Lewisham deserves a change. Read what Duwayne Brooks will do to create decent homes for all after he is elected.
A Decent Home For All
• Drive out private rogue landlords with a licensing scheme to protect our vulnerable residents.
• Tackle the years of neglect and bad maintenance in Lewisham Homes – too many families still live in a home riddled with damp and mould damaging their health. None of these homes are classed as ‘decent.’
• Create a housing band exclusively for 18-24 year old residents who have grown up in Lewisham. Give additional priority to long-term Lewisham residents on the housing list.
• Work with London Fire Brigade to create a system that ensures no one who lives in a high rise apartment goes more than 18 months without experiencing an evacuation simulation.
• Investigate whether or not a social housing contents insurance scheme (fire & water) can be implemented to protect residents and their property.
• Look at ways of protecting leaseholders from malpractice and shocking bills. In instances where bills have been huge, I will increase the payback time without penalty, alongside ensuring transparency at every step.
• Re-enforce the 50% share affordable rents on all new builds in the borough during my term.
• For the first time in 30 years this Council has started to build much needed homes. I will continue to spend the £12 million this Government gave Lewisham Council and build more.
What are your views? #Letsmakeadifference and #voteforDuwayne on May 22nd 2014.
Duwayne Brooks for Mayor of Lewisham – Decent Home Manifesto
Re: Duwayne Brooks for Mayor of Lewisham – Decent Home Manif
This really is lame.Cassandra wrote:Lewisham deserves a change. Read what Duwayne Brooks will do to create decent homes for all after he is elected.
A Decent Home For All
• Drive out private rogue landlords with a licensing scheme to protect our vulnerable residents.
• Tackle the years of neglect and bad maintenance in Lewisham Homes – too many families still live in a home riddled with damp and mould damaging their health. None of these homes are classed as ‘decent.’
• Create a housing band exclusively for 18-24 year old residents who have grown up in Lewisham. Give additional priority to long-term Lewisham residents on the housing list.
• Work with London Fire Brigade to create a system that ensures no one who lives in a high rise apartment goes more than 18 months without experiencing an evacuation simulation.
• Investigate whether or not a social housing contents insurance scheme (fire & water) can be implemented to protect residents and their property.
• Look at ways of protecting leaseholders from malpractice and shocking bills. In instances where bills have been huge, I will increase the payback time without penalty, alongside ensuring transparency at every step.
• Re-enforce the 50% share affordable rents on all new builds in the borough during my term.
• For the first time in 30 years this Council has started to build much needed homes. I will continue to spend the £12 million this Government gave Lewisham Council and build more.
What are your views? #Letsmakeadifference and #voteforDuwayne on May 22nd 2014.
Saying "Drive out private rogue landlords with a licensing scheme to protect our vulnerable residents" is much the same as what Labour says, although they lead on increasing supply, whereas Duwayne Brook finishes up with increasing supply, as if saying - "O yes, me too". I've not gone into it before, but there's an obvious risk with schemes to "drive out private rogue landlords" which is that let's say on balance reasonable private sector landlords (I'm not saying any of them are perfect) feel deterred from letting out properties, so making the housing crisis worse. One London borough, Newham, has introduced such a scheme, but the report which it was based on was about the need to expand the private sector rented supply. Of course there are rogue landlords, but they aren't all rogues, and turning up the rhetoric about them is not helpful.
And what's this - "Create a housing band exclusively for 18-24 year old residents who have grown up in Lewisham. Give additional priority to long-term Lewisham residents on the housing list." I probably have, but I can't remember reading a policy idea from a mainstream party so insane and unworkable.
This is what I mean by the record of Labour in Lewisham never having been challenged by any serious opposition.
Re: Duwayne Brooks for Mayor of Lewisham – Decent Home Manif
After his comments on the Zanzibar I would hope people would avoid him like the plague!
I'm sooo glad I moved.
I'm sooo glad I moved.
Re: Duwayne Brooks for Mayor of Lewisham – Decent Home Manif
Rogue Landlords?..It appears this definition seems to apply only to extreme cases i.e. those that pack 200 into a damp, insect infested one bed flat...OK slight exaggeration but you get my drift!
How about the following:- nice residential Close/area with most homes occupied by home owners. Landlords buy properties in Close and let out to Housing Benefit tenants who get a free home that others have made great sacrifice to obtain via taking on mortgages etc... Aforementioned tenants are a complete nightmare in terms of foul and abusive language, consideration for others, noise and general anti social behaviour (ASB). Case law in England (not Scotland, South Africa and indeed most developed countries in the world) is that Landlords cannot be held responsible for behaviour of tenants.
Residents then report ASB tenants to local authority where a lengthy process of letters, mediation, possible CCTV installation, logs kept etc... to furnish evidence to eventually get an injunction/abatement order and eventual action taken by the Council not to REMOVE tenants but to do all in its' power to make them behave. This process takes years usually and is completely toothless at the end. The Landlords of such tenants however are laughing all the way to the bank as they are providing such a "valuable" service to local authorities by providing housing which is in desperately short supply.
As English law has absolutely no precedents in this area and is based entirely on the principle that Landlords cannot be held responsible for their tenants behaviour, they can literally sit back and do nothing even if neighbours of their tenants write to them daily asking them to take action. Are these not Rogue Landlords??? All they have is a moral obligation and nothing else. So the situation arises where hard working home owners make great sacrifice to buy, (many who come from social housing background in their formative years actually buy to escape all the behavioural issues of "problem families" ),pay their taxes which pays the Housing Benefit of the tenant and the investment return to the Landlord, yet their daily lives are blighted and made a misery by the same two entities and there is nothing at all they can do! No wonder tenants don't care and landlords just stay silent...both are getting rewarded by the people whose lives they are making a misery!
Enfield Council has recently rolled out a licensing scheme Borough wide for all Landlords (not just HMO landlords as in Lewisham) and can now withhold rental payments to Landlords if neighbours complain about ASB issues of private tenants. Landlords also have to have an ASB policy and deal with ASB issues before the rent is released to them and this indeed forces Landlords to eventually issues Section 21 or other Notices to Quit to the tenants much more quickly than going through the whole ASB Environmental Health process by which time the poor neighbouring residents have usually turned grey through the stress or died of heart failure living next door to the neighbours from hell whilst the process plays out!
Many will immediately think that if Councils and residents had such powers to force Landlords to evict such tenants it would increase the burden on Housing shortage, on the Council itself and simply move the problem elsewhere. Well consider this:- most private tenants are on Assured Shorthold tenancies usually of a one year duration and with no real security of tenure. Periodically there is a natural "merry go round" anyway where Landlords want a new tenant or their property back for a short period before re-letting. So xxx number of people a year are constantly on the move anyway. By adding a few badly behaved people to this list ( do the math...a property becomes empty when a tenant leaves...yyy number of people in Borough, zzz number of houses...equation is still roughly the same) and continuously moving them on, the penny will surely drop that their behaviour must change and Landlords will have an obligation to deal with bad behaviour immediately rather than just smugly ignore the problem while collecting Housing Benefit rental income.
A Borough wide compulsory licensing scheme for ALL private Landlords will go someway to alleviate these problems which are becoming widespread nationally and getting many hard working home owning folk very aggrieved at having to live next door to those who blight their lives and live for free in a property others have had to make great sacrifice to live in.
My vote will go to anyone brave enough to roll out such a scheme. It would bring in licensing income to the Council, allow them to employ enforcement and mediation officers and make many lives a lot better. This is a serious national problem now on a growing scale. In most other areas of life there are professional body standards i.e electricians have to comply with H&S, finance professionals have to conduct business in compliance with strict rules, etc....ALL have to pass a "fit and proper" person test before engaging in their activities. Is it not time for Landlords standards to be upgraded to the same?After all they get a great investment return at the taxpayers expense so surely some minimal standards should be enforced.
To all Lewisham Councillors and all readers of this post....please redefine Rogue Landlord as to me anyone who places a tenant not in keeping with an area, who blights the lives of others and simply denies their moral obligation and consideration of the effects on others lives all because they are getting money, is a Rogue Landlord
How about the following:- nice residential Close/area with most homes occupied by home owners. Landlords buy properties in Close and let out to Housing Benefit tenants who get a free home that others have made great sacrifice to obtain via taking on mortgages etc... Aforementioned tenants are a complete nightmare in terms of foul and abusive language, consideration for others, noise and general anti social behaviour (ASB). Case law in England (not Scotland, South Africa and indeed most developed countries in the world) is that Landlords cannot be held responsible for behaviour of tenants.
Residents then report ASB tenants to local authority where a lengthy process of letters, mediation, possible CCTV installation, logs kept etc... to furnish evidence to eventually get an injunction/abatement order and eventual action taken by the Council not to REMOVE tenants but to do all in its' power to make them behave. This process takes years usually and is completely toothless at the end. The Landlords of such tenants however are laughing all the way to the bank as they are providing such a "valuable" service to local authorities by providing housing which is in desperately short supply.
As English law has absolutely no precedents in this area and is based entirely on the principle that Landlords cannot be held responsible for their tenants behaviour, they can literally sit back and do nothing even if neighbours of their tenants write to them daily asking them to take action. Are these not Rogue Landlords??? All they have is a moral obligation and nothing else. So the situation arises where hard working home owners make great sacrifice to buy, (many who come from social housing background in their formative years actually buy to escape all the behavioural issues of "problem families" ),pay their taxes which pays the Housing Benefit of the tenant and the investment return to the Landlord, yet their daily lives are blighted and made a misery by the same two entities and there is nothing at all they can do! No wonder tenants don't care and landlords just stay silent...both are getting rewarded by the people whose lives they are making a misery!
Enfield Council has recently rolled out a licensing scheme Borough wide for all Landlords (not just HMO landlords as in Lewisham) and can now withhold rental payments to Landlords if neighbours complain about ASB issues of private tenants. Landlords also have to have an ASB policy and deal with ASB issues before the rent is released to them and this indeed forces Landlords to eventually issues Section 21 or other Notices to Quit to the tenants much more quickly than going through the whole ASB Environmental Health process by which time the poor neighbouring residents have usually turned grey through the stress or died of heart failure living next door to the neighbours from hell whilst the process plays out!
Many will immediately think that if Councils and residents had such powers to force Landlords to evict such tenants it would increase the burden on Housing shortage, on the Council itself and simply move the problem elsewhere. Well consider this:- most private tenants are on Assured Shorthold tenancies usually of a one year duration and with no real security of tenure. Periodically there is a natural "merry go round" anyway where Landlords want a new tenant or their property back for a short period before re-letting. So xxx number of people a year are constantly on the move anyway. By adding a few badly behaved people to this list ( do the math...a property becomes empty when a tenant leaves...yyy number of people in Borough, zzz number of houses...equation is still roughly the same) and continuously moving them on, the penny will surely drop that their behaviour must change and Landlords will have an obligation to deal with bad behaviour immediately rather than just smugly ignore the problem while collecting Housing Benefit rental income.
A Borough wide compulsory licensing scheme for ALL private Landlords will go someway to alleviate these problems which are becoming widespread nationally and getting many hard working home owning folk very aggrieved at having to live next door to those who blight their lives and live for free in a property others have had to make great sacrifice to live in.
My vote will go to anyone brave enough to roll out such a scheme. It would bring in licensing income to the Council, allow them to employ enforcement and mediation officers and make many lives a lot better. This is a serious national problem now on a growing scale. In most other areas of life there are professional body standards i.e electricians have to comply with H&S, finance professionals have to conduct business in compliance with strict rules, etc....ALL have to pass a "fit and proper" person test before engaging in their activities. Is it not time for Landlords standards to be upgraded to the same?After all they get a great investment return at the taxpayers expense so surely some minimal standards should be enforced.
To all Lewisham Councillors and all readers of this post....please redefine Rogue Landlord as to me anyone who places a tenant not in keeping with an area, who blights the lives of others and simply denies their moral obligation and consideration of the effects on others lives all because they are getting money, is a Rogue Landlord
Re: Duwayne Brooks for Mayor of Lewisham – Decent Home Manif
Magfin
Welcome to the Forum, and check for a PM from me.
In the blog I wrote for the Intergenerational Foundation following the Dianne Abbott meeting organised by the Sydenham Labour Party I wrote:
Welcome to the Forum, and check for a PM from me.
In the blog I wrote for the Intergenerational Foundation following the Dianne Abbott meeting organised by the Sydenham Labour Party I wrote:
and more recently I wrote hereBut most people don’t want to live in social housing: tellingly, at the public meeting I attended, there was significant dissatisfaction with the performance of both Housing Associations and local authority housing management
We all tend to shy away from such nitty gritty issues of housing management, because they are so sensitive. In my defence, I'll say I'm well aware of how important they are, and as you'd expect, I'm going to make the point that if housing in London was not in such short supply, you'd not see anything like the abuses your describe.Tim Lund wrote:I don't mind one way or the other. I'm more interested in what housing providers and tenure type (renting vs. owner occupation) provide the best quality of life for residents. I have no ideological position here.leenewham wrote:Do you think we need to build more state housing and council housing instead of private housing?