low rents (by comparison to the sort of thing that is available here), the apartments are usually big enough to raise a family, and the younger generation often just take over the rental so that an apartment can remain in one family for generations.
People only have but three score years and ten to do everything that human beans do, whereas the institutions that we create are immortal, the ownership of land is enough for them it is a huge asset, and they ain’t making any more of the stuff.
All we want is a roof over our heads.
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