Written evidence submitted by Mr Devinder Kumar [EXA 027]
I'd like to submit evidence for the Exempt Accommodation Inquiry.
Over the last years number ** has operated as an
as an HMO it was used to house students which caused some noise issues when they held parties.
However, it is in its latest incarnation in housing vulnerable adults that the real, frightening problems started. I've listed a few things that we have experienced in the last 12 months
Domestic violence
My wife and I were woken one night by muffled screams coming through the walls, however we put this down to one of the neighbours watching TV or horror films. On the following Sunday morning the residents called police and ambulances. One of the residents had beaten his girlfriend-she had taken several blows to the face; her nose was smashed; her lips were bleeding and her eyes were swollen. The police took away the boyfriend. I spoke to one of the residents as they milled around outside the property. Apparently, all the residents were aware that the boyfriend was abusing his girlfriend but only chose to intervene when he tried to strangle her in a communal area. This led to brawl and police were called. He told me that most residents were originally housed in London via a housing association but had been displaced to Birmingham.
Rent to Rent
I telephoned the landlord and he told me that he knew none of the tenants and he had not been told of any of the events that had taken place at his property. The tenants had all been placed by a letting’s agency under a 'rent to rent' deal. The landlord had been promised a rental income which he was receiving. So, what has happened here? As has been the case with another house I have written to you about (**********), the lettings agency has been able to bring in, en masse, vulnerable adults from other cities and house them in Birmingham. Due to the letting’s agency claiming to meet loosely defined care and support services, their tenants can be exempt from housing benefit caps and therefore can charge much higher rents when compared with normal landlords. The lettings agency is keeping the difference between what they receive in inflated housing benefit and what they pass on to the landlord. The rent to rent sector is problematic because it creates perverse incentives; lettings agencies are effectively incentivised to house as many vulnerable adults in a property and withhold any problems from the landlord.
Lack of protection and support for vulnerable adults
All the events I have described here have happened within the last 12 months i.e. within various levels of Covid lockdowns. Why is this relevant? I understand that tenants are meant to have been afforded extra protection from eviction during the Covid lockdown, however once I had made the call to the landlord to describe the domestic violence event, every single one of the tenants was removed and replaced within a fortnight. I am being hypocritical because I wanted those tenants removed, they frightened us, however their swift removal serves to show how broken the system is; these vulnerable adults are just being shunted from city to city, property to property without adequate support which is having an adverse impact on longer term residents.
On the 11th of January, I was awoken by one of the neighbours; he was crying and looked dishevelled. He begged me for money, and I gave him £5 as he said it was an emergency and he needed to visit his sick mother in another part of Birmingham. He promised he would pay me back when he got his benefits on Thursday. He didn't pay me back. He came back twice within a week later this time asking for £10 but I refused and told him not to come back at all - the second time I closed the door and 5 minutes later he was still there on my doorstep crying. Where was this man's support?
The impact of substance abuse and drug dealing
A common theme throughout the last 6 months has been the amount of drug use predominantly marijuana and alcohol; no matter how many tenants have come and gone there is always a smell of marijuana. With one couple, the smell of marijuana was so bad it seemed to be coming permeating through the walls into the room we were using as our 11-month-old baby's nursery. We had to take him out of the room - this was heart-breaking as we had decorated this room to be his nursery.
The drug use goes hand in hand with drug dealing; tenants are either having drugs delivered to the doorstep by dealers who speed around the neighbourhood dropping off at various other HMO and exempt properties or the tenants are dealing themselves. In the case of the latter, cars pull up outside the house and the dealer runs outside leaning into the window, making a very quick exchange with the car speeding off having "picked up".
Pre-Covid the police were holding Neighbourhood Tasking Group meetings in which they discussed how their priorities were aligned with those of the community. The Sergeant at the time said that due to their lack of resources they would be focussed on crimes for which they had warrants. PCSOs would look after everything else but, can’t; we have passed on multiple instances of dealing to the police however those vehicles continue to do the rounds in the neighbourhood. Having so many drug dependent people in one neighbourhood makes it easier for the dealers and ultimately there will be trouble as they try to grab market share.
The threat and fear of violence
********** are my neighbours at number *************. One day ******* knocked on my door in a distressed condition, she had been walking back home from a GP appointment and had looked up at an upstairs window at number ** due to the shouting and smell of drug use. The man who lives in that room with his girlfriend saw her look up and started hurling abuse at her through the window and threatened to come outside and ‘sort her out’.
It was this same man and his girlfriend that I had to call the police about 2 times (26th December 2002 and 14th January 2021) as we witnessed the same pattern of behaviour develop and escalate over the course of a few days. Muffled arguing became shouting matches, shouting matches moved from the bedroom to the shared space and back as the male followed his partner around the house; the girlfriend shouting for him to stop following her. Door slamming shook our house and eventually we could hear sweary threats of violence and screams for help at which point I had no choice but to call the police.
I grew up at Douglas Road in Handsworth, which is on the same block as Albert Road where Darren Constantine murdered Julie Webb by beating her to death in January 2019; they were in an abusive, drug-blighted relationship and housed in exempt accommodation. I can easily see this happening again at ********** or elsewhere in Birmingham. Why are the Council allowing the housing of abusers and abused in the same properties? This is the oppositive of care and support. Why is one dysfunctional couple being replaced with another in number ***********?
The amenity of the area
A drive around the neighbourhood shows that the proliferation of exempt properties and HMO has resulted in bin blight. Properties that are meant to have black bag collections have wheelie bins that can’t be pulled back on to properties. Waste presented incorrectly goes uncollected only to added to week after week until bins overflow and the rubbish blows around the neighbourhood; the Waste Management Service say it’s not their responsibility to clean up after landlords but neither should the rest of the neighbourhood suffer.
January 2022