A scenario.

Neighbour works as a cleaner. She cleans all her neighbours houses. One day she decides to take items including money not belonging to her from her neighbours who provided her with a key based on trust.

The cleaner is arrested and charged. She is then convicted and receives a six week custodial.

Upon release, she discovers her home has been targeted and has received physical and verbal threats.

They are all social tenants.

Do you:

A) move the tenant to another area so she's no longer victimised

B) evict the cleaner due to the burglary / theft

C) something else

 

A) for her safety then prosecute those that you can based on evidence for criminal damage.

Mob mentality can not see to be a winner. Criminal damage is criminal damage, assumption of guilt and punishment needs to be done by the law.

 

Either A or B would remove her from the 'scenes of crime'. It's impractical for her to stay. Neither would preclude prosecution of those who targetted her home in her absence and are continuing to threaten her now. As long as the evidence is there.

B would be justified because she has not only abused the trust of her neighbours and been crassly stupid, but she's abused the trust of her landlord as well. But is it sensible? You would be making her 'constructively homeless' and just shifting the problem to another agency. How would she get another tenancy anywhere else without a reference? So I'd say A, with a strict warning that if anything similar were to happen again, she'd be out on her ear.

 

Is she Romanian?

 

Is she fit?

 

She's my mum you bɑstɑrds

 

Eviction is not unreasonable if you steal from your neighbours. I wouldn't wish her to be homeless, but she may have limited options for rehousing, for example to another area.

But you'd need proper process and to hear all the evidence any mitigation etc.

 

Does she take it up the dirt box?

 

Employ/get as tenants Robots next time.

There are, no strings on them.

 

Bomb the whole area.

 

[video=youtube;uklF7VtqJq8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uklF7VtqJq8&spfreload=10[/video]

 

Interesting to hear your views on this.

Correct answer: eviction/possession

 

Easy option answer.

 

There's a housing shortage. Demand outweighs supply.

Whilst this remains the case and housing organisations can pick and choose who to house, why should the state favour the wrongdoer whilst innocent, law abiding families remain homeless?

 

fhritp

 

Obvious solution ... deport her to Australia

 

Fair question. But Housing Associations aren't the state. Now she is the responsibility of the state. She had somewhere to live before the Housing Association turfed her out. Sure others need housing. But she was housed. Now she isn't.

Why did she commit the crime? She'd obviously be fingered for it. She had ALL the keys. Sounds desperate. Why's she desperate? Probably more desperate now.

Anyway, it strikes me there's not a right and wrong answer here. There are just choices.

 

I do actually feel for her. It's social housing so obviously all the tenants must be benefit scroungers...apart from wads of cash what else was she stealing? 60" plasma tvs and the like no doubt as all welfare beneficiaries can afford those. Since she is the only one on the estate with an actual job, probably trying to feed her family on £4 an hour, it's no wonder desperation and temptation got the better of her. No doubt she is guilty of envy so she probably deserves all she got. She did her jail time it's only right she subsequently be made homeless and unemployable. If only she had raped someone instead.

 

One point that has been missed.....

How can anyone in social housing be able to afford a cleaner? Social housing is for those that can not afford private rents or to buy themselves. If their income extendeds fine to employing staff then this should preclude them from living in social housing.

Evict the lot and build an Aldi there instead.

 

So why not get as tough with the anti social neighbours from hell who seem to be able to stay in situ and make life sh*t for everyone around them for years on end?

 

Not all bad then , at least she got something out of it

 

I never said she was a housing association tenant. Not that should matter. Nominations are sourced from the local authority so whilst powers etc are different the role they play are the same. Many local authorities do stock transfers anyway, like Bedford, so the LA no longer have any housing, it's all managed by a HA.

She will always be housed, that shouldn't be an issue. She'll be picked up and given housing under another landlord. But by going for possession at least our communities get some respite.

 

The person you're describing here is the person I'm evicting. The 30k benefit fraud is enough to convince me that this is the right decision.

 

You're right, social housing is for those groups you mention. But lives change and usually a result of housing people are able to create better futures for themselves. However, what most agencies don't do is carry out checks to see which tenants are no longer eligible for social housing many years later. If the cleaner went for housing today, she wouldn't be eligible. The family earn a reasonable amount.

 

Surely it depends on the circumstances? Disability living allowance, or whatever they call it this week, is paid to disabled and elderly people for the very purpose of making adaptations to their daily life to maintain a basic standard of living. One of these could be to pay someone a few quid to clean their house. I'd much rather it was spent on a service like that than 200 extra fags and a Sky Box Office movie.

 

Agreed

 

Is this the same person?

 

Yep!

 

Well you didn't tell us up front that that there was a £30K benefit fraud involved and that they were 'neighbours from hell'. Makes a bit of a difference!

Anyway, the big issue would appear to be the housing shortage. Ever since 'right to buy' kicked off the social housing stock has been depleted and the revenues derived from those sales for local authorities have not been able to be used to replenish that stock. Time to change that.

In London and the south east we now have another property bubble even though hardly anyone in a regular job, or any young people, are able to afford to buy a house and private landlords rake it in because, as you say, demand exceeds supply. The population is increasing and more and more people choose to live alone further exacerbating the situation. It's an effing disaster and is what's creating a two tier society more than anything else. Unless there's a complete rethink around housing policy it's bound to end very badly.

 

Right to buy hasn't affected the number of houses or house availability, it's just changed the ownership form public to private. If anything as more houses were available to buy it's actually artificially lowered the purchase price.

There's not enough housing because less have been built than the increase in population. The government has recently changed regulations with respect to changing purpose of use in planning. Look at the amount of office space now being converted to flats. Give it 5 years and there will be plenty of accommodation just all to small and pathetic for families. Just look at Pinner. 1 pub and 3 office blocks all being converted to flats at the moment. There are now no office buildings in Pinner other than those above shops.

 

I never said anyone was a neighbour from hell and the benefit fraud was only made known to me yesterday. I found that out by pure fluke.

 

I think he picked it up from your reply at post #23.

 

Fair enough, although for the record I wouldn't put this case quite in the same category as a neighbour from hell. Not yet anyway.

 

OK. But it's a bit disconcerting if that's the sort of information you find out by 'pure fluke'. I'd have thought that would have been a piece of information that should have been available to you upfront if you're making a decision on eviction.

 

OK. But what is in short supply ay the moment is social housing available for a reasonable rent. As less people are able to obtain/afford a mortgage then more have to rent. So demand exceeds supply and many are left at the mercy of unscrupulous private landlords. Whether the conversion of office blocks to housing will solve that problem remains to be seen. Who's doing the conversions? Who will own the new flats? If there is a shift from ownership to rental (which is underway at the moment) then we need social housing provided by local authorities/housing associations giving some sort of security of tenure rather than a bunch of greedy parasites running the show.

Just this week we see social tenants on the New Era estate in Hackney being threatened with eviction because Westbrook Partners, a US (New York) investment firm, have bought their estate and want to charge 'market rents'. Like I said. F..king parasites.