Landlady Helena McAleer has launched an important petition that every right-minded citizen of this country should support.
Many readers will have heard of landlords rejecting benefit claimants – but few will have realised that behind that lies a policy of many banks to reject or terminate finance agreements with landlords who accept claimants as tenants.
In the introduction to her petition, Ms McAleer writes:
Some banks refuse mortgages to buy to let landlords who let to welfare recipients. My bank instructed me to “seek an alternative tenant” if I wished to keep my mortgage because my tenant was a welfare recipient.
The government must close these loopholes, as they are a breach of basic human rights.
A survey of 1,137 private landlords for housing charity Shelter in 2017 found that 43% had an outright ban on letting to such claimants (welfare recipients).
This isn’t only because landlords are discriminatory, many banks prohibit landlords from renting to reliable tenants just because of their circumstances. Welfare recipients are not 2nd class citizens they deserve access to safe, secure, habitable, and affordable homes as is their Human Right.
Please sign and share this important petition, which has been released website just today.
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Done. 103 signed so far.
Not sure what good it will do though, banks being virtually a law unto themselves.
Buy-to-let landlords (unfairly enabled by preferential lending and tax relief) are the biggest cause of the house price bubble, the dearth of affordable houses and the high cost of mortgages for first time buyers.
A massive building programme of quality social housing causing prices and rents to fall dramatically is a fair solution to the problem in my view.
Bankrupt landlords are a small price to pay.
Likewise. It’s up to 305 now, 75 mins later…
Universal Credit won’t help matters regarding landlords receiving payment directly (Will it help anything?) but remember that by far the biggest portion of the welfare bill goes on housing.
Rents have increased mainly due to avaricious landlords charging exorbitant rents to get their massively-leveraged portfolios paid off. THEY are the parasites – NOT the Low-paid, disabled and unemployed what have no choice but to rent from the parasites.
Banks refusing to lend; thinking it ‘irresponsible’? Pull the other one – it’s got a handmade Italian shoe on the end of it!! If the banks wanna lend – they’ll lend. That’s how the last crash happened, remember.
I cannot sign, I’m afraid.
This country is just a f***ing nightmare!
I think nationalised banks and heavily regulated markets will in the end be essential to make socialism stick permanently – without both we’ll just be nipping at the ankles of neoliberalism. The housing market is trivial in comparison.
Once we’ve proved that economic instability isn’t a law of nature there’s no reason the essentials of life including housing, power, transport, food and connectivity shouldn’t be provided free to everyone as of right.
It may take a revolution to get there but if the throttling of the view from the left on social media increases that may be just the trigger we need.
Good idea. but anyone who may disagree has something wrong with their mind? Arrogant & nasty.
Huh?
Huh?