A personal view of Shelter’s latest anti-landlord campaign

A personal view of Shelter’s latest anti-landlord campaign

7:04 AM, 29th April 2017, About 7 years ago 34

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I am writing my thoughts here about Shelter, because they appear to have banned me from their Facebook page. I can still see their campaigns, but have no right to reply on their site, so have chosen to point out here what I would have written on their page:

Shelter’s latest campaign is about mental health issues being caused by housing (by ‘housing’ you can of course read ‘landlords’). What Shelter omits to mention is that landlords also suffer from all kinds of anxiety, depression and so on. When we have awful non-paying tenants – who are often helped by agencies such as Shelter – it feels horrendous. We have all the stress of being cheated out of large sums of money and having to face court, and later fix all the damage they’ve done and clean up all their mess and rubbish, and also often face verbal abuse as though it is outrageous of us to ask the tenants to pay the rent.

In these situations, when we have done nothing wrong we also have so-called housing charities trying to find any little mistake in the paperwork to ‘win’ more time for their non-paying client in our properties. When the tenants finally leave, they usually owe thousands of pounds so they have enjoyed many months of rent-free accommodation courtesy of the landlord – mostly money that the landlord will never receive as the court judgements are largely unenforceable.

Shelter then constantly repeat their mantra about ‘losing a private rental being the main cause of homelessness.’ Yes, that’s a really clever thing to say. As the vast majority of evicted tenants are evicted because of non-payment of rent and damage, it is the tenant who has caused their own homelessness. Why don’t they say ‘tenant behaviour is the main cause of their homelessness?’ As it is when they are evicted from private and social rentals, and in fact the eviction rate in the latter is higher (but it’s not cool to slag off councils and Housing Associations; it doesn’t fit in with their narrative).

Shelter – as well as Generation Rent – treat us constantly like we are ‘scum’ and their campaigns against us encourage others to actually call us ‘scum.’ Someone on Twitter this week called me ‘a disease.’ There is apparently a website where other brave, anonymous posters, want me to burn in hell and so on. It’s invariably anonymous men who make these brave comments. I would add that the man who called me a disease refers to himself as ‘Solzhenitsyn.’ I find that such an insult – Solzhenitsyn was a courageous and clever writer who spoke out against the Soviet regime and was imprisoned for his bravery. Not much resemblance with his namesake on Twitter.

Anyway, Shelter whips up people these cowards on social media and then puts out poster campaigns as if to say that they are so ‘caring’ about tenants’ problems; they don’t care about us though; they depersonalise us as though we are not human beings; it is an evil business. The sooner they are seen through for what they are, and people stop donating and they get shut down, the better for everyone.

In the meantime, I have a message for them: SHELTER: START PROVIDING SHELTER (OR CHANGE YOUR NAME). AND IN THE MEANTIME LAY OFF THOSE OF US WHO ACTUALLY PROVIDE ROOFS OVER PEOPLE’S HEADS!


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Comments

Dr Rosalind Beck

10:01 AM, 1st May 2017, About 7 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Mandy Thomson" at "01/05/2017 - 08:56":

Yes, Mandy. I wonder how they managed to prosecute/fine in the Irish case. I don't remember the details but I think the landlord was fined 3,000 euros.

Ian Cognito

10:08 AM, 1st May 2017, About 7 years ago

Ignore me everyone! I want to keep track of this post, but signing up to follow comments in the usual way has not been possible. Technical glitch, maybe?

terry sullivan

10:10 AM, 1st May 2017, About 7 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Simon Parker" at "29/04/2017 - 11:45":

and nearly all their funding is from the taxpayer

terry sullivan

10:11 AM, 1st May 2017, About 7 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Dr Rosalind Beck" at "29/04/2017 - 15:59":

robb was paid £110000 approx

Whiteskifreak Surrey

10:33 AM, 1st May 2017, About 7 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Dr Rosalind Beck" at "29/04/2017 - 15:59":

Ros, I frequently comment on their FB page, mostly regarding S24. I guess one day they will ban me too...
They seem to be living in a different universe... Still do not get even a fraction of consequences of that disastrous taxation. Their universal reply is "It's not quite as simple as that" with a link to their ill-thought article. They seem to be immune to any reasonable argument. I am sure they will twist Anne Baxendale's statement to blame Landlords again.

Gromit

10:33 AM, 1st May 2017, About 7 years ago

According to their 2015/16 account Shelters income was ~£57m of that they spent ~£37m on wages, NI and £7.68m retail sales costs to generate £8.31m in revenues giving a profit of £0.63m (which given the vast majority of goods sold are donated) is appalling.

Personally, I wouldn't donate to a "so called" Charity for which so much of what I donate goes into wages and admin.

Dr Rosalind Beck

12:07 PM, 1st May 2017, About 7 years ago

Someone called Simon Smith just contacted me via FB to call me a parasite. I presume that he is using his real name when sending hateful emails to women who are not hiding get behind pseudonyms. So anyone know who this charming man might be? I may be forward and ask him out on a date.

Jan Martin

16:34 PM, 1st May 2017, About 7 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Dr Rosalind Beck" at "29/04/2017 - 15:59":

I am having to deal with Shelter myself and have been since before christmas. My ex tenants who owe me a lot of money chose to go to Shelter in order to get back their deposit instead of dealing with me . They thought that Shelter could just ask for the deposit for them and forget about me .I am waiting at the moment for a court date in order to get back the deposit which is only part of all thats owed me .

alan curtis

16:39 PM, 1st May 2017, About 7 years ago

I am a landlord of 1 small property. I am a good landlord have kept the property up to standard and have always done anything the tenant asked for. I have had the present tenant over 7 years.
2 years ago he started to get into arrears. He told my estate agent that he had home difficulties and would be able to catch up within a few months. He did for a pay extra for a few months but then started to get further behind. He was given plenty of chances but still got further into arrears he finally reaches over 2 months in arrears and was given notice to quit in June last year. He has paid no further rent since. We applied to the court in September for an accelerated possession order and was given a date in December. When we were at the hearing the Judge threw it out straight away because he thought the “Tenancy deposit protection Certificate” stating on or AFTER the 10th Oct 2014 was invalid.
This is the usual certificate from the Dispute service Ltd and when we checked this with several solicitors and others was told by all that this is the common certificate that was normally dated for 5 years and thereafter and was in order. We then engaged solicitors to apply again for a possession order for being over 2 month in arrears and costs. The hearing took place on 17th March 2017 and the possession order was given to take effect 14 days after. The tenant still hadn’t left the property so I had to apply for bailiffs. I am still waiting for the courts to sanction this. We are now at the end of March. I am over 9 months rent owing plus all the legal fees the whole lot amounting to over 1 years rentals and still the tenant is in my property.
I really don’t want to go through with all this trouble again and am considering selling. How many other landlords are in the same position? This is another good reason why rentals are so scarce. Another point is that because of this loss of rental there is no tax to pay hence another loss to taxpayers in general.

Dr Rosalind Beck

17:18 PM, 1st May 2017, About 7 years ago

Hi Jan and Alan. I am very sorry to hear about what you're going through. Believe me - I know exactly what it feels like; to be cheated out of large sums of money while the criminal tenant (I call them 'crininal' because they have stolen the money off you the same as if they took it from your back pocket in the atreet) gets the help of publicly-funded organisations who are basically on the side of the criminals. On what planet is it okay for someone to live rent-free in your house for nearly a year? The authorities don't provide rent-free accommodation but they expect us to. It's a bloody disgrace
We have no proper recourse to justice and instead of the Government seeking to rectify this they put the knife in further. All I can say is look after yourselves, both. This will pass and you will get your peace of mind back again. I know that for a fact. These criminals, on the other hand, will never get true peace of mind.

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