Around a third of the population of Wales rent their homes from private landlords. After ten years of austerity, low wages and benefit cuts, many of these people were already desperate for support. Now, as Wales enters its 8th week of lockdown, with coronavirus infection rates still rising, incomes have been shattered, while landlords are as eager as ever to collect rent payments
Receiving little support & threatened with eviction while a lethal virus engulfs the world – we spoke to people living in rented accommodation across wales during the biggest health crisis and economic shock in memory.
Words by GS Thomas. Images by Veronika Merkova & SC Cook
Marie and her six children live in Flintshire in a home she’s rented privately for over six years. On 20 March, as the UK braced itself for the full force of a deadly, contagious disease and prepared to go into lockdown, mere hours after paying her rent, Marie was served with an eviction notice.
“Apparently it’s nothing to do with me, ‘cos ‘they’re very happy with me,’ and I’m thinking ‘yeah, I know you are… His name’s on the mortgage, but I’ve been paying it for the last six and a half years!”
Marie currently pays £830 each month to live in a house where the shower hasn’t worked for two years, and the bath’s cold tap has never worked – the family use a jug to run the children’s baths. Though she’s reported these problems, they’ve never been fixed. Speaking to her landlord and her letting agent about her issues hasn’t been successful.
“I replaced the carpet, I just do it myself, ‘cos I don’t like any hassle.” The hassle she refers to includes poor service – after the cooker broke, she was without one for a year, eventually having to pay to replace it herself.
But there are deeper problems with the people and agencies who have a legal responsibility to ensure good quality housing in exchange for the vast majority of her income. Marie has kept her distance from the landlord ever since the first day of her tenancy, when he lost his temper about her over a small issue and shouted at her.
“He went mad at me… That day I didn’t really click with him. I didn’t like him; I’m not into men and women shouting. So I kept my distance and stayed away from him…. I’m not into that, especially after what I’ve had.” Marie – whose name we’ve changed at her request – has been a victim of stalking, after being in an abusive relationship ten years ago that has left her looking over her shoulder even now.
Later on, Marie’s landlord employed a letting agent to communicate with Marie on his behalf, but that business relationship has been equally inappropriate. When the agent finally did come to fix the cooker, he remarked suggestively to Marie about pictures of her he’d seen on her WhatsApp account, through which they communicated about tenancy issues.
He was like “ooh, yeah, you’re looking fine on your pictures…There was one [picture] of me in my swimming suit, ‘cos I’d been swimming with the kids. I didn’t expect anyone to look at it and say anything.”
After aggressive behaviour from her landlord and uninvited comment on her appearance by her letting agent, after the abuse she has suffered in the past, it’s no wonder she ‘d rather fix things herself, when she can afford to. “I don’t like to make a scene, cos he might say ‘get out’.”
For Sian, who lost her last job before the crisis had arrived, things were already difficult. Like Marie, she is painfully aware of how vulnerable her tenancy is.
Sian lives with her son in Barry, where she’s rented the same property for nearly six years. In January, she lost her job with a housing association and is claiming Universal Credit without her landlord knowing. The family are left with around £50 a week to live on. “I’m struggling to pay. Obviously, with Universal Credit, it’s designed really to push you into poverty to get you back into work… and I’ve got a twelve-year-old who eats like a seven-foot guy, so, yeah.”
“It’s part of my tenancy agreement that I’m not allowed to be claiming benefit. It’s part of the stipulation that they don’t want DSS people in the property, ever.”
This discriminatory yet commonplace practice, where private landlords refuse housing to tenants in receipt of benefits, has been denounced by many organisations, including Shelter Cymru, but is still legal in Wales and the rest of the UK.
Like Marie, Sian has a poor relationship with her landlord and her tenancy has involved maintenance issues. Wales’ private rented housing stock is the oldest in the UK.
“We’re only really living in half the house at the moment because of the leaks and damp.” Sian’s letting agent, who she is currently in dispute with and asks us not to name, have not been helpful.
“They mark it down on a sheet, and they nod, and they never take photos. They never respond. When I point out to them it’s got worse, they’re not bothered. I don’t bother to point it out to them anymore, I just let them walk around the property making marks on their sheets. They just kind of shrug their shoulders. When they have new staff they’ll comment on how bad it is, but nothing ever gets done about it.”
With Sian’s housing benefit payments – rolled into Universal Credit – not covering the cost of her rent, she has to make up around £75 each month from a meagre budget.
“It’s OK for now, but if this continues for a long time and they find out, it could actually put my tenancy massively at risk, because I’d be technically breaking the tenancy agreement by claiming.”
Eviction is an ever-present possibility:. “It can be quite a stress to think about really… I try not to think about it too much because it’s a depressing thought. I would be classed as homeless and that’s kind of a terrifying situation when you’re a single parent with a child, really.”
With the network of interlinked problems, childcare costs that have risen in Wales much faster than the rate of inflation*, housing costs that have soared in spite of a third of people living in poverty, and a system that discriminates against those receiving state support, the situation of parents like Marie and Sian is unbearable. But even young, single people without families are finding that the social fabric is unable to support them.
Kellie and Rebecca, who share a flat in Cardiff Bay, have experienced first-hand the exploitation our society enables for landlords, and the inadequacy of the support system.
The Penarth restaurant Kellie worked at went into liquidation in March, owing her £800 pounds in wages. The next job offer she received vanished as social distancing began. Kellie signed on to Universal Credit, but only receives the cost of rent and council tax, without anything for food and bills.
The pair realised that they were facing a struggle to cover their £830 rent, as well as high council tax and bills. They decided to ask for help from their landlord, as per Welsh Government advice, through a reduction or a pause on rent payments. As with many tenancies, the landlord remains anonymous, with all contact mediated through contracted agents, in this case the company Boulton & Griffiths.
“I had so little expectation, that I was really dreading sending the email,” Rebecca tells us. “Kellie had to nag me to send it, because I was just so pre-depressed – because I already knew how the conversation would go – that I just put it off. And then I did send the email, and that was the response I got, which was completely what I expected.”
The reply came from the agency that Rebecca and Kellie were entitled to request a rent reduction for three months, but that the full amount would still be due at the end of that period, so they’d be best not to reduce their rent payments by very much. But even if this temporary payment deferral was requested, the landlord wasn’t obliged to accept, said the agents.
“If I didn’t pay my full rent this month,” says Kellie, “the remainder would come three months after. I would still have to pay it and then the bills would have like, racked up. It’s stressful.”
Rebecca agrees. “It’s that extra layer of uncertainty. Everybody’s anxious at the moment, you know, everybody’s not sure whether they’re gonna have a job in a few months, whether they’re gonna get paid for their time. It’s that extra layer of worry.”
Not only was their response inadequate, the letting agents decided to take the opportunity to remind their tenants of the penalties and punishments resulting from non-payment of rent.
“They said it would potentially affect credit rating,” Rebecca tells us. “It would affect the landlord preference that we’d expect to get at the end of the tenancy and it would also affect our living situation, in terms of possible eviction proceedings starting.”
“There’s a sort of veiled threat to it,” says Rebecca, in shock and anger; “It exacerbates all the anxieties that you already had”
As with Marie and Sian, Kellie and Rebecca have had to endure numerous, costly problems with their furnished flat, such as faulty furniture and broken toilets that hiked their water bill to £100. These facts made no difference to the rigid demands for payment by the landlord and letting agent.
The pair are now facing the absurd predicament of living with parents in order to cut the cost of bills, so as to be able to afford the rent on an unoccupied flat.
“As far as I’m concerned, the power balance is wildly unequal,” says Rebecca, who is keen to see things improve for renters in Wales. “For them it’s going without a couple of hundred quid and for us it’s not having a roof over our head, not having our own living space, not being able to be comfortable.”
Rebecca – who has recently been involved in efforts to organise tenants – believes collective action will be vital: “I think that probably the priority, in the first instance, is to get everybody signed up to a union so that everyone can protect themselves in that way,” Rebecca says.
Renters lack a collective voice in Wales, with no tenants’ unions equivalent to Scotland’s Living Rent or the Acorn groups in England, except for one local branch of the latter in Ceredigion. Recently, renters have begun to take steps towards setting up a Cardiff branch too.
Unions can help people to demonstrate and improve their rights, and they can make rent strikes – the collective withholding of rent – a viable way to exercise control and prevent exploitation by landlords and letting agents. “It needs to be a really collective thing,” believes Rebecca, “otherwise landlords will just use it as an excuse to evict people.”
As of mid-April, 15,000 people in Spain had signed up to the ongoing rent strike there. In the US, where at least 12,000 began a rent strike on May 1, Democrat politician Ilhan Omar has proposed legislation to cancel rent and mortgage payments, which has been endorsed by at least eight other Democrats.
Rebecca wants to see “something positive,” she says, “that actually creates lasting change, as opposed to just anger for the sake of anger, that is eventually channelled into something damaging and not good for society. And I think younger people, in general, are more keen to do something positive than they are to do something negative.”
In Barry, Sian’s also in favour of the idea of collective action and demonstration. “I think there’s a lot of fear and anxiety among tenants about pushing for rent holidays in case they could get evicted,” she tells us.
“Personally, I think there’s a lot of merit to rent striking… if a lot of people get together and start doing these sorts of things it will force change. One or two people aren’t gonna make a huge difference but many, I think, could force a change.”
Part of the motivation for taking this form of action is the gross inequality that exists between renters and landlords.
In Flintshire, Marie describes herself as having been “a moneymaking scheme” for her landlord, having paid over £50,000 in rent over her tenancy. “And then you’ve got eight weeks to get out. I could have had a mortgage for that. And really, I’ve been paying for amortgage for six and a half years.”
Now that contagion measures have closed the courts, there will be no movement on eviction proceedings until at least June. But that doesn’t provide meaningful help to people facing evictions and unable to find new homes or afford new tenancies.
“You’re allowed a break on your mortgage. Well, my landlord could be getting a break on the mortgage, but I haven’t been offered one… Anything to do with rent should just be stopped, just like mortgages are stopped at the moment.”
There has been some emergency housing legislation put in place by Welsh Government, but many feel it is woefully inadequate and fails to protect vulnerable tenants. Described as a ‘ban on evictions’, it merely increased the notice period from two months to three, meaning that the threat of eviction and potential homelessness would still be hanging over the heads of people renting their homes.
“I don’t mind renting; I just feel you should have more rights… you shouldn’t be told in eight weeks’ time you’ve got to move. You should be told you’ve got six months, or however long.”
The Welsh Government is in the process of legislating a statutory six-month eviction notice period for renters, as part of the Housing Act (Wales) 2016, it but probably won’t come into force until April 2021.
“Why does it take so long, though,” asks Marie?
The question could also apply to the ban on agency fees, which took Welsh Government years to bring in, lagging behind even the Tory government in Westminster.
Jennie Bibbings manages campaigns for Shelter Cymru, the charity providing housing advice in Wales, and she told us that her organisation’s caseworkers received a high number of calls from people facing eviction during March as the effects and implications of Covid-19 mounted up.
“In theory, because housing’s devolved,[Welsh Government] can do whatever they want,” says Jennie. “[They’ve] got the ability to increase notice periods to six months, but they haven’t done it yet!”
Emergency changes to the legislation of housing, which is devolved to the Welsh Government, have followed those made by the UK Government to the letter. Mark Drakeford’s Welsh Labour government has seemed to wait for permission and instruction by Boris Johnson’s Westminster Tories at every stage of this crisis. In some ways, it seems like devolution has been suspended during Covid.
Bringing the six-month eviction ban into force right now would be the Welsh Government’s best option for the time being, Jennie says. “Because if you’re evicting people, you’re evicting people into- there’s the risk of homelessness, always. And the local authority homelessness services are massively stressed at the moment and they haven’t got places to put people. You can’t look for a new home during lockdown.”
But Jennie says there’s much more the Welsh Government could be doing too – for a start, backdating the so-called eviction ban in order for it to protect all of the people it is designed to, including those who were sent eviction notices before the legislation was passed.
There is another, hidden, threat to renters, too, Jennie warns. Since the closing of the courts has stalled legal eviction proceedings for the time being, some landlords are taking things into their own hands. “We’ve also had an upturn in illegal eviction calls as well,” Jennie explains.“Because, you know, some landlords try to bypass the legal process… [landlords] just try and change the locks, or send round the heavies.”
The law provides almost no protection for people who find themselves in this situation.
“It’s really rare to get any enforcement action” when this happens, adds Jennie. “If you try an illegal eviction, you don’t actually face any enforcement, you know, you may as well ‘have a go’, because, you know, the police aren’t interested, local authorities haven’t got – they’re the ones who are supposed to prosecute, but they don’t, cos they haven’t got the capacity.”
It’s shocking to hear how easily landlords are able to exploit their power over people paying high rents to live in otherwise unoccupied homes, due to weak legislation, disinterested police and underfunded local government.
For Marie, facing eviction while home-schooling six children Flintshire, the situation is wearing thin.
“I’ve always had people taking the mickey out of me,” Marie says; “I always end up paying people’s debts, that’s why I’ve got CCJs [County Court Judgements].” Years earlier, she was forced to take the fall for her ex-partner’s financial problems and reckless behaviour. During that time, she was visited by bailiffs during the Christmas holiday. Now, she must suffer for her landlord to reclaim the use of his assets, even after paying tens of thousands into a broken rental sector for years.
“I’ve come a long way now,” she says proudly. “I’ve saved a bit of money. I can afford things. I’ve never been in that situation before; men have always handled the money… so, I’m in a good place… but there’s no point having money if you’ve got no house, do you get me?” During our conversation, Marie’s humour and laughter have been irrepressible, but at this point her tone darkens.
“In my life, and I’m not saying ‘please feel sorry for me’, ‘cos I’m not, but I’m just saying, ‘cos I’ve been nice towards people, I’ve always ended up in bad situations. And I feel a bit like that now. I’ve been nice to them, and now I’m in a bad situation again… it makes me feel bloody angry to be honest with you.”
Told to leave after the fortune she has paid, and the abusive and discriminatory treatment she has suffered, during a dangerous, stressful crisis, has made this very positive and easy-going woman rather irate. “What normal people would give you an eviction on lockdown?” she asks incredulously.
“Moving house when you’re talking about, you can go down the shop and catch a virus – how the hell is that normal? That’s not right. And I don’t believe one person, even all these posh people in parliament would surely think that’s appropriate, but everything I keep seeing, that’s the impression you’re getting: that it’s OK.”
The issues faced by Marie, Sian, Kellie and Rebecca are not unusual. Many renters don’t have any confidence in their landlords and letting agents, and worry about the safety of their tenancies if they complain or even ask for help. Lots are understandably scared to speak to journalists about their situations – or they simply don’t have the time or mental space.
The power imbalance between people trying to live in rented housing, and those who own it, is huge. Wales is a nation where housing costs are ever increasing while wages are not. There is nowhere near enough social housing, and a huge amount of the new homes that are permitted are unaffordable to the vast majority of people, even if they saved up for a long time.
Our economy and society prioritises landlords’ right to make a profit over the individual’s right to a decent, affordable home and a sense of peace and security. Landlords are protected, tenants are vulnerable, and in spite of some gradual changes, government is ultimately on the side of landlords. Austerity from the Tories has made things much worse, but the Welsh Government have consistently failed to protect renters.
Now tenants are in danger from a new threat.. One in six workers in the UK is at risk of losing their jobs because of Coronavirus, and the chancellor Rishi Sunak has threatened to reduce furlough payments. In such circumstances, the sudden increase of pressure on people’s incomes is becoming impossible to withstand.
We’re seeing governments and businesses around the world choose profits and the economy over people’s health and lives, in some ways nowhere more than the UK. In March, businesses were allowed to remain open far longer than necessary, and large events like the Cheltenham Festival were allowed to continue in spite of scientific advice. Now there is enormous pressure from big business and their political advocates to return to normal, despite a stubbornly high Covid infection rate.
People who have no choice but to work are to be exposed to a lethal, contagious virus, and income support and rent relief has been withheld, while billions have been spent on bailing out large corporations in secret.
In this new reality, grassroots collective action has come to the fore. Wildcat strikes in Italy, America and the UK have forced employers to shut sites or put in safety measures. Renters themselves are a major part of the working class, and can take action together.
I ask Marie about the prospect of a large scale rent strike in Wales. “That would be fab,” comes the reply. “Why should we pay rent?”
Now may be the time for people to take their lives into their own hands. They are being forced to.
