A new report, published this week, suggests councils are telling renters who have been served with eviction orders to remain in their rented homes until bailiffs come, in an effort to keep them off the homelessness register. Councils are legally obliged to provide emergency housing if a tenant becomes homeless. Landlord Sarah*, 59, from southern England, says she experienced this with tenants at her rented property and says the council did not support her. She spoke to Charlotte Lytton.
I first became a landlord by accident around 20 years ago, deciding to rent my house after meeting my now-husband and moving in with him. I never had any problem with tenants – until a single mother moved in. I felt for her; I’d been a single mother too. But from the moment she arrived, there were problems I wouldn’t have imagined in my worst nightmares.
Her boyfriend moved in with her – something I had not been told of prior – and started dealing drugs from the house in the quiet cul-de-sac. He was quite terrifying, showing no regard for me, or what had been my home. They wouldn’t put rubbish out for the bin collections and would instead set it on fire in the tiny garden, to the dismay of my former neighbours.
They also quickly amassed dogs, chickens and cats – all in a small two-bed – it filled up like Noah’s Ark. I was refused access to do gas safety checks, but through the windows I could see how badly damaged things were becoming, and my heart just sank.
It became obvious that things were wrong quite quickly. The first month after she moved in, the rent she was due to pay (a third, from her benefits and the rest from the council) didn’t appear, so I contacted the council.
I would ring the landlord liaison officer – appointed by the council for private landlords – only to be told: “Sorry there’s nothing we can do.” They just didn’t seem interested and told me to wait a few months to see what happened in case things got straightened out by themselves.
I waited, then got in contact again to tell them that nothing, of course, had changed. At that point, the council said that they would pay the full amount on the tenant’s behalf because they didn’t want the couple to have to leave – I think this is because they knew that no one else would take them if they found out what they were really like.
The police had also contacted me multiple times after calls from frustrated neighbours witnessing drug dealing, while the RSPCA had been sent round to address the animals too. On one occasion, when I attended with the police, the tenant’s boyfriend was hanging out of the window saying: “You’re never going to come into this f—-ing house”.
The council then suggested that I sign over my house to them (the council), for ‘guaranteed rent’. Essentially that’s when you let the council take it over for five years and they organise renters on your behalf – and say they’ll cover repairs at the end. But there was no chance I was giving them any more control over my home and who was in it when I felt they had already let me down so badly.
I filed a section 21 notice [a ‘no-fault’ eviction] meant to end a tenancy without a reason. Section 21 notices will be abolished from 1 May 2026, which is meant to protect landlords from bad tenants by ensuring that they will be evicted after two months, but this was refused.
Along with the stress of constantly chasing a council who didn’t seem to care, my husband was diagnosed with kidney cancer and told that he needed a life-saving operation. I was getting constant messages from my old neighbours, who were distraught. One of them had a heart attack and told me it was because of the stress of the people living in my former home.
When things passed the one-year mark, and with my husband’s surgery imminent, I decided to call in the bailiffs. I couldn’t afford to waste any more money on going through the courts or getting a solicitor, so I did it all myself. I was completely exhausted and felt let down by a council that I thought should have been protecting me.
The tenants were given a few hours’ warning that the bailiffs were arriving so they scarpered, leaving two cats in the house and the heating on full blast.
By the time I went through the front door for the first time in more than a year, the place was in a horrific state. The ceiling had fallen in, the dogs had eaten the kitchen; there was about a tonne of aggregate in the garden and no back door. Every remaining door was broken; the kitchen was burnt out and there were cigarette butts lining all the windows. I just broke down, it was so horrendous.
The damage was so bad that I couldn’t renew the house insurance, and ended up spending £10,000 to put in new floors, new doors, and clear the debris from the garden. They also left me with three County Court Judgments over unpaid water bills totalling £2,000, which I’d never been made aware of as the letters, addressed to me, were being sent to the tenants.
It wasn’t easy putting the place up for rent after they’d left because I just thought, ‘I cannot go through that again’. Still I needed the income, and I now have a lovely tenant. When she goes, though, I’m selling – I will never, ever rent again, and I’m not the only one.
I know of lots of landlords who feel the same, and one by one they’re getting rid of their houses. I don’t know what the Government hopes to achieve: they’re not building new homes fast enough, so there’s going to be a huge shortage of rental properties. The situation is just going to implode on itself.
The Renters’ Rights Act comes into effect on 1 May in England, which will allow tenants to leave with two months’ notice, and end discrimination against renters with children or benefits. But there’s plenty of renters in groups on social media who discuss how to fleece landlords – and, in my experience, the system seems set up to protect them. A lot of landlords are nice, just people who have an idea of making an investment and retiring, but the experience ends up becoming crippling.
I never bothered taking the bad tenants to court – it would have been pointless. You can’t get money where there is none. I’m in a couple of landlord groups and I always say to those going through the same thing: “Just get your house back and just put it right, because you’ll move on”. Sometimes, you just have to cut your losses.
*Name and some details have been changed
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