Human rights at home
Guidance for social housing providers
Human rights have special significance in relation to social housing
Equality & Human Rights Commission
Quality of housing can have a huge impact on wellbeing. Inadequate housing increases the risk of severe ill health and disability; it can also lead to poor mental health, lower educational attainment, unemployment and poverty. The importance of housing is recognised in the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which includes 'the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate ... housing'. The United Kingdom is legally bound by this treaty. Protecting people's human rights in housing is therefore important in its own right.
If you work in social housing, this guide is for you. Poor housing can affect a person's health, work, education, relationships and life chances, which is why the right to respect for a person's home is in the Human Rights Act. By providing social housing in a way that is compatible with human rights laws, your organisation can make a positive difference to people's lives.
Guidance on the law
There have been a number of recent cases in British courts as well as the European Court of Human Rights concerning the housing rights of individuals. This can be confusing for social housing providers, so as we learn more about what human rights mean for tenants and their landlords, we want to help you get it right.
This guidance is intended to be a practical tool, to build your understanding and confidence in your ability to spot and deal with human rights issues. It provides examples of how human rights can be relevant throughout the housing journey from allocation to the termination of a tenancy. It also provides a checklist to help social housing providers review their policies and practices for human rights compatibility and address any issues effectively.
Who wrote the guidance?
The Commission has developed this guidance in close consultation with key stakeholders in the social housing sector across Britain. We would like to express our thanks to the advisory group for their invaluable help. We hope you will find it useful, and we look forward to working with you to bring human rights into the homes of your tenants.
Please click on the link to find the original article
For the social housing guidance document, please click on the following link:
EHRC - Human Rights At Home - Guidance For Social Housing Providers - March 2011
Slum landlords are back in Britain
The Guardian, 5 July 2011
Our investigations found dozens of tenants left in squalor by unregulated landlords – maybe a little red tape is a good thing
Tenants fear being made homeless if they complain about conditions. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
"To be honest, if someone came and inspected our houses, we wouldn't be able to rent any of them."
And with that, one lettings manager, secretly filmed for Channel 4 Dispatches, summed up how we are seeing a return of the slum landlord.
As part of our investigation, we infiltrated a property empire with hundreds of houses in the north of England. We uncovered vulnerable young families housed in appalling conditions; tenants being lied to and threatened with eviction; a landlord who boasted about his "thugs" and told our reporter how he would "quite happily" knock tenants' teeth out with a baseball bat.
But rogue landlords operate all around the country and we really didn't have to look hard to find them. Despite hundreds of housing regulations introduced in the past 40 years by both Labour and Conservative governments, these bad landlords are thriving, with complaints to housing charity Shelter about rogue landlords going up 23% this year.
Housing minister Grant Shapps told us that three quarters of all tenants were happy with their landlord. But the quarter who are unhappy are the poor and the dispossessed – many of whom don't know their rights. In the course of our investigation we found dozens of tenants living in squalor who didn't know where they could turn for help. One single mother called Hazel had lived in a house so covered in damp and mould that her eldest daughter's asthma deteriorated. It was unpleasant for our reporter, Jon Snow, and the rest of the team to be in the house for an hour, but the thought that an ill child woke up every day facing a wall black with mould is deeply disturbing.
After almost three years in a house unfit for human habitation, rather than deciding, after increasingly desperate appeals, to finally come and fix the damp, the landlord decided to increase the rent instead. When we asked Hazel if she had been to the council she looked blankly: "I was scared of complaining because I'm then thinking the landlord is going to get nasty with me and maybe throw me out."
We asked every council in the UK how many landlords they prosecuted for breaching regulations. The answer is, on average, fewer than two landlords in three years. And this at a time when government research shows that over 40% of private rented homes are in poor conditions.
The Labour government recognised that this sector was dangerously unregulated and commissioned an urgent review, carried out by Julie Rugg, an academic at the University of York. She told us councils were reluctant to take on bad landlords: "An environmental health officer might say, 'Look, 60 of these properties ... I could condemn them tomorrow ... but where are these people going to go?'
"The ability of the environmental health officer to react is undermined," she continued, "and in some cases they get actually quite dispirited because they know that other parts of the council aren't going to take any action."
This system isn't working, and it's only going to get worse as councils face severe cuts to their budgets.
The main proposal of the Rugg review was to create a national register of landlords. This would ensure a minimum standard for landlords and mean the worst could be banned. At the moment anyone, including a convicted criminal, can be a landlord – and it is almost impossible to prevent a persistent offender from renting out more properties.
The Labour government had started to develop concrete plans involving "light touch regulation" and landlords paying £50 a year to join the register. It didn't sound too burdensome. But within weeks of the 2010 election, Shapps announced that he was doing away with "red tape" and there would be no national register.
When it is estimated that billions go to bad landlords in housing benefit – the one we investigated received 80% of his rent in this way – you might have thought the government would want to make absolutely sure our money was well spent. And of course, the coming cuts to housing benefit will, most likely, push even more people to the bottom end of the market.
No one wants to punish good landlords, but what we have found must not be allowed to continue. Slum landlords are exploiting the most vulnerable and getting away with it in a largely unregulated market and, with a nationwide problem like this, a little "red tape" might go a long way
Please click to find original article
Top tips for private tenants
Citizens Advice Bureau
Are you a private tenant living in poor housing conditions? Here are some top tips to help you understand your legal rights and work out what action you might want to take.
- as a tenant, you have the right to have the structure of your home kept in good repair by your landlord. Heating and hot water systems must also be kept in working order. Details about repair responsibilities are usually set out in a written tenancy agreement
- there may be several ways of getting repairs or improvements done if you need them. But you should always check what type of agreement you have with your landlord before you complain about housing conditions. Your landlord may try to evict you if you ask for repairs to be carried out so you need to know how easy it would be for them to do this. If in doubt, get advice from an experienced adviser at your local housing aid centre, law centre or Citizens Advice Bureau
- the first step to getting repairs done is usually to talk to your landlord. It may be worth trying to negotiate with them, even if they do not have a legal duty to carry out a repair. Put your request in writing and keep a copy
- if talking to your landlord doesn't work, don't just stop paying your rent. You don't have the right to withhold rent and you shouldn't do this to try to force your landlord to do repairs. Your landlord could take legal action against you for rent arrears and you could lose your home
- if your property is in poor condition, your landlord may have broken the tenancy agreement or the law in not carrying out repairs. This means you may be able to take court action against them. But it's really important to get advice first, in case your landlord tries to evict you. If you do decide you want to take court action, you will need to give your landlord written notice of the repairs that need doing and you won't be able to start court action until you have given your landlord reasonable time to carry out the repairs
- if you think the condition of the property is either affecting your health or causing a nuisance to others, you should complain to the Environmental Health Department of your local council. They should investigate and they have the power to order your landlord to do the necessary repairs. Local councils also have a duty to take action against a landlord if they consider that housing conditions are not acceptable for people to live in. To find details of your local council, go to the Directgov website at: Please click this link. For more information about getting repairs done when you're a tenant, see Getting repairs done while renting