Unsafe, overcrowded, and illegally unlicensed HMOs (houses of multiple occupancy) are “endemic” in London, according to Roz Spencer, Head of Service at Cambridge House’s renter advocacy programme Safer Renting.
Shocking revelations in BBC documentary on criminal HMOs in London
The hidden and brutal reality – overwhelmingly impacting the bottom-end of the market or the ‘shadow private rental sector’ – has been laid bare in a recent documentary by the BBC which revealed the shocking conditions that “children and people with health issues” face, not least due to the “trauma attached to it”, Roz stated.
The documentary – ‘For Rent: Rooms Under the Radar’, which is available on BBC iPlayer – gives a devastating first-hand account of the stories that likely capture the lives of tens of thousands in the capital, the sixth richest city in the world, including a death due to a fire in a heavily and illegally overcrowded bedroom.
The documentary, which aired on Friday, 1 August, led to a host of media attention, including BBC News at 6, BBC Radio 5 Live, and BBC Radio London.
BBC News also filed a report, which details the shocking revelations made by the documentary.
Roz appeared as a guest on BBC Radio 5 Live, saying that we are seeing “rampant increases in rent… stripping far ahead of wage inflation, creating a shrinkflation effect” where homes decrease in size, but costs increase.
One client of Safer Renting’s, a cancer patient having chemotherapy, was living in an overcrowded property with a high turnover of tenants and living with carpet lice, Roz shared with the BBC, saying: “Anything that is bad that you can imagine is going on.”
The full interview can be heard here, which is bookmarked at the start of the feature at 1:21:10.
There exists an unacceptable data gap on the scale of illegal evictions
Roz also joined Jumoké Fashola on BBC Radio London saying there is an “unacceptable data gap” on the scale of illegal evictions – a problem that is rampant in the HMO sector, particularly at the bottom end of the market, with no government data collection apparatus in place.
Previous analysis from Marks Out of Tenancy, a property research firm, shows that just 0.2 percent of illegal evictions end in the renter receiving compensation.
“It is more expensive to evict someone lawfully, than it is to evict someone illegally, even
if you get caught”Roz told BBC Radio London
Police forces “classify illegal eviction as a civil offence when it’s actually a criminal offence” she continued, “everything goes wrong from that point onwards, the police decline to step in” while “austerity has stripped away resources so local authorities are no longer in the position to enforce [the law]”.
The full interview with BBC Radio London can be found here. It is bookmarked at the start of Roz’s interview from 3:11:21.
