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TODAY'S OTHER NEWS

Shelter claims 1,000 calls a day since eviction ban eased

Shelter claims its helpline has received 1,000 callers a day since the eviction ban began easing at the start of summer.

It says the helpline - free to use and part-funded by M&S Food - has been “inundated” with more than 60,000 people ringing between June and October. Of those calling 70 per cent were already homeless or at risk of homelessness.  

A new statement from the charity claims the evictions ban was one of a number of “vital” measures keeping thousands safe in their homes. But as they have gradually wound down and living costs have risen, thousands of people have been contacting the housing charity.

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It claims one in four callers need urgent help to find temporary accommodation, and a roughly similar proportion need help “to try and [sic] keep hold of their current home.”

Shelter, which is currently running an appeal for funds, says a difficult winter lies ahead for its services.

Helpline manager Andrea Deakin comments: “The last year has been hard, and 2022 is going to be just as tough. Now Covid protections have ended and living costs are soaring, we’re answering calls from thousands of people who are homeless or about to be.

“We’re working every day, including Christmas Day, to make sure no one faces homelessness alone, but we’ve got our work cut out. By the time we get that call most people have exhausted every other avenue - from the family about to be evicted, to the person facing another night sleeping in their car.”

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    And how many from all these calls did they house? ...........None as usual. I’ve seen the adds for funds. Probably Polly needs a pay rise with the inflation issue no doubt... Shelter the charity ( business) that houses no one.

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    Everything free will be over subscribed even the phone call.
    Like carrier bags used to be and grabbed by the fistful, about time NHS started charging something as well stop the abuse even a fiver would do, too many free loaders everywhere.

  • John Ahmed

    The problem with Shelter is they make noise but do little.
    All politics to gain funds unfortunately Shelta can't be trusted in what they say.

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    They have many very expensive staff to pay, noses in troughs.

     
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    Set up to keep people in their present home by fighting the landlord in court. I am not aware that shelter actually houses anyone. Please publish your records.Their legal department was set up by a judge and shelter lobbies unashamedly to shaft the landlords rights in favour of the tenants it seems to me. Show me something shelter have done which helps the overall situation regarding housing. Did retaliatory eviction? In the long run no it just gave the tenant and shelter another reason to delay the inevitable. How can a section 8 for rent arrears not be a retaliatory eviction? Shelter are the lobbyists in favour of removing the section 21. I sense a deeply bigoted bunch who do not live in the real world but have an agenda that attracts huge amount of money as a charity. Which functions to further shaft the landlord for court costs. What did a thousand people a day do in order to find themselves in a position where the landlord had no other choice except to evict them? I am not saying that all tenants are bad, but if there are a thousand a day being made homeless does that show there are a thousand bad landlords to match? And to conclude 'keeping thousands safe in their homes' their homes if they elected to act in a tenant like manner of course. Why does Shelter always assume in the way they present these situations as though butter would not melt in the mouths of the tenant? Is it to substantially increase their coffers by any chance?

     G romit

    A backlog of Landlords If the 40,000 per year Landlords exitting the market (pre pandemic) catches up, and with the threat of the Abolition of Sec.21 and setting MEES to "C". I can see a lot of evictions due to Landlords selling up (using Sed.21 while they can).

     
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    Ah-that explains the reason why homeless people are encouraged by Shelter to seek legal aid, and why Shelter is campaigning for more legal aid.
    Since their Legal dept. was set up by a judge - who would clearly know the loopholes to easily claim £millions of taxpayers money for ‘legal aid’ to reduce ‘homelessness’.
    LTA & Housing laws are already unfairly biased to help the unscrupulous tenants- commercial & residential, and Shelter legal team take advantage of this unfairness to line the charity business’s executives bank accounts at the cost of British taxpayers/govt treasury, and private sector landlords.
    #sheltergateunfolding.

     
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    Every rent dodger is blocking a decent tenant from getting a home.

    Why has this penny not dropped?

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    All I see is protections for the Tenants, what about the Landlords, why do we have to always take the hit with £1000's of unpaid rent and damages. When will there be rights for Landlords without being dragged to court.

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    It doesn't say why those people are homeless or about to be made homeless.
    My guess is that it's largely due to half baked government policies rather than the more traditional reasons.
    Landlords being prohibited from renting out properties that score F or G on the EPC would be one reason.
    The ludicrously low UC paid to single unemployed adults is another.
    No financial support for landlords during the pandemic while encouraging tenants to demand rent payment holidays.
    Far too many people excluded from furlough payments or any other financial support while the government had prohibited them from working.
    These were government failings. Collectively they have made being a landlord feel very precarious.

    Very few landlords evict good tenants unless they absolutely have to.
    Even landlords who have never evicted a tenant have found the total inability to be able to evict to be hugely stressful and has certainly stopped me from expanding my portfolio.
    I'm only one landlord but over the last 10 years I have bought 4 properties specifically for people who were homeless or had had Section 21 notices served on them because previous landlords wanted to sell. In one case I bought the house they were already living in. For the others I bought properties within walking distance to their work that could be viable at LHA level rent. Unfortunately 2 of those properties only score D on the EPC so it may be that at least one of those tenants will become homeless again purely because of a half baked government policy. I truly hope not.

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    Jo

    I only disagree with one sentence and then only partially.

    There are around 1 million job vacancies in the UK and many (admittedly not all) UC claimants could do a fair proportion of them.

    I was brought up in a very left wing mining family who told me that practically every unemployed person, no matter how infirm, was desperate for work up until the war. One of my great grandpas died in a Scottish poor house "wholly infirm and destitute", which was the entrance requirement, after working down the mines for 56 years, from 13 to 69.

    However even his son and grandsons felt we had gone too far in looking after the feckless and workshy from the fifties on. I think if still alive, they might even now vote Tory! I know most of their descendants now do!

     
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    I don't suppose Shelter would listen to my side. I'm so stressed right now. My tenant hasn't paid since May. I served a Section 21 and have sold the property, subject to contract. My tenant is supposed to move out on 8th December. A housing association found him a house but it didn't have a garden for his dogs so he turned it down. He doesn't know how long till he'll be found something 'acceptable'. Meantime I'm having to borrow money, rent a room on Airbnb, work two jobs. Why isn't my tenant working, he's young, he's not unintelligent but he was in the army and now has mental health issues. Why is he my responsibility, I'm not a charity. I've seriously considered just letting the mortgage company repossess the property.
    I've just spent most of the day cleaning another of my rental properties before new tenants move in tomorrow. When the previous tenants moved out I had to have the whole place painted, carpets cleaned (they were new when the tenants moved in). They didn't clean when they moved out, it was a mess and I had no deposit to use because I'd helped them out during covid by using their deposit for a rent payment.
    My other rental property is going to need a lot of money spending on it when the tenants move out in a couple of months.
    It's a mug's game and I've had enough!!

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    Well Karen we've all been there, I was a soft touch when I started over 30 yrs ago, always wanting to see the good in people, trusting and wanting to help, I'm a very different person now, give an inch and they'll take a yard, then they'll stab you right between the shoulder blades, you're wrong though, it's not a mugs game, but you do have to harden up and trust NO ONE

     
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    Hi Karen, so sorry for your situation but not uncommon I have had that a number of times and suffer in silence, sometimes takes months and costs thousands to put right, so now we have Safe Agents safe for them of course was Arla not enough, now Redress Schemes but redress for whom and who pays the piper. This is the result of all this anti-LL hype and adverse laws in recent years. So many carving out a soft business model for themselves sometimes in collusion with the Council they all have the snouts in the trough at LL’s expense, no one else pays a penny for anything ever. I am beginning to
    question who the real Rogues are.

  • George Dawes

    I wonder how much the managers at shelter are being paid ?

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    Shelter's R&A are freely available on their website (and I don't pretend to understand most of what it says). The latest one (2019-20) says Shelter’s Chief Executive is paid a salary of £131,315.41 - but that's buried in the vast amount of copy and of course doesn't include anything like pension contributions by Shelter, private health insurance, expenses, car, phone and whatever else they get.

    It also says they had in that time 112 full time staff, of which 30 (i.e. more than a quarter of their staff) are paid over £60k. Nice work if you can get it. And yet they rely on 'volunteers' who get paid nowt for the work they do while the bosses are raking it it.

    Disgraceful.

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    It is disgraceful Laura but let's face it most charities are just the same, and housing assoc bosses are paid very much more, so much for '' not for profit'' seems like a lot of people in these organisations are profiting very nicely

     
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    Why do they need all these staff? I wonder if the government gives them money ?

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    I think the government does give them money, so do B&Q and Screwfix

     
  • George Dawes

    Years ago there was a war on want near us , the boss turned up driving a rolls Royce !

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    Nationwide gives them money as well, yet LL are their biggest customer with their subsidiary TMW, M & S gives them 5% of my sandwich enough to choke me.

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