Activists in the Generation Rent campaign says big city Mayors should “tackle the worst landlords and seize their properties.”
It also wants those Mayors to create what it calls “a fighting fund” to police the idea of interim management orders, taking control of the landlords’ private property.
In a new briefing to candidates standing for the Metro Mayor posts in May, Generation Rent claims that those who win will be able to ensure their city region’s renters have access to secure, quality and genuinely affordable homes.”
Therefore it’s briefing the candidates standing for the Mayor positions in the East Midlands, Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, London, North East, South Yorkshire, Tees Valley, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, and York and North Yorkshire. And it says the winners must:
- Create a landlord and letting agent fines and prosecutions database;
- Work with the local police force to end illegal evictions through better police training and proper recording of incidents;
- Host a fighting fund to tackle the worst landlords and seize their properties;
- Ask national government for powers to regulate rents, fast-track developments and approve licensing schemes in your region;
- Buy previously privately rented homes and provide them for social tenants, reversing the flow of social housing into the hands of private landlords;
- Create a renters’ forum to involve private renters in decisions that affect housing and your wider work.
Specifically in the part about seizing properties, Generation Rent tells candidates at length: “Private renters rely on our local authorities to take action if our home is unsafe and landlords are failing to take action to meet minimum standards. Unfortunately, even when environmental health officers find hazardous conditions they don’t always take sufficient action to hold landlords to account.
“This is partly due to limited budgets at local authority level which reduce their appetite to fine or prosecute landlords who flout the law, or take over their properties when they have been found unfit to provide housing.
“The lack of legal action against criminal landlords emboldens them to continue to exploit and mistreat tenants. very often these landlords have portfolios that straddle local boundaries, so no single local authority can drive them out of business alone.
“Metro Mayors should play a greater role in supporting local authorities, through coordination of enforcement policies, facilitating the sharing of intelligence, and providing institutional support for local authorities considering legal action against criminal landlords. This could include a fund to enable more prosecutions, and the infrastructure to manage homes seized through interim management orders – both of which local authorities lack on their own.”
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How about Rewarding Model Landlords! For once, doing something to help our society move forward harmony and prosperity.
😂
That unfortunately doesn't satisfy the embittered have-nots hunger to punish and take.
No matter how wrecked the housing sector becomes, these communists, fuelled by their warped political dogma will continue to pile crushing pressure on private tenants and landlords. They need to be firmly slapped down and soon.
The end of Democracy who’d be bothered to vote with Rogue so called Charity Organisation running the Country making a mockery and destruction of legitimate business. I am finished with giving to Charities like yesterday when I paying hundreds for a washing machine for Tenants by my card, would you like to donate 50p for Charity Sir, in the past always yes, yesterday No, tomorrow No.
The Mayor’s of Cities are already discredited misusing tax payers money and robbing hundreds of pounds from each c/tax payers Bill, they are out of control, its a lovely word funding yes someone else’s money, fund yourselves you parasites. We need someone like Mrs Tatcher to restrict out of control Mayors power’s, like when she abolished the GLC that put a stop to reds under the bed.
Same here. NO more Mr Nice Guy. Zero.
Yesterday I was challenged on what I believe was the maximum permitted Tenancy Deposit of one month, instead of 5 weeks which I am aware of since last April, not that it matters to me I had to stop talking them in 2007 when they were converted from a protection to a liability.
I found an alternative way to check instead.
Google. What Changes to Tenancy Deposits on 1st April 2023 (it should come up I just done it).
Hi Michael,
Are you sure that the four week rule is not confined to Northern Ireland?
Actually, Michael, it was you who challenged me. 😉
Ellie, you are correct.👍 It applies to Northern Ireland only.
The practice of taking over other peoples properties has been tried in the past, with some success initially, but then ending in catastrophe 🤔 It was initiated in the early 1930’s by an ex WW1 corporal originally from Austria 🇦🇹🫣.We could be about to go down the Rabbit 🐰 hole. 🆘
HERE WE GO AGAIN, nothing learned same people different insignia ,different footwear same hate same mentality
All they have done is translate from german to english and changed the word Jewish to Landlord
I should know about property confiscation my ancestors in Ireland were evicted from their house & land all them years ago but the history passed down the line. The set rates so high that they couldn’t pay.
Then the Bailiffs comes put the family out on the road, brought the Builders with them and took the Roof off making sure.
Then had to walk 20 miles with a gang of kids to common ground on the mountain and try to make cover from the elements for the night with no resources. The wealthy investors in London bought from the Government and didn’t even see the place.
Michael
This happened to the peasant classes throughout the whole of the UK and probably all over the world.
African chiefs sold off their own people to slave traders who didn't kidnap those enslaved.
Scottish mining families sold or bonded their new born children to mine owners and had to replace any who died before working age for no extra payment.
The upper leisure classes have always exploited the lower classes until recently. It wasn't racist with both being the same race.
Nowadays it's the leisured lower classes who exploit the working classes of all social strata. There is a slight racial (not racist) element now in that the majority of the exploiters are native Britons whereas the enterprising working exploited tend to be native Britons and minority ethnic groups as well.
Generation Rant off again. Councils do not have limited budgets, they just don’t spend it wisely.😠
Well the next article suggest they should start with their own / outsourced social housing. And when they have sorted that out then maybe cast the net wider.
If the property is bad and the landlord won't put it right maybe the council should do so then invoice the landlord for the work siezing the property if the landlord doesn't pay, that would seem fair to me
Everything these people want to do just adds burden on the people they profess to help. More will leave the sector . The additional costs of being licensed past to tenants so the choice dwindles the costs rise and the type of individual who supports generation rent will be the sort of person as a result will be living in a box outside Marks and Spencer’s, as they tend to be the last people on earth you would want to do business with.
Outside Poundland. M&S doorways will be much too expensive due to the high demand.
PS. What's the epc rating of a cardboard box?
How about a national bad tenant register. I am sure this will be a lot larger than a bad landlord register
Very possibly, but it will never happen. Polly Bleat, Shelter, Generation Rant, SBR & James Turner will accuse landlords of everything from vitimising tenants to outright lies. Remember, in their eyes, tenants are angels who do no wrong and landlords are devils.
Likely 1,000x larger
Surely you mean 1,000 times larger?
Percentages can be confusing.
100% larger is double, 200% larger is treble, so presumably 1000% larger is 11 times larger?
I love arguing with SNP supporters that by only gaining 45% of the 2014 vote, they lost by around 25% and they argue it was only 10%.
Around 2 million sensible Scots voted NO and 1.6 million idiots voted YES, which is 20% less YES voters or 25% more NO voters, depending on your point of view.
Paradoxically it only needed over 5% of YES voters to vote NO to change the result. Hopefully it will never happen.
The message here is Percentages can be very confusing!
Robert, Percentages confuse Diane Abbot so everything is eleventy twelve.
Apparently a register for bad tenants would breach the GDPR rules, A register for bad landlords probably doesn't?
As the councils and people who run social homes are unable to maintain decent properties and are wasteful with what resources they have, how about this. Instead of building more council homes just give the benefit claimants the money and let them rent whatever property they like. The council will have no obligation to house anyone, instead they should encourage and support landlords. This in turn will encourage house builders to build more properties as the number of landlords will increase. With the greater number of properties and landlords there will be more competition between landlords, increasing quality of properties and more choice for tenants.
Will never happen John as that would be seen as helping us make bigger profits
Andrew the dogooder organisastions are already helping landlords make greater profits, look how rents are soaring under their guidance.
TheMaluka, I couldn't agree more. When my two bed house was let for the first time in Nov 2020, the monthly rent in the area was around £1,050 - £1,100. It's now £1,400 - £1,500 and everything is going like hot cakes so, as my tenant is about to move out, that's what I'll be putting it on for. I'd be an idiot not to. But we are the monsters - where are all the calls for supermarkets to be subject to price caps, because people can't afford to eat?
I would say finance the properties to the maximum, take out all the cash and invest elsewhere. Then let them try to take with a mortgage outstanding on it.
I feel that the local council or metro mayor will come very unstuck with that plan. 😉
Councils don’t want to seize properties by way of management orders because they don’t have the facilities in place to maintain them, particularly if they’ve sold off their own housing stock and don’t employ a team of contractors to do any repairs. Nice headline grabbing ideas won’t necessarily work in practice.
They are supposed to use a letting agent to manage and they deduct costs etc. before paying the landlord. They sent us a "Consider for tender" form many years ago and even then it was so woke as to exclude the smaller, independent agents, so we didn't bother.
Nearly 20 years ago I was asked to fill in a diversity questionnaire stating the age, ethnicity, religion, sex etc. of the staff I would use on a public sector contract I was invited to tender for.
I sent a covering letter saying I only recruited on merit and didn't ask or record the type of information they seemed to believe was important.
I was phoned up telling me that my tender couldn't be considered as it was incomplete and begging me to cooperate as they wanted to short list my tender. I refused on the grounds that I might inadvertently discriminate or be open to such charges if I knew these details.
No wonder the Public sector is so useless given its twisted priorities!
Spot on, Robert. There were just two of us and they wanted to know our equality, diversity etc policies. Total waste of time and Bristol Council have only got worse with time.
This is why the nwo great reset is doomed to fail , a public private partnership will never work as the public sector is so inefficient and incompetent exemplified by the wasteful councils and their insane leftist agendas
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