I’m not sure why folks expect a landlord to accept tenants who are unlikely to pay on time?
Did you miss:
“…and has served all of his benefits-receiving tenants with eviction notices.”
It’s not (just) a matter of not accepting tenants who he deems unlikely to pay on time–it’s that the fucker is evidently evicting his current tenants, regardless of their payment history, just because they’re on the dole.
Depends on the state and how strong its tenants’ rights laws, I suppose. But in some places, you’d probably instantly become a leading candidate for either governor or the House of Representatives.
It’s not (just) a matter of not accepting tenants who he deems unlikely to pay on time–it’s that the fucker is evidently evicting his current tenants, regardless of their payment history, just because they’re on the dole.
Good point; that is a dick move. It should be “if you pay, you stay.”
(This comment system won’t let me make a minor syntactic edit without also changing the text, so I’m adding this parenthetical comment.)
Toward?
Well at some level, the agreement that the landlord has with the bank, where they have the right to seize the property if he isn’t paying them usually predates the agreement that the landlord has with the tenant. Of course the tenant has an ironclad case if they took the landlord to court, since he was unable to deliver the housing the tenant contracted for. But all a court victory would give the tenant is the right to stand in line behind everybody else who the deadbeat landlord has stiffed.
I don’t see this being a problem with the landlord. Should he continue to rent privately and lose money? He’s not running a charity, and isn’t a government service - it’s not his personal responsibility to house those not paying their rent; anyone would be evicted for repeatedly not paying their rent on time, including me.
The problem is with the system (and that ‘mega landlords’ can exist in the first place, but that’s a different conversation). Ultimately DSS renters shouldn’t even be in a position to not pay their rent, it’s paid for by someone else, from a guaranteed pot of money that they needn’t have exposure to. One of the supposed benefits of paying DSS rent money directly to the tenant is that it gives the tenant more freedom (as the first comment references, the common label to many rental ads: “No DSS”), which in principle I’m in support of, but if the landlord knows they’re still a DSS tenant then it serves no purpose, and if the tenant is defaulting then the option should be taken away from them; else it’ll ruin a positive system for many people that can manage their own finances and don’t want to live in overpriced shit-holes that are open to DSS tenants.
Don’t get me wrong, that there are people being evicted is a big problem - I’m a big proponent of sensible welfare and housing policy, nobody should be without a roof over their heads. But that’s a problem for the government, who caused it, not the private individual that is also suffering as a result of their failings.
As it says in the excerpt, “This is just one symptom of a wider housing market that is simply not working in the consumer’s interests…”
This. Anyone that thinks that landlords ‘do nothing’ has clearly never owned, or even lived in a home.
I’d be surprised if my landlord (who is very good, like yours) has made ANY profit in the two years I’ve lived there. Houses can be expensive to run. The real profit from property is in re-selling, generally several years down the line when prices have ideally gone up. It’s not a job as much as it is a high-maintenance investment.
I do think that ‘buy to let’ needs curbing, as it’s a real problem for those actually wanting to buy a property to live in. But landlords aren’t some kind of automatic evil.
I wonder if the decision to evict people on welfare is lawful? It’s illegal to discriminate based on disability or sex - is it discriminatory to evict social tenants en masse? What is the overlap between DSS recipients and legally protected categories such as the disabled? There’s also a gap in the law here - an employer who makes over 20 people redundant has to enter into negotiations with those people being let go. I’m surprised there is not a similar protection for mass eviction.
The law provides grounds for legal eviction for not paying rent - if you’re 2 months late the court can order eviction, though most contracts in the UK try to shorten that period to about 2 weeks. Nevertheless the cost of going to court and securing an eviction order would be equivalent to a months rent when you count solicitors fees and court filing fees.
He’s supremely wealthy. He doesn’t “shop”. Underlings “shop” for him…
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