Getting Greedy - A Cautionary Tale
Sep. 20th, 2011 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiat_knoxA few years back, the landlord of the old private accommodation where I lived found out about a new, swanky property development nearby. Thinking that the whole area would get a boost in status, he decided to go back on his contracts, hiking up the rents to drive the tenants out so he could doll up his apartments and bring in new, rich customers who'd reflect the increased status of the area.
The development went downmarket in the first three months. Crime soared, customers stayed away or went to the town next door, thrift shops opened in vacant units which the council had earmarked for fancy goods - handbags, shoes, the usual shite.
And the council have regraded his apartments, deemed them barely fit for human habitation and told the landlord to fork out thousands on repairs. Worse, since the new neighbourhood is worse off than intended, even before taking into account the detail they'd apparently not noticed before that the apartments stood on the bank of a river that is virtually an open sewer, the council have regraded all the apartments - and set a rent cap far lower than it was before.
So he's now housing a tenant who doesn't even pretend to want to take care of the place: and he is only there because (a) he'd otherwise be living in a cardboard box; (b) the council pay his rent; (c) if the place was unoccupied, someone would have broken in and turned it into a cannabis farm, like half the vacant industrial units in the vicinity of the old apartments.
He can't sell them; he can't use them; he can't even demolish them because it'd cost him more to knock them down than to keep them going.
See what happens when people get greedy? :)
The development went downmarket in the first three months. Crime soared, customers stayed away or went to the town next door, thrift shops opened in vacant units which the council had earmarked for fancy goods - handbags, shoes, the usual shite.
And the council have regraded his apartments, deemed them barely fit for human habitation and told the landlord to fork out thousands on repairs. Worse, since the new neighbourhood is worse off than intended, even before taking into account the detail they'd apparently not noticed before that the apartments stood on the bank of a river that is virtually an open sewer, the council have regraded all the apartments - and set a rent cap far lower than it was before.
So he's now housing a tenant who doesn't even pretend to want to take care of the place: and he is only there because (a) he'd otherwise be living in a cardboard box; (b) the council pay his rent; (c) if the place was unoccupied, someone would have broken in and turned it into a cannabis farm, like half the vacant industrial units in the vicinity of the old apartments.
He can't sell them; he can't use them; he can't even demolish them because it'd cost him more to knock them down than to keep them going.
See what happens when people get greedy? :)
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-20 08:30 pm (UTC)What's a "council"?
Why are they paying his rent?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 07:49 am (UTC)Basically, City Hall without the pretension.
The poorest tenants can't pay the landlord, so the council gives the landlords the rent - called Housing Benefit - which comes from central government in Westminster. Basically, the idea stems from the drive in the 1970s from the then government to get all the indigents, vagrants and bums off the streets and into decent housing.
If you're working and on a low wage, you pay part of that rent, but the council pays the rest - up a to a certain limit. This stops some vagrant from living in a posh apartment in a desirable location costing a thousand pounds a week in rent.
Some landlords become what are known as housing associations. They build and run whole estates of social housing and contract out to private maintenance companies for the basics - fixing the roofs, providing utilities, keeping the stairs clean and so on. Private landlords round here don't give a shit about that: it's up to the tenant not to turn their pad into a tip.
HAs are more desirable, in the long run, because they set a rent figure that is the same for all tenants in a given category of housing, and they don't muck around with the rent just because some idiot's got a plan to build a swanky shopping mall round the corner.
But basically, an occupied apartment works out better for the landlord, even a poor tenant, because it means some sort of money coming in each week from somewhere, whether from the tenant or from the government. An unoccupied apartment doesn't generate any source of income at all, and the landlord then has to fork out rates to the council for the empty building he has built on their land.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 04:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 05:19 pm (UTC)Since, in my case, it's not about the money, currently I just elected to let the council pay my HA directly instead of having money in my hands and them knocking on my door every couple of days.
But back then, it was just put in my hands. The landlord became very annoying ...
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 05:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-22 08:32 am (UTC)And then I landed a job, which meant the council would only pay about half the rent. The rest came from my pay, and so back came the landlord.
Then I lost my job and became unemployed, which meant the council had to pay the full rent again. And all was good once more.
And then the fancy shopping mall project got approval, and that was the point that the landlord got all greedy and started these shenanigans - whose ultimate effect was to get the council to inspect the premises to see what was worth so much rent, and make the determination that the place was, even at its best, less habitable than they were led to believe.