housing

On Monday (June 4), Manchester Solidarity Federation demonstrated outside the head office of Fortis Student Lettings in Altrincham, near Manchester.

It was an action in solidarity with a group of tenants renting in Chester through this letting agency. Fortis had allowed unacceptable delays in carrying out basic maintenance resulting in tenants living, for example, with damp and mould, or without hot water for months: https://www.facebook.com/pg/ fortishorrorstories/posts/. The tenants are now asking Fortis for compensation and the agency keeps ignoring them or to engage in any attempt at mediation.

After trying unsusscefuly to talk to someone from the Fortis management, we went ahead with our picket outside their office. With a banner, a megaphone and leaflets, we spread information about the dispute and received lots of supporting messages from the public, including plenty of toots by vehicle drivers.

In October 2017, Brighton Solidarity Federation was organising with a tenant who was facing a £344 deduction from their deposit after moving out of a house administered by the lettings agency The Property Shop in Kemptown. The tenant approached Brighton SolFed for support to organise a public campaign against this, which concluded successfully with full replayment to the tenant after around one month of actions. Below, the tenant tells the story of their experience of this situation, as well as of the public campaign.

Brighton Solidarity Federation has concluded its campaign against the student lettings agency G4Lets. The campaign was in support of two groups of tenants who had just over £3000 deducted from their deposits. One group of tenants had £2000 taken from their deposit for fire safety, redecoration, and pest control, in spite of an Environmental Health Report from the council informing G4Lets that these issues were their responsibility to resolve as part of landlords' general obligations to the properties they let out. Another group of tenants had £1080 taken from their deposit for cleaning and redecoration, in spite of the fact that they cleaned the property before leaving it, and had it professionally repainted, which they had an invoice for as evidence.

This week's Badger - the student newspaper at Sussex university - reported on our campaign against the G4 Lets. The agency - who specialise in renting to students made a group of students live in squalid conditions, the responsibility for which the local council’s Environmental Health Report placed firmly on the shoulders of the lettings agents. The tenants had to live in mice-infested, unsafe accommodation for a year, and then had £2000 illegitimately deducted from their deposit for these costs. Here we reproduce the full account written by one of the tenants, as well as our response to claims G4 Lets make in the article.

Watch the tenants from our dispute with G4 Lets explain that an Environmental Health Report shows that G4Lets neglected their legal decoration, fire, and pest control duties, then charged the tenants for decoration, fire, and pest control.

(Click 'read more' for the full story)

As the public campaign continues to grow, Brighton Solfed are being contacted by other local people who have had similar experiences of the mismanagement of properties by Youngs. In one instance, there were distressing and disruptive consequences for the everyday lives of a couple and their son.
A family living in Kemptown had to suffer raw sewage flowing through their home after unidentified damage to a pipe from flats above - and Youngs failed to investigate the damage until after that their floorboards were sodden and underfloor troughs were filled with dirty water. 

We're calling our second demo against Youngs letting agency this Saturday, for instigating a revenge eviction against Patrick rather than fixing the serious problems with his flat.

In this short video, Patrick talks about what it's been like being a tenant of Youngs - you'll understand why we're calling for safe living conditions.

Short clip from emergency protest against Youngs agency, 13. January 2018,  in support of tenant facing a revenge eviction

Brighton SolFed is continuing its campaign against local letting agents G4 Lets into the new year, as the agency has not yet made an adequate offer to meet the demands of two groups of tenants. Both groups are asking for the return of their deposits and for compensation. In one instance, tenants were charged for pre-existing damage to the house they were living in, which was damp and infested with vermin throughout their tenancy; in the other, tenants have been charged for wear and tear and for redecoration costs, even though they had the interior of the property repainted professionally before they moved out.

Brighton Solidarity Federation has started a dispute with the letting agency Youngs on Upper St James's Street. Two tenants have been organising in regards to structural damp, presence of severe black mould and overall dilapidation issues that created unsafe living conditions - dangerous to the tenants' health - throughout their tenancies at two separate properties managed by Youngs. Both tenants are demanding compensation for such issues and one of them, who is still living in the property, is urgently requesting that a number of neglected and still unresolved problems are attended to by the agency.