So, speaking broadly is it the sense of the UK forumers that renting should be a semi-permanent arrangement and ending a lease when the contract is up ought not be allowed, or is that the general attitude toward renting?
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
The idea is a landlord would need to find a good reason to get rid of tenants because losing your home is a substantially greater negative event than having to find a new tenant, shelter being an essential service and ideally a basic human right, to deny it to someone capable of paying for it who doesn't want to give it up should require a substantial justification.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
So, speaking broadly is it the sense of the UK forumers that renting should be a semi-permanent arrangement and ending a lease when the contract is up ought not be allowed, or is that the general attitude toward renting?
The issue is, like with employer/employee dynamics, there's too much power on the side of the owner. Maybe this is a bit too far a swing the other way. Maybe it'd be fairer if the renewal added an opt-out for the owner (ie, I renew my lease with my landlord, the landlord is able to say this is the final one, so I've got the length of my renewed lease to find a new place).
But as others have pointed out, the number of landlords that use the end of the lease to dick over people who have valid, legal complaints, because they're deemed "troublemakers", or whathaveyou, and throwing them out in short timeframes, means I don't have a lot of sympathy.
I'm not sure if this law covers terminal leases (you can rent, but when the term of the lease expires, there's no chance of renewal*), or just the standard rolling leases (you rent for a year, then can renew or not).
* I've seen leases like that, usually where the owner intends to occupy, but needs some time before doing so (selling off another property, finishing up a job/schooling in a different state).
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
So, speaking broadly is it the sense of the UK forumers that renting should be a semi-permanent arrangement and ending a lease when the contract is up ought not be allowed, or is that the general attitude toward renting?
The idea is that renting a home is not a traditional business relationship because where you live and the home you live in are both critical things in your life that you make a lot of decisions based around. If a tenant is a perfectly suitable tenant and is not breaking any rules, it should not be permissible to simply oust them because you feel like it.
The common counterargument from those predisposed towards landlords' rights is "it's their home, they can rent it to whoever they want, whenever they want" and while that's not untrue it's also not conducive to a healthy society. It's incredibly disruptive to have to move home, it has enormous effects on people's lives and the general idea is that if a landlord wishes to earn extra income from their property by renting it out, they should acknowledge that it comes with certain responsibilities like not being able to turn their tenants' lives upside down on short notice.
The main thing I'm curious about is: if I'm a landlord and I sign a one-year lease with a tenant, isn't the point of a time-limited lease to give either party the chance to back out after one year of experience with one another (or even if the landlord simply wants to use the house after a year)? 8 weeks notice seems like a fairly reasonable length of time to give if either party decides that they don't want to renew the lease. I understand the argument that there's probably a higher burden on the person who has to move out, but if you signed a 1 year lease than I'm not sure why the lease should be binding beyond 1 year unless both parties decide to renew.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
8 weeks is absolutely not enough time to uproot your entire life.
Perhaps not your entire life, but it is not that unreasonable to move to a new place on. I can understand extending the time a bit though -- is that was the legal change is? 12 weeks or some such?
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Perhaps not your entire life, but it is not that unreasonable to move to a new place on. I can understand extending the time a bit though -- is that was the legal change is? 12 weeks or some such?
Moving to a new place is uprooting your entire life.
I think you're still missing the point. The idea is that a landlord accepts certain responsibilities when renting out their property for people to use as homes. Homes are not like cars, bikes, boats, or anything else you rent. They become a huge part of someone's life, and if somebody is a perfectly good tenant, pays on time, follows all the terms of the lease, it is not reasonable for the landlord to simply decide to terminate that without a good reason.
If the landlord wanted to use the house themselves, such as living in it, then sure, that no doubt qualifies as a good reason.
But being able to terminate a perfectly suitable lease with minimal notice simply opens up too much potential for abuse by landlords.
8 weeks is absolutely not enough time to uproot your entire life.
I don't think any of my friends that have been forced to move to a new apartment when a lease ran up or their roommates moved away would call it uprooting their entire life. At most they'd call it a hassle.
I understand that moving is gigantic pain in the ass. I've done it more than once and a couple times on the 8 week time-table. The landlord does accept certain responsibilities, one of which is providing notice if they don't want to renew a lease (which, hey, maybe 8 weeks isn't enough, maybe 12 or 20 might be better). However, if you've signed a one-year lease, then you know at least one year in advance that you might have to move. You did not sign a permanent lease. You did not sign a 10 year lease. The landlord isn't making promises beyond the term of the contract, so I'm curious why they should be forced into perpetual leases?
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
I understand that moving is gigantic pain in the ass. I've done it more than once and a couple times on the 8 week time-table. The landlord does accept certain responsibilities, one of which is providing notice if they don't want to renew a lease (which, hey, maybe 8 weeks isn't enough, maybe 12 or 20 might be better). However, if you've signed a one-year lease, then you know at least one year in advance that you might have to move. You did not sign a permanent lease. You did not sign a 10 year lease. The landlord isn't making promises beyond the term of the contract, so I'm curious why they should be forced into perpetual leases?
What do you do with the information that you might have to move? What do you do to prepare? What can you even do? are you going to go out looking at properties and filling in rent applications when you very well might be staying in your current property for all you know?
This is the point here. Fixed term contracts with minuscule notice periods work for many things, but they don't work for housing, because there is nothing that you can do to prepare for possibly having to move.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
8 weeks is absolutely not enough time to uproot your entire life.
I don't think any of my friends that have been forced to move to a new apartment when a lease ran up or their roommates moved away would call it uprooting their entire life. At most they'd call it a hassle.
Sure, if you live in an area with plentiful places available for rent in a similar area.
I understand that moving is gigantic pain in the ass. I've done it more than once and a couple times on the 8 week time-table. The landlord does accept certain responsibilities, one of which is providing notice if they don't want to renew a lease (which, hey, maybe 8 weeks isn't enough, maybe 12 or 20 might be better). However, if you've signed a one-year lease, then you know at least one year in advance that you might have to move. You did not sign a permanent lease. You did not sign a 10 year lease. The landlord isn't making promises beyond the term of the contract, so I'm curious why they should be forced into perpetual leases?
What do you do with the information that you might have to move? What do you do to prepare? What can you even do? are you going to go out looking at properties and filling in rent applications when you very well might be staying in your current property for all you know?
This is the point here. Fixed term contracts with minuscule notice periods work for many things, but they don't work for housing, because there is nothing that you can do to prepare for possibly having to move.
What length of notice would you no longer consider minuscule?
Does the UK also have protection against increases to the rent price? Here landlords can only increase the rent once a year and only by a percentage determined by the government. There is also a government agency you can appeal to when your rent is too high for the size and quality of your home. They only handle cases for homes that are in the same ballpark as social housing, as it was deemed too difficult to come up with standards for more expensive housing.
That+renter's protection (essentially: you can't evict someone without proving they are a menace in court) means landlords can get punished for being the utter dicks they still try to be. They essentially pull the same stunts as in other countries, hoping their victims are unaware of their rights. They get away with it far too often and the govt agency is understaffed, so even if you know your rights, it might still take ages to get your money back.
There are enough horror stories about landlords that we need a strong government to keep them in check.
Re: contracts. The ones I signed had a 1 year period in which I wasn't allowed to move out without a veeery good reason (a new job, suddenly got twins, death). After that period I could move out with a 1 month notice. I never saw* a contract that gave the landlord such options, unless they were planning to stop renting a home all together or if it was a short-stay home for internationals. In those specific cases contracts had a hard end date and a new contract would have to be drafted if the landlord wanted to keep renting out the property after that.
*One of my previous jobs involved reading dozens of them per day to determine whether someone could receive a housing subsidy for low income households.
So, speaking broadly is it the sense of the UK forumers that renting should be a semi-permanent arrangement and ending a lease when the contract is up ought not be allowed, or is that the general attitude toward renting?
This tends to be the prevailing norm in Western European countries - renting is viewed as semi permanent rather than transitory, and regulated accordingly. The UK is more the exception in taking the US approach of putting almost all the power in the relationship in the hands of the landlord.
Edit: as an aside, this is one of the reasons that many UK cities are seeing an explosion in private (i.e. not university provided) dedicated student accommodation. It's not regulated in the same way as housing, so it's one of the avenues that allows landlords to retain this kind of control over their tenants.
8 weeks is absolutely not enough time to uproot your entire life.
I don't think any of my friends that have been forced to move to a new apartment when a lease ran up or their roommates moved away would call it uprooting their entire life. At most they'd call it a hassle.
I think your use of 'roommates' gives an idea that you might be picturing a different rental demographic. Due to absurd entry prices in the UK renting goes all the way up the age chain; these are very often families we're talking about and other people tied to very specific areas for work and schooling and service provision.
I understand that moving is gigantic pain in the ass. I've done it more than once and a couple times on the 8 week time-table. The landlord does accept certain responsibilities, one of which is providing notice if they don't want to renew a lease (which, hey, maybe 8 weeks isn't enough, maybe 12 or 20 might be better). However, if you've signed a one-year lease, then you know at least one year in advance that you might have to move. You did not sign a permanent lease. You did not sign a 10 year lease. The landlord isn't making promises beyond the term of the contract, so I'm curious why they should be forced into perpetual leases?
What do you do with the information that you might have to move? What do you do to prepare? What can you even do? are you going to go out looking at properties and filling in rent applications when you very well might be staying in your current property for all you know?
This is the point here. Fixed term contracts with minuscule notice periods work for many things, but they don't work for housing, because there is nothing that you can do to prepare for possibly having to move.
What length of notice would you no longer consider minuscule?
So, speaking broadly is it the sense of the UK forumers that renting should be a semi-permanent arrangement and ending a lease when the contract is up ought not be allowed, or is that the general attitude toward renting?
This tends to be the prevailing norm in Western European countries - renting is viewed as semi permanent rather than transitory, and regulated accordingly. The UK is more the exception in taking the US approach of putting almost all the power in the relationship in the hands of the landlord.
Especially in many of the European *cities* I've known that's definitely the case. The people my age and in my social circles that own rather than rent accommodation tend to have kids and usually live out in the far outskirts of town or out in the country (which admittedly is rarely more than 30-45 minutes away from the city in Switzerland). Most others rent and have done so for years and years. We could probably afford a flat or a small house if we moved away from the centre of the city where we live, but neither my wife nor me have ever felt the urge. In return, I've felt that all the landlords (or, usually, estate agencies) I've ever had to deal with held up their end of the deal, organising upkeep and repairs, making sure that the garden around the building is tended and that snow and ice on the paths are taken care of in winter.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Honestly I'm surprised even 4% of people who voted Remain in the referendum said No Deal in the poll.
What about the last 2 years made you change your mind on crashing out?
I thought maybe it was some of the "I just want it to be over" crowd, but it says "first choice" so like....who are these people?
The leaver rhetoric of "the people have spoken anything but no deal is a betrayal of democracy" has actually taken root in the public narrative pretty deep. I know perfectly sensible people who voted to remain who now think we have to go through with this no matter what just on principle.
Speaker of the House of US Representatives Nancy Pelosi has arrived in Ireland, leading a Congressional delegation on a two day fact-finding mission.
Madame Speaker has expressed concerns over the potential loss of the Good Friday Agreement, and warned that the House of Representatives would not allow any US / UK trade deal to pass if the UK violates it.
That kinda ruins the premise of Leave tho. The UK can't get a trade deal with the EU or the US unless the GFA is adhered to. That implicitly means that Freedom of Movement stays (because good luck persuading the Irish to ditch it, ho ho ho), and that's pretty much the whole underpinning of Brexit in the first place. If FoM stays, might as well stay in the common market, and if you're in that you might as well keep on having a say in the rules (and protecting the carve-outs, rebates and exemptions you've negotiated)
That kinda ruins the premise of Leave tho. The UK can't get a trade deal with the EU or the US unless the GFA is adhered to. That implicitly means that Freedom of Movement stays (because good luck persuading the Irish to ditch it, ho ho ho), and that's pretty much the whole underpinning of Brexit in the first place. If FoM stays, might as well stay in the common market, and if you're in that you might as well keep on having a say in the rules (and protecting the carve-outs, rebates and exemptions you've negotiated)
Almost as if leave was based on a pure fantasy and (to be charitable) misunderstanding of how everything surrounding international relationships and trade works.
What a lot of landlords don’t realise is that being a landlord is a job. That money and time might have to be spent on keeping a property safe.
Simply owning a property as an investment (because of property prices) is not enough.
The stats are in that article; 46% chance of being issued a section 21 if you make a complaint (I wager that’s a low figure because a significant number of people don’t make complaints because of the fear of being evicted).
That gives a pretty good indication of housing stock in the rental market being poor / unsafe.
If landlords complain that it’s really hard because they have to get electric reports, gas reports, not have shitty EPCs, or spend money on broken boilers or make repairs then they should sell up.
What a lot of landlords don’t realise is that being a landlord is a job. That money and time might have to be spent on keeping a property safe.
Simply owning a property as an investment (because of property prices) is not enough.
The stats are in that article; 46% chance of being issued a section 21 if you make a complaint (I wager that’s a low figure because a significant number of people don’t make complaints because of the fear of being evicted).
That gives a pretty good indication of housing stock in the rental market being poor / unsafe.
If landlords complain that it’s really hard because they have to get electric reports, gas reports, not have shitty EPCs, or spend money on broken boilers or make repairs then they should sell up.
Unless I've misread the coverage, this also doesn't remove the capacity for Landlords to evict tenants for reasons. For example, if a tenant is no longer paying their rent, or they decided to set the shed on fire, or they're recklessly damaging the internals of the properrty, etc, etc. Then the landlord still has recourse. It's the case of "I just don't like your face, you're out" which is being removed, which has often been used as little more than a stick with which to beat tenants. Want a working shower? You're out, I can find someone else to take that room. Want not to have mould spores on three walls? You're out, I can find someone else. Want working heating? You're out. Want to paint the walls? You're out.
Removing the insecurity of tenants in this case is in the interest of the public good.
The Beeb article also notes there will be routes available to a landlord seeking to move a tenant out of their home for other reasons (e.g. wanting to live in it themselves, or sell it). I'm going to call this one a much needed win in a sector with a reputation for being full of unregulated cowboy landlords.
What a lot of landlords don’t realise is that being a landlord is a job. That money and time might have to be spent on keeping a property safe.
Simply owning a property as an investment (because of property prices) is not enough.
The stats are in that article; 46% chance of being issued a section 21 if you make a complaint (I wager that’s a low figure because a significant number of people don’t make complaints because of the fear of being evicted).
That gives a pretty good indication of housing stock in the rental market being poor / unsafe.
If landlords complain that it’s really hard because they have to get electric reports, gas reports, not have shitty EPCs, or spend money on broken boilers or make repairs then they should sell up.
Unless I've misread the coverage, this also doesn't remove the capacity for Landlords to evict tenants for reasons. For example, if a tenant is no longer paying their rent, or they decided to set the shed on fire, or they're recklessly damaging the internals of the properrty, etc, etc. Then the landlord still has recourse. It's the case of "I just don't like your face, you're out" which is being removed, which has often been used as little more than a stick with which to beat tenants. Want a working shower? You're out, I can find someone else to take that room. Want not to have mould spores on three walls? You're out, I can find someone else. Want working heating? You're out. Want to paint the walls? You're out.
Removing the insecurity of tenants in this case is in the interest of the public good.
The Beeb article also notes there will be routes available to a landlord seeking to move a tenant out of their home for other reasons (e.g. wanting to live in it themselves, or sell it). I'm going to call this one a much needed win in a sector with a reputation for being full of unregulated cowboy landlords.
Yeah that’s section 8’s which at the moment takes longer.
I will say I have some sympathy trying to get rid of tenants who aren’t paying rent.
(Some) Council’s advise tenants to stay in properties until they effectively get chucked by ballifs because they won’t help if people make themselves voluntarily homeless. Seems odd that people are being advised to do the “wrong thing” but there you go.
Interesting times ahead what with electrical reports being made mandatory and Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES).
I don’t think I’m being cynical in believing the Tories are only doing this because there is now an entire generation who can’t afford to buy their house now and are being forced to live in poor rental accommodation and they are likely to blame the Tories for this.
8 weeks is absolutely not enough time to uproot your entire life.
I don't think any of my friends that have been forced to move to a new apartment when a lease ran up or their roommates moved away would call it uprooting their entire life. At most they'd call it a hassle.
How did their kids feel about having to change grade schools midyear and losing all of their friends while catching up on a different teacher's approach?
8 weeks is absolutely not enough time to uproot your entire life.
I don't think any of my friends that have been forced to move to a new apartment when a lease ran up or their roommates moved away would call it uprooting their entire life. At most they'd call it a hassle.
How did their kids feel about having to change grade schools midyear and losing all of their friends while catching up on a different teacher's approach?
Yeah, a single person, or a couple with few ties, might find it an inconvenience. A family, especially one with kids that are at differing school ages (ie, one aged 8, one aged 15), would be a frikkin' nightmare.
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Blackhawk1313Demon Hunter for HireTime RiftRegistered Userregular
8 weeks is absolutely not enough time to uproot your entire life.
I don't think any of my friends that have been forced to move to a new apartment when a lease ran up or their roommates moved away would call it uprooting their entire life. At most they'd call it a hassle.
How did their kids feel about having to change grade schools midyear and losing all of their friends while catching up on a different teacher's approach?
I think the fundamental disconnect here is the thought that there are other readily available rental options in the immediate area vs. being forced to completely relocate. It’s certainly an upending regardless for a family but in the case of limited supply or the only things available being prohibitively expensive the relocation would be at the level of life changing for virtually any type of tenant.
There’s a bit more in terms of logistics than just packing up some boxes and moving from one property to another one.
Moving from one rental to another is now pretty expensive. It’s not unknown to be asked for 2 months rent in advance in addition to putting a safety deposit down (I would say agent fees but they are going).
That’s not an insignificant amount of money to get your hands in a short period of time.
There’s a bit more in terms of logistics than just packing up some boxes and moving from one property to another one.
Moving from one rental to another is now pretty expensive. It’s not unknown to be asked for 2 months rent in advance in addition to putting a safety deposit down (I would say agent fees but they are going).
That’s not an insignificant amount of money to get your hands in a short period of time.
Just paying for a moving company or renting a van is fucking expensive.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
verhofstadt has been feeling relatively irritated by the length and nature of the extension granted to the uk - and feels that the united front of the eu27 is beginning to fray. tusk on the other hand is frankly an Anglophile and takes an opportunity...
Nah, elections coming up. Verhofstadt and Juncker are of different parties. Verhofstadt expected to be the Spitzenkandidat (the Face of the pan-European coalition ALDE his Belgian party is a part of), but instead the liberals have opted for a "Team Europe" of 7 candidates. He is annoying in his attempts to stay in the spotlight and be treated as the sole leader of ALDE.
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
this goes back further than that. he was pushing for a very aggressive withdrawal agreement from the very beginning ( and informally got barnier to take a harder line on a few issues ) - although you may be right about his attention seeking tendencies...!
this goes back further than that. he was pushing for a very aggressive withdrawal agreement from the very beginning ( and informally got barnier to take a harder line on a few issues ) - although you may be right about his attention seeking tendencies...!
Perhaps because his time as PM of Belgium coincided with the rise of Vlaams Belang (Belgium's version of UKIP/Front National/etc) and took those experiences with him to the negotiating table? I mean, I can't blame him for not handing out favours to ERG and their ilk.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
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The issue is, like with employer/employee dynamics, there's too much power on the side of the owner. Maybe this is a bit too far a swing the other way. Maybe it'd be fairer if the renewal added an opt-out for the owner (ie, I renew my lease with my landlord, the landlord is able to say this is the final one, so I've got the length of my renewed lease to find a new place).
But as others have pointed out, the number of landlords that use the end of the lease to dick over people who have valid, legal complaints, because they're deemed "troublemakers", or whathaveyou, and throwing them out in short timeframes, means I don't have a lot of sympathy.
I'm not sure if this law covers terminal leases (you can rent, but when the term of the lease expires, there's no chance of renewal*), or just the standard rolling leases (you rent for a year, then can renew or not).
* I've seen leases like that, usually where the owner intends to occupy, but needs some time before doing so (selling off another property, finishing up a job/schooling in a different state).
The idea is that renting a home is not a traditional business relationship because where you live and the home you live in are both critical things in your life that you make a lot of decisions based around. If a tenant is a perfectly suitable tenant and is not breaking any rules, it should not be permissible to simply oust them because you feel like it.
The common counterargument from those predisposed towards landlords' rights is "it's their home, they can rent it to whoever they want, whenever they want" and while that's not untrue it's also not conducive to a healthy society. It's incredibly disruptive to have to move home, it has enormous effects on people's lives and the general idea is that if a landlord wishes to earn extra income from their property by renting it out, they should acknowledge that it comes with certain responsibilities like not being able to turn their tenants' lives upside down on short notice.
Moving to a new place is uprooting your entire life.
I think you're still missing the point. The idea is that a landlord accepts certain responsibilities when renting out their property for people to use as homes. Homes are not like cars, bikes, boats, or anything else you rent. They become a huge part of someone's life, and if somebody is a perfectly good tenant, pays on time, follows all the terms of the lease, it is not reasonable for the landlord to simply decide to terminate that without a good reason.
If the landlord wanted to use the house themselves, such as living in it, then sure, that no doubt qualifies as a good reason.
But being able to terminate a perfectly suitable lease with minimal notice simply opens up too much potential for abuse by landlords.
I don't think any of my friends that have been forced to move to a new apartment when a lease ran up or their roommates moved away would call it uprooting their entire life. At most they'd call it a hassle.
What do you do with the information that you might have to move? What do you do to prepare? What can you even do? are you going to go out looking at properties and filling in rent applications when you very well might be staying in your current property for all you know?
This is the point here. Fixed term contracts with minuscule notice periods work for many things, but they don't work for housing, because there is nothing that you can do to prepare for possibly having to move.
Sure, if you live in an area with plentiful places available for rent in a similar area.
What length of notice would you no longer consider minuscule?
That+renter's protection (essentially: you can't evict someone without proving they are a menace in court) means landlords can get punished for being the utter dicks they still try to be. They essentially pull the same stunts as in other countries, hoping their victims are unaware of their rights. They get away with it far too often and the govt agency is understaffed, so even if you know your rights, it might still take ages to get your money back.
There are enough horror stories about landlords that we need a strong government to keep them in check.
Re: contracts. The ones I signed had a 1 year period in which I wasn't allowed to move out without a veeery good reason (a new job, suddenly got twins, death). After that period I could move out with a 1 month notice. I never saw* a contract that gave the landlord such options, unless they were planning to stop renting a home all together or if it was a short-stay home for internationals. In those specific cases contracts had a hard end date and a new contract would have to be drafted if the landlord wanted to keep renting out the property after that.
*One of my previous jobs involved reading dozens of them per day to determine whether someone could receive a housing subsidy for low income households.
This tends to be the prevailing norm in Western European countries - renting is viewed as semi permanent rather than transitory, and regulated accordingly. The UK is more the exception in taking the US approach of putting almost all the power in the relationship in the hands of the landlord.
Edit: as an aside, this is one of the reasons that many UK cities are seeing an explosion in private (i.e. not university provided) dedicated student accommodation. It's not regulated in the same way as housing, so it's one of the avenues that allows landlords to retain this kind of control over their tenants.
I think your use of 'roommates' gives an idea that you might be picturing a different rental demographic. Due to absurd entry prices in the UK renting goes all the way up the age chain; these are very often families we're talking about and other people tied to very specific areas for work and schooling and service provision.
6 months.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
The leaver rhetoric of "the people have spoken anything but no deal is a betrayal of democracy" has actually taken root in the public narrative pretty deep. I know perfectly sensible people who voted to remain who now think we have to go through with this no matter what just on principle.
Madame Speaker has expressed concerns over the potential loss of the Good Friday Agreement, and warned that the House of Representatives would not allow any US / UK trade deal to pass if the UK violates it.
RTÉ News is Ireland’s public broadcast news service.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Almost as if leave was based on a pure fantasy and (to be charitable) misunderstanding of how everything surrounding international relationships and trade works.
Simply owning a property as an investment (because of property prices) is not enough.
The stats are in that article; 46% chance of being issued a section 21 if you make a complaint (I wager that’s a low figure because a significant number of people don’t make complaints because of the fear of being evicted).
That gives a pretty good indication of housing stock in the rental market being poor / unsafe.
If landlords complain that it’s really hard because they have to get electric reports, gas reports, not have shitty EPCs, or spend money on broken boilers or make repairs then they should sell up.
Unless I've misread the coverage, this also doesn't remove the capacity for Landlords to evict tenants for reasons. For example, if a tenant is no longer paying their rent, or they decided to set the shed on fire, or they're recklessly damaging the internals of the properrty, etc, etc. Then the landlord still has recourse. It's the case of "I just don't like your face, you're out" which is being removed, which has often been used as little more than a stick with which to beat tenants. Want a working shower? You're out, I can find someone else to take that room. Want not to have mould spores on three walls? You're out, I can find someone else. Want working heating? You're out. Want to paint the walls? You're out.
Removing the insecurity of tenants in this case is in the interest of the public good.
The Beeb article also notes there will be routes available to a landlord seeking to move a tenant out of their home for other reasons (e.g. wanting to live in it themselves, or sell it). I'm going to call this one a much needed win in a sector with a reputation for being full of unregulated cowboy landlords.
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SF&F Reviews blog
Yeah that’s section 8’s which at the moment takes longer.
I will say I have some sympathy trying to get rid of tenants who aren’t paying rent.
(Some) Council’s advise tenants to stay in properties until they effectively get chucked by ballifs because they won’t help if people make themselves voluntarily homeless. Seems odd that people are being advised to do the “wrong thing” but there you go.
Interesting times ahead what with electrical reports being made mandatory and Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES).
I don’t think I’m being cynical in believing the Tories are only doing this because there is now an entire generation who can’t afford to buy their house now and are being forced to live in poor rental accommodation and they are likely to blame the Tories for this.
How did their kids feel about having to change grade schools midyear and losing all of their friends while catching up on a different teacher's approach?
Yeah, a single person, or a couple with few ties, might find it an inconvenience. A family, especially one with kids that are at differing school ages (ie, one aged 8, one aged 15), would be a frikkin' nightmare.
I think the fundamental disconnect here is the thought that there are other readily available rental options in the immediate area vs. being forced to completely relocate. It’s certainly an upending regardless for a family but in the case of limited supply or the only things available being prohibitively expensive the relocation would be at the level of life changing for virtually any type of tenant.
Moving from one rental to another is now pretty expensive. It’s not unknown to be asked for 2 months rent in advance in addition to putting a safety deposit down (I would say agent fees but they are going).
That’s not an insignificant amount of money to get your hands in a short period of time.
Just paying for a moving company or renting a van is fucking expensive.
(Brussels reporter)
verhofstadt has been feeling relatively irritated by the length and nature of the extension granted to the uk - and feels that the united front of the eu27 is beginning to fray. tusk on the other hand is frankly an Anglophile and takes an opportunity...
More on them: https://www.aldeparty.eu/news/team-europe-seven-leaders-renew-europe
Perhaps because his time as PM of Belgium coincided with the rise of Vlaams Belang (Belgium's version of UKIP/Front National/etc) and took those experiences with him to the negotiating table? I mean, I can't blame him for not handing out favours to ERG and their ilk.
the spirit of optimism lives on
I am frankly shocked to learn that the Leave campaign was actively pursuing the racist vote. Shocked I say!