15 May Student Homes are where the dangers are
Mice, mould, parasites, and that’s all just under one roof. Privately renting University students may be walking into a health hazard the minute they decide to privately rent.
By Isla Russell, journalism student
Dead mice littering the kitchen floor, damp leaking down the sides of the living room wall, and mould infesting every crevice. What sounds like an abandoned building is actually a student home whose residents endure these shocking and dangerous conditions every day. Despite contacting their estate agent, landlord, and even environmental health, this is how they have been living for the past nine months and will be living for the foreseeable future.
According to a 2016 study carried out by the National Union of Students (NUS), 44% of UK students live in privately rented accommodation. Of this 44 %, 64% said that they had experienced issues with the management of their property. Ethan is just one of those students. He lives in a spacious four-bedroom house in South London with three of his friends and believed that he had found the perfect house. “only one of us had actually seen the house before we moved in” he told me. “The rest of us weren’t in the country so we saw it via a dodgy Skype call. We had been trying to find a house for months and were working with a letting agent to find us a home. We were so desperate to find somewhere I think our first mistake was not all viewing the house together”.
In London, the average student will pay upwards of £500 a month on rent. Ethan is paying £596. As he shows me round his house you’d think he was getting a bargain. His home consists of four spacious bedrooms, a small study, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. For a first house it’s impressive in size. “We had signed a two-year contract with a 12-month break clause. We had full intentions of staying here until we graduated”. After tirelessly looking for a new home it seemed like Ethan and his friends had found the perfect one.
“The issues began before we had even moved in. The day before we were set to move we got a phone call from our estate agent to say that our cooker had failed its gas safety test.” Under chapter 70 of the Landlord and Tenant Act (1985) “part of an unsafe house unfit for human habitation is if resources are not fully available for the preparation and cooking of food.” Despite this failure, the letting agency assured Ethan and his fellow tenants that the landlord was happy for them to move into the house and that a new oven would be fitted in due course. “We were so desperate to move in that we didn’t think about the issues that would come with having no cooker. It was at least a week before a new oven was fitted and we could finally cook something other than microwavable meals”.
Alice also privately rents in London; however, her home is a one bedroom flat she shares with her boyfriend in Camberwell. She told me “we were assured that all of the little issues with the flat would be fixed before we moved in. It’s now May and guess what? they’re still not fixed”. Her issues ranged from a broken tap in the bathroom to the boiler not working at all. Under section D of the model agreement for an assured shorthold tenancy provided by gov.uk landlords are obliged to “keep in repair and proper working order the installations in the property for the supply of water, gas, and electricity”. Admittedly the boiler was fixed within the week that Alice and her boyfriend moved in, however not having it in a perfect working condition prior to their moving date was a breach of this contract, and therefore created an unsafe living condition for herself and partner.
Despite getting her boiler fixed Alice continued to encounter issues. “The winter was very tough for us. The flat was constantly freezing due to the Victorian bay windows and dodgy radiators. Even worse, our bedroom ceiling constantly leaked when it rained. The winter felt so much longer in these gross conditions. On top of that, we had mice in the kitchen. Endless calls and messages got me nowhere but a series of ‘yes it will be fixed soon’ messages and on many occasions, I was told to expect a roofer to come around and took the day off uni and then nobody ever came”.
NUS found that 53% of students reported their most common issue was delays in repairs, and 34% said that they had issues contacting their landlord. There is no set time limit on how long a landlord has to respond to a tenant complaint, however Richard Blanco, a London based landlord, developer and member of the National Landlord Association, says “good practice is to respond promptly as it’s in the landlord’s best interest to maintain a good relationship with his/her tenant(s)”.
But not all landlords are set on maintaining such a good relationship with their tenants. In Ethan’s case, his landlord began to blame him for some of the issues he was encountering in his home. “A month into living in our house we got bedbugs. One of my housemates was coming out in horrible bites and had seen one in her bed. We immediately contacted our estate agent with the issue.” After a month of waiting to hear back, and a month of being bitten every night, they rang their estate agent again. “They told us that the landlord refused to pay for an exterminator as there was no proof that the issue was there before we moved in. He believed that we were the issue, the cheeky f***er. Jokes on him though because we found a nest of them in the corner of one of the bedrooms and bombarded them with images of it until they had no choice but to send someone out to deal with the issue”.
Ethan is very much someone who uses humour to help him deal with his housing issue. Despite cracking countless jokes at his and his housemate’s expense, his fidgeting and aversion of eye contact show his uncomfortableness as I probe him further about the issues in his house.
“Of course, after bedbug gate then came the mice and the mould. It was getting absolutely ridiculous. We were constantly being passed around from one agent to the next, so we never knew who we were contacting, and then when we did report issues there was no response let alone a solution to our issues. Our landlord refused to use the agencies workers to fix maintenance issues and instead sent round dodgy men who hadn’t a clue what they were doing”.
Alice can sympathise with Ethan’s struggle as she too knows how it feels to have what can only be described as “cowboy builders” fixing housing issues. “I had doubts about the people who were coming around to my flat to fix my issues. They didn’t seem like they were doing the job properly, but I was just happy that something was actually being done. One day I was feeling particularly stressed and it got too much. I burst into tears and started to look for more issues in the flat. I reached up to check the fire alarms were working properly and to my absolute horror, I took the carbon monoxide detector off the wall to see the person who fitted it hadn’t even put batteries in it”.
Alice is just one out of the one-third of students that NUS found didn’t have a working carbon monoxide detector in their home. According to the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) that the local authorities use to assess housing conditions “asbestos, carbon monoxide, or dangerous gas issues” are part of what can make a house hazardous meaning that having a carbon monoxide alarm that is not fully working is making a home hazardous to its tenants.
But what will the future be for these landlords that are prying on students lack of knowledge regarding the private renting market? Ethan tells me “our landlord is so sick of our constant complaining that he’s going to pay all the fees and let us out early. That’s not saying we will though. Finding a new house is hard and we’re definitely not going to rush into it like last time. But the sooner we find a house the better”.
Ethan and his flatmates have become accustomed to living with mice but feel embarrassed to bring people round. Alice feels the same; “I do love my flat but as soon as my contracts up I’m getting the hell out”.
A right to respond was sent to the National Landlords Association detailing the allegations set out against them in this investigation, however, no response was given.
