Beadle asked for more. Oliver Twist says no

Enough! to the injustices of the housing industry

We probably know that scene from Dicken’s novel where the titular pauper orphan boy holds up his gruel bowl before his benefactor and asks for a second helping. We are used to being in Oliver Twist’s shoes – the dependant far smaller than those in authority over us, ‘fortunate’ to be in the care of an institution. We are used to being told that their benevolent provision has saved us from the streets and the gutter but we must now submit to their regimes, their fees, their rules. If we do not pay directly but live from charity we especially must accept the menu and portions given to us. We do not return to the front of the room, to the powerful one’s area, and in public ask for more. Oliver asked politely and suppliantly, holding his bowl out, but at the level of the man in front of him.

A beadle is but one example of one of our many kinds of administrators claiming authority – often more than they really have.

I hereon concentratate on those relating to housing: local authorities, legal figures, and most of all, landlords.

Did you know that judges are in fact just senior administrators?

Administrators tend not to be chosen by the people. Landlords are those who aren’t even called to office; there is no calling or bar for them in any sense.

Like the likes of beadle, landlords claim that they too are providing something – shelter – which you would suffer without. How magnanimous of them. So it’s quite reasonable for them to have to charge you – they do have to make a living, of course. And what’s wrong with making money? Investing is shrewd. Buying and selling, gaining lucrative planning permissions, making good returns, are all skills. It is a legitimate and necessary business.

I wish to stop there and get us to roll over this stone.

And then I wish us to think about the injustice of evictions, and I’ll share some of my recent experience on that, including the legal system, the council, and charities meant to assist those facing homelessness.

My story began last summer, when on the day that covid rules ended (but so did the moratorium on eviction and rent raises), my landlord asked for more. He knew of my long term financial difficulties and that thanks to the government shutting down businesses and expecting us to stay at home for many months that I was unlikely – like so many of you – to have improved my situation during the pandemic period.

A day is coming, and is now here, where it is Oliver who has the right of refusal. It is those who hitherto charged us who raise up their bowl to us. May we? Nope. Landlords, along with others we pay our bills to, have already had so much from us. They’ve hoarded gruel and the bowls it goes in for too long. They have made us beg them for something to eat. They have made a roof over our heads and the supplies that go with it something that is conditional on us placating them. They have made it their gift, not our right. They have made this placation an endless abasement, a debt that we are never released from.

I recently pointed out that that is slavery.

I want us to think about landlordism – yes, that’s the term for it – as hoarding resources and selling them back to us, as I have already written of regarding utilities (gas, electricity, water). It is known as rentier capitalism – that of hiring out resources permanently, which the users never own, even though most housing (unlike a wedding dress or a holiday vehicle or hotel) is a long term need. The landlords set the prices, not us the dweller/consumers. We can choose to some extent where we live and with whom we contract, but unless we own outright (and are not in a managed property), third parties claim rights to repossess that home and to have control over what goes on in it – who lives with us, whatcauses we promote outside of it, expecting us to submit to inspections and repairs, and often paying their bedfellow – the insurers.

In the last couple of years, the disparity of power and the poor behaviour of many landlords (including the failures of the legal system) have been exposed to the point that a sea change is occurring, internationally.

This is the water that is surrounding King Cnut:

In Britain, the hated legislation that contains the clause which gives the landlords the right to move you on without reason or automatic recompense is the housing act of 1988 (no capitals, any more than I give for the established church). Although its section 21 is infamous – that’s the bit that allows the judiciary power to arbitarily order your forcable ejection and create you homeless – the whole act is objectionable. It was created in a little chain of acts under our then conservative government (deliberately lower case). I may surprise by saying that in one sense, I support ex-prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s moves to sell off council housing because I want people to own their homes and I do not not think that councils are good landlords. There is much intrusion into tenants’ homes and lives, and if you’ve ever tried to get on a housing list – even and especially in a crisis – you’ll know how rubbish they are. I will talk more about that later. I do not support getting everyone on a mortgage, for it is a swindle and gives your power to banks, and makes you another kind of slave. At least this slow filling bucket with a hole does lead to eventually stopping casting money in a bucket, and the bucket becomes yours to do with as you wish – except for tax. Renters’ buckets never fill and they never get the bucket at the end.

But the late and controversial Maggie’s push to get us owning, not renting, affected landlords. I’ve seen figures that under 10% were renting around the time of this act. Landlords felt that they had less legal rights than tenants now (good, that is the right way round) and that their market was too small. Rent capping – making limits on how much could be charged – was spoiling their favourite doctrine: the free market.

So my understanding is that this act of 1988 was created to encourage a wider rental housing market with the freedom for landlords to charge what they want.

The infamous section 21 of that act gives the landlord the right to move tenants on at their whim, mostly to create more wealth for themselves. That’s right: the power of arbitrary homelessness is purely so that landlords are able to make more money. They can move on people who simply aren’t paying the rent that they’d like – or who stand up to them (eg over not doing repairs, dealing with anti social behaviour, or for turning up at tenants’ without sufficient warning – all of which are illegal).

Please sit with that a moment.

The clause about non payment of rent (section 8) which is internationally considered a common and reasonable reason to to evict is also about making wealth for the landlord, and is also unfair. We should and do have the right to withhold payment – for shoddy service (interpersonally), for lack or faulty goods (a home not fit for habitation, and breaking the intrinsic right to quietly enjoy), and if we have overpaid. To undermine this right is to create serious inequality and is a human rights issue. It is a form of slavery to say your home is at risk if you don’t keep paying for something which costs the owner little, which the landlords generally didn’t even build, and which never ends, and that rights are one-sided.

Why should landlords keep getting for doing little to nothing? Especially when it keeps us in work we maybe don’t like, giving a high proportion of our income away to them, whether we’re rich or poor.

Those who attack the notions that rent is theft and that most landlords are bad are landlords themselves, or attached to them. They’re feudal enough to consider that they offer a service that we would be without, if it weren’t for them. There’s still a lick of that old school “I own you”, “respect me, I’m your landlord.” They expect to act like that beadle and for us to be Oliver Twists, up to that point of the double helping.

I found this piece ‘The Myth of the Good Landlord’ by Tom Lavin very interesting, although I reject his solution: government ownership, at any level, is not public ownership and certainly not the people’s. Let us not confuse them; for the government is not benign – you just give it greater power and create it as a huge landlord.

I also have written several pieces of my own, often in emails to policy makers. I was not happy with the stance and [utter lack of] assistance of Shelter – Britain’s most famous housing charity – nor the Citizen’s Advice Bureau (there’s something legally dubious about the word ‘citizen’ – it means owing allegiance to your nation in return for protection.)

There are those who might protest that they are good and busy landlords, kept busy by the government’s growing demands. I have found that this list is less about real tenants’ safety and rights, and more about landlord compliance to checks which are lucrative to those that undertake them (such as gas engineers), and as one writer argued, is about keeping your chattels (ie us rent payers) still valuable (ie able to pay and not dead or suing due to gas leaks).

I was shocked at how much of a countersuit against eviction depends on not only on checking our electric and gas – even during the years we’re meant to have limited who came into our homes! – but on having a valid Energy Performance Certificates (whose real value I query).

Council workers asked me this first: they actually confessed (I recorded Mr PT at Norwich City say it) that their concern at the homelessness prevention team is to establish if they have any legal requirement to help; they and will dump you if not, not caring if you die in the gutter. This council spied on me after the notice period expired (still when covid was meant to be rife and restrictions in place), hoping that if I seemed to have moved on (rather than face the violence of bailiffs) that they could wash their hands of me, which they think they did.

They are wrong – read the below.

If you move before you’re pushed, the council can claim that you made yourself voluntarily homeless and thus you are not assisted; if you sit tight in a home you’re not welcome in with a legal case over you, you wonder if you’ll actually receive the papers inviting you to court to defend yourself and whether you’ll receive a fair hearing, and warning – or could the bailiffs just turn up? (You should have several warnings and opportunities to defend but I found that legal post doesn’t always arrive). Living with that fear is very stressful, as I heard other local families state on news last Christmas.

I say this not to scare, but to illustrate the injustice of the system which we must fight against.

I’ve wondered how much of my own experience to share. I’m aware of attempted repercussions, but I remind that it’s only slander/libel if it’s untrue; and that speaking out is whistleblowing, which is protected, and it is about protecting others from particular companies and individuals, and calling them to account to to make reparations. I write nothing to be vindictive or vexatious, although I believe I have been on the receiving end of both of those from those to whom I allude; my home and income was lost through the bloody-minded actions of others – especially particular individuals at the supposed Housing Options department and revenues and benefits at Norwich City Council, HMCTS (the court service), and my former landlord – a man who’s been investing in multiple properties since the 1970s, and had over 30 tenants when I moved in, on top of a presumed public pension and other business.

I had lived long term in a tiny one room home, not fit for purpose and with no commercial value, unable to move on. “A bolt hole, suboptimal at best,” said one visitor – “not a serious home”. “It’s the second worst home I’ve seen in Norwich” said another. “I wouldn’t swap with you.” Yet my landlord had received tens of thousands for my just being there.

Those concerned have been individually and personally put on permanent notice, and know who they are. At this time, I will just name my landlord, Clem Vogler of Norfolk. He is on the net for several reasons – his Dec 2018 Telegraph article on helping landlords avoid the new tax rules (he saved over £50,000) in which he confirms the size of his £4m property portfolio, and his work for infamous Golden Eye International, which is verified on his own website.

As for his interactions with me, his own words and actions convict him. Both are utterly provable and undeniable.

There will be repercussions for any repercussions.

I will here point out that

-the court, with its huge backlog, processed his forms (at Christmas) in under a week but failed to serve my countersuit over some months, despite his form missing sections

-the council wanted instrusive forms and compliance from me (as did HMCTS) to do anything

-there is strong circumstantial evidence of collusion

-the unfairness that Rent Repayment Orders (designed to punish rogue landlords) do not benefit council tenants or benefit recipients nor those with live-in landlords, and are again about those checks

-few lawyers seem really interested in championing tenants, especially if you need support to pay their fees (that legal dress down piece is coming). A real champion I found was a Californian firm – do look at what tenants were awarded. I like reading their site for empowerment.

Don’t feel that if this isn’t where you live that no-one can help.

I hope this inspires any genuine lawyers and paralegals to assist in this battle, and any true judges.

We need a new legal system, and many are looking to People’s Courts and Grand Juries.

I think it’s time that homes simply were: perhaps we could pay to buy, repair or build one but not to live in it, certainly not to the tune of what we’re used to paying. Homes need to be given to the those who live in them. As for landlord being compensated – they have been, all along. It’s called rent.

All those who have been part of the injustice should be ashamed

Every bully landlord – and bank – and those who support them (such as bailiffs) needs to make reparations, now.

We need to end this slavery and the system that makes it not only possible, but pretends that it’s normative.

My fomer landlords wrote in to the Telegraph nearly 30 years ago with his views on tyrants. The irony is clear: it is not just political dictators at a national level who are tyrants, it is anyone who ill uses (often self-given) power.

I was put at risk by Clem’s actions, and those of those courts and council, like so many others. Those doing so in these last couple of years especially are reprehensible and are guilty of crimes and liable for all the distress they caused, your losses, inconvenience, detriment to your income, relationships, health…… there are many in an eviction.

There are consequences for evicting people and all injustice – certainly in the next world, but I’d like them in this, now.

And I wish to see the end of landlordism and bully banks. The new world is here. Beadle’s bowl is empty.

Why do we pay rent or mortgage?

Another pillar of society to take out and examine, and ask how – and if – we replace it

These viral months have made us question many things, things that some of us were already taking apart. The quick version is:

• In a world that (wrongly) values earning, why do we accept this huge passive income?
• Whilst so many of us struggle due to the lockdown, why are we still expected to pay?
• Poverty is created by systems: government choices over the closing of many workplaces, the onerous rules to reopen, and the systems already in place
• Property owning is part of those systems and imbalance; it’s the ultimate capitalist value: owning is good; not being able to pay is bad; owners have the power and money
• Note the name – landLORD – and its historic link to class and control
• Why is a basic need (shelter) turned into a fear inducing commodity?
• We’re taught to shun the homeless, and fear being so, but it means leaving the Matrix

Hence homeless charity is really about restoration to the system

Here’s the long version, of different thoughts:

Whether we’re wealthy or not, what we pay for our homes is a significant part of our resources.

We often portray renting as inferior to mortgages – it was pressed here in Britain by our beloved (?!) PM Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Ownership is status, and more grown up and responsible. If you bought a home, you could feel really pleased. Like the board game Game of Life of the same era, you’d got one of three life choices sorted. And property owning is freedom. You don’t have to ask for written permission to put a nail in the wall. You can live with whom you choose.

But I looked at my mortgage agreement and was appalled at what I’d signed up to. I wasn’t really a home owner rather than a renter – it was just that my landlord was a bank. They could throw me out if I couldn’t pay; they even expected me to tell them about who I lived with. Like many, I had to pay fees to a third party, who didn’t do the maintenance that they were supposed to. Not very different from the rental market. In fact, it was worse – for those in flats both pay ground rent (!) and service charges, and yet have to sort out their own internal maintenance problems. My freeholder was a vast international music firm who took from each of us a large sum each year and then demanded another to sort a problem they’d let accumulate to alleged emergency level. The fee for this work – which was very disturbing – was so great that we all had to sell to pay it, and they didn’t see the legal issue when I pointed out that they’d taken money immorally, for they’d not used the maintenance fees for the purpose described.

The only real beneficial difference between rent and mortgage is the ability for payers of the latter to sell and make money. That isn’t always possible, and it’s another life game to choose your moment, when the market’s at its peak. It is possible to sell it for less than you bought it for if you bought at such a peak and need to move at a property market trough. But even if you bought low and sold in a price rocketing time, you can find that you can’t get back on the oh so esteemed property ladder. You’ve made thousands in profit, but you now can’t afford your own home.

At times, mortgages have been less than rents for the same property – how I hate that word.

So for not being deemed to have a reliable enough income to get the one way financial agreement which means ‘engaged unto death’, we perhaps pay more each month, and what Thatcher types are fond of saying: dead money. You don’t see anything for those thousands you pay each year.

They go into someone else’s pocket, not into a slow filling jar for you one day.

And that’s the property promise: deferred gratification. One day… you’ll earn something good.

You’ll work your way to freedom. Sounds like a bond, doesn’t it. That was exactly the overtone I meant. Many of us are enslaved at the bottom of a pyramid, and the masters are few.

It’s time we took a close look at that pyramid and withdrew its planning permission.

I’m questioning what we pay for and if some things are too much or are really worth a fee.

I feel that to pay to buy, build, or repair a home is fair. But to live in it? And so much: for whether our home is large or small, in good condition or crumbling with damp, in a neighbourhood considered desirable or ‘rough’, we are forking out a large proportion of the money we have. If we’re better off, we’ll likely have a larger, grander home, and thus I surmise, the percentage of our income – at least half – spent on our regular home payments will be similar.

In Britain, we do have housing benefit for renters. But it’s capped (often lower than local rents) and like other welfare support, is a crutch easily pulled away. A dreaded green stripe edged envelope can appear at any time, demanding information, on pain of taking your benefit away. I know people who have received these auto forms DURING COVID, even though there was talk of giving all of us a rent holiday or the government paying our housing costs during the lockdown. This council had actually given written assurance that support would continue – and then stopped the money. When we venerate our keyworkers for keeping our services running and bravely coming into work, I ask why some council staff at Norwich city council came in to effectively harass the poorer people they are meant to serve. When proof was served that they had missed the information given and cessation was entirely their fault, they said, you have come to the end of our complaints process!

I find that utterly despicable bullying.

If you get housing benefit, as with other welfare, there’s stigma: you’re not paying your way; you’re using public funds, or more emotively – Taxpayer’s Money. People on government support don’t pay income or council tax, and thus, are less valuable. You know what I’m going to say:

We are not valued by the taxable income we generate.

Nor by what ‘assets’ we own. We are not an asset because we have them in the fiscal sense.

We are not valuable because we add to someone else’s portfolio. Many landlords (or ladies) are well off. A few need the rent to manage, but you also need to be someone affable, approachable and willing to share and sort problems out. Many letters don’t have the right attitude and skills.

There’s a big power imbalance in property between they who own and those who live in and pay for it. Letting and mortgage agreements are standard; the terms are not individually negotiated, although occasionally you may wangle bringing a pet in. Agency fees are now banned in Britain, but the essence remains: intrusive checks are one sided; they see if you can pay. I’ve noted some antisocial tenant behaviours be let pass, because at least those people have a steady income and never ask to skip or reduce their rent. Their landlords are not thinking what it is like to live with or next to you, or if the design and location of the development lends itself to noise issues.

But what bothers me most is that most of the time, our lenders and landlords do nothing. I’m glad that they don’t need to come round and collect our money, and I’d rather be left alone to, as the agreement says – ‘quietly and privately enjoy’. I resent being intruded upon to see if my housekeeping is deemed to be up to standard, like some boarding school or girl guide on camp. I shouldn’t wonder if my landlord will just turn up to fix something. To attend the property unless in emergency, two days written and agreed warning should be given and agreed to. Landlords should also give warning to do work outside one’s home – such as the garden or communal hall – it’s courtesy.

Often, tenants feel that works are slow and shoddy. When problems are addressed, it’s such a hassle that you wish you’d not pointed them out. I’ve seen hilariously bad work done by landlords.

Often, landlords don’t provide furniture or even white goods – ie a fridge and washing machine – as they’ll be liable for their upkeep. They won’t get involved with your utilities, which are often extra to your rent. So what are the services exactly that they’re offering – walls, windows, ceiling?

But the line I’m really coming down to, especially due to the coronavirus cessation, is why do we pay for the right to be? We need shelter – it’s a basic right enshrined in the Universal Declaration. This unalienable need is made into something very expensive. We can’t avoid it, we suffer for it if we can’t pay… and yet, what do our landlords and lenders do? I’ve even heard landlords say that they don’t like showing prospective tenants round; several try to get the existing tenants to do it for them. Mostly, it’s money from our bank account to theirs, with no action or effort needed on their part at all. They don’t wait on us; they don’t create anything for us. The building just is – and is sometimes left to be, whilst yards look like something out of Sleeping Beauty.

I’m not saying that all landlords are bad and lazy, but I am saying, a lot are.

Why is this passive income therefore allowed? How do we feel in this society obsessed with the value of earning, to have all these people who get money from us for not doing anything?

Many of us work hard but get little in return. Kate Millet pointed out 50 years ago that housekeepers and child raisers do that day long work for nothing. We may well run community things – such as sporting activities or Girl guides or our church – for nowt. We may sit on committees for free. Ask any self employed person, creator, or someone with a vocation, and you’ll learn that although they never really switch off from their work, their financial return does not reflect the time, skill or passion they put in.

How many of us would say that the things we really value aren’t things which we earn from? Time with loved ones; walking; thinking; art; sports; faith…. And some of us are doing great work in those areas. Whether it is yet appreciated, God sees it.

I note the mainstream advice as lockdowns happened: that you must keep paying and that landlords will suffer if you don’t. Of course ‘industry experts’ would say that – they are on the owners’ sides. For some small landlords, yes, lack of rent could diminish them too and may have a knock-on affect on those they employ. But others – and I suspect, the majority – have multiple properties and actually are wealthy. I’ve lived in places where just 4-5 small flats or even bedsits, or a couple of houses easily garner £2000 a month – that’s quite a comfortable income. Some landlords have 10s of properties, meaning that they may receive each month more than many households do a year. And with very little work.

I think we need to ask: do these owners need or deserve the money we’re obliged to pay them? Why isn’t being understanding (‘lenient’ is so condescending and mercy driven) normal, rather than a rare attitude? Why do the bullies who say: ‘can’t pay – out!’ still roam freely and take on new tenants? A major London landlord was on reality TV, and they pretty much incriminated themselves. Why weren’t they arrested? Why wasn’t there a revolt?

I think it’s time to cut our rents and mortgage, cut property rises – created by the industry – and ridiculous interest, as well as ask about insurance and bills [see previous post] and all the other related matters.

It is a time for compassion, and the landlords who won’t should be the ones in the dock, not the tenants. Poverty is not a crime. Bullying and extortion is.

The assumption that there is the right to this money needs to be taken apart. Why should a landlord or bank (or indeed, many recipients of other of our ‘financial responsibilities’) have our money when we can afford little else? They are large companies. We often need that money; they just want it and believe that it’s theirs.

Really, it comes down to the pyramid. We need to be on the same level, and perhaps tipped more in the occupier’s favour. What if we were seen as customers, clients, people to serve; not people that you’ve generously given a home to and so must keep to the preset legal contract and pay the money you ask for. This viral time has shown us so much about what controls there are in our society, and we should be unpicking them and withdrawing our consent.

I think that at the least, the landlords who can should reduce or waive rent during this time for those whose incomes are affected; and that the property market needs to burst and rebuilt at a much more reasonable level. I repeat that our monthly payments henceforth should be very much less than current norms, and that estate agents, developers and landlords should no longer be able to drive up prices for their own gain.

We’re keen to stamp out modern slavery. Remember that the other kind was (after so many disgusting centuries), as enshrined in the UDHR. This is another kind of shackle, upheld by those who benefit from it. We can change this, and we can find a balance which is much much fairer.

Government gripes

What does Royal Mail think it will achieve by raising the price of postage so? If it is already struggling to compete how will this assist it? In my experience delivery is slow and often inaccurate – misdelivered items are regular. In times of cuts, passing one’s own struggles onto the public is immoral and also does not make business sense. It is claimed that too many of us are using other methods to transport things and that RM are not viable – so how is making a radical price increase going to help?

The cuts continue to be ridiculous and eating at those who need the money most. Housing benefit claimants are slashed each year without warning as a kind of warped anniversary present. Just because one has been claiming for a time does not mean you can magically waft in more money at the government’s behest. It’s still a system where it makes claimants worse off for working. These moves are going to make some homeless and make those with a home in very unsuitable living situations. It also passes on the shortfall to landlords, some of whom might do very well for doing very little, but the people really responsible for this so called deficit are not in any way taking any of the strain. They’ve no idea about being poor and now the quite well off are also struggling financially. The Guardian reported that East Cheshire council is paying over £200,000 per year to its top two council leaders – one of whom is off sick. Paying them a more suitable salary would mean alot [sic] of people on benefits (as well as all the other axed services and needs) could be paid. Leaders don’t understand the anguish and fear they are putting onto people. Or are they like Scrooge, hoping that the poorest will just die in the gutter?

We shouldn’t let them.