So far I have managed 4 months at the first place and 1 year at the second place. Speaking of places... place your bets now on how long I lasted at place number 3!
Did I mention I have M.E and Fibromyalgia? Extreme tiredness, fatigue and muscle pain from hell. Just what I need, moving around like some kind of traveling hobo.
My life was this time humped into the back of a horse box and Land Rover and driven 26 miles away to, as I mentioned, the arse end of nowhere.
I made myself comfortable, killed 7 HUGE spiders, went to the local shop (that'll be an hours drive then), got myself pizza and beer and went back 'home'. I can't say anywhere I have lived has even closely resembled a home.
There was no room in the fridge for even my pint of milk and you guessed it, there were huge spiders everywhere, every single room. It was freezing cold, the heating didn't work. Tesco (an hour away) sold small fan heaters for a tenner. So fuelled on pizza and a cup of tea I headed back out to try and heat the igloo.
When I got back with my heater which had miraculously and ironically climbed to £20 in the hour it took me to get there the landlord was home. It suddenly struck me that he was in fact really odd and quite scary.
We settled down to sort out the tenancy agreement and the deposit and rent in advance.That was all sorted and I went to bed. Well, I walked into my bedroom and it was a scene from arachnophobia. There were 2 vents in my bedroom, sorry, 1 vent and 1 hole. The vent was to the outside and spiders were crawling through it, HUGE spiders. The hole was into the roof space, there were spiders crawling out of that too.
I went back into the lounge and watched some TV, I also watched the spiders in there too, 1 climbed into my handbag. I have never seen anything like that in my life and hope to never again!
Something on the mantlepiece caught my eye. A gun. A real gun. A Beretta M9 to be precise. Landlord saw me looking and confirmed "oh yes, it's real".
I was now really quite concerned. I went to bed and no word of a lie, I could hear the spiders OUTSIDE my bedroom door running along the laminate of the hallway. I say it's no word of a lie because I wondered what that "tic tic tickety tickety tickety tickety" noise was so opened my bedroom door and proceeded to watch 3 massive spiders run down the hallway. One ran towards me. I leapt onto the bed and it ran under my bed. Oh dear god, I think I know why he has a gun now!!
Freezing cold, spiders everywhere, literally everywhere, a really weird landlord and a gun. Yep, I was in the car in my pyjamas at 3am. Not a clue where I was going I just went and went and went.
I managed to cleverly get lost and was on a dual carriageway heading to god knows where. I rang and rang and rang my boyfriend and he eventually answered and with many apologies from me and some road sign help he managed to figure out where I was and guide me to his house where I stayed for 2 days. On the 3rd day I went back to the Hammer House of Horrors, collected my things and left. Landlord was pissed and kept my deposit.
Over the next 3 weeks I spent every single day driving miles and miles trying to find somewhere to live. Live with the boyfriend? Don't be daft, he's a massive commitment phobe and once hinted I could well be a gold digger. Don't even begin to ask me why I was with him. I eventually found a couple in a very small village not a million miles away from my bloke. They were Christian, very friendly and welcoming, had 2 lovely dogs and some farm animals. The rent was too much for me but they liked me and said if I was prepared to do some gardening and dog sit if they wanted a night or weekend day out they would lower the rent, it still would be really expensive but just about manageable. Why wouldn't I take it?!
My car was loaded up and I moved... again.
Wednesday, 23 July 2014
Landlord Number 2 - Perfect... for a while
Landlord number 2. Lovely chap with a nice house, garden and 3 cats. I was a bit put off lodging with men after my last experience but Landlord number 2 was gay so I felt very safe and was happy to have some lovely kitty cats to play with and keep me company!
For quite a few months things were excellent, we got on really well and became friends, I was introduced to the family and all was tickety-boo. The only down side in all of this was my previous landlord bombarding me with phone calls and text messages every single day, several times a day and night. He would not leave me alone. He was wanting my address. 1 minute he was aggressive, the next he was begging me to help him from fixing his PC to lending him some money. It was disturbing and the last time he rang me I told him he had to stop harassing me or I would go to the police.
Thankfully he did not ring again that night. I tried to pop to the local chemist to get a prescription but the road was closed due to a fatal accident. On my way home I did think about dropping into the police station to chat about my last landlord or to even go to his house and tell him face to face to leave me alone but I left it in the end hoping the message had sunk in and it seemed to have. I didn't hear from him for the next 3 days.
My landlord became quite unwell with stress, depression, anxiety and previous medical issues and had taken time off work, it was looking long term so he purchased himself a puppy. On the drive to get this puppy I received a text message. It was from my last landlords mother stating that he had been run over and killed whilst cycling to work. I instantly burst into tears from shock and my landlord who was driving at the time was really confused as he knew all about my landlord and the constant phone calls. I was absolutely devastated. It didn't take long for me to put 2 and 2 together and realise that night the road was closed was because my landlord was laid dead in it.
I went to the funeral 2 weeks later and I was also called into the police station to give evidence as I was the last person he spoke to before he died and there was a reasonable amount of evidence (from me and 2 others) that he may have committed suicide. The guilt I felt was horrific. I hated myself. To this day, 2 years later the police investigation is still ongoing as to what really happened.
So, we had a new puppy in the house. Although very cute I was not too pleased with the constant chewing of my belongings, poo, vomit and wee in the house to clear up and the bin spread over 3 rooms almost every day.
It soon became apparent that Landlord number 2 had some pretty big money issues and a bit of a nutcase ex boyfriend. The solution came in the form of another lodger, who was also gay. We all went out to lunch and got on very well. My landlord fancied him... uh oh. I knew this wasn't going to end well but what can I do?!
It did not last long before things went wrong and I found myself piggy in the middle. The new lodger did not like the puppy, he was pretty annoyed about the pooping, bin emptying and chewing of items and tensions between lodger and landlord started to form. The lodger was also a Pagan. I don't have a problem with this, I do however have a problem with a cauldron in the back garden and rituals and spells being performed, creepy is an understatement.
If that wasn't bad enough the landlords ex boyfriend appeared (from America) one day and brought a dog back and left it there (originally the dog was theirs when they lived together). The dog was lovely, no fuss at all and I really bonded with her. She had been abused and used as a puppy farm so it was important to get her weight up and have her trust humans again.
Landlord then went back to work leaving me to look after a puppy, a nervy dog and 3 cats. I'm sorry I was wanting a room to rent not a full time job which I paid to experience!!
Landlord announced one day that his ex was moving back in. We didn't have to go anywhere immediately but we should look for somewhere else to live. Fireworks erupted between other lodger and landlord, I was literally cornered in the kitchen with no escape.
That eventually all fell through so landlord got back on the dating scene and me and the lodger started to 'enjoy' the company of random men being brought back to the house who the landlord had only just met, literally for a coffee... "come back to mine, stay over". I had 1 guy walk into my bedroom at 2am thinking it was the bathroom and he barely spoke a word of English!!
The other lodger now also had money problems and things were tight. I felt sorry for him, the upset the landlord had caused us both was quite a strain and me and the other lodger got on really well. So I decided to cook us all a big roast dinner. I love cooking, it sucks cooking for 1 so I thought it would be great to bring us all together as well. That went down like a 10 ton sack of poo. Lodger accused me of treating him as a charity case and was pretty vicious.
I then had the landlord wishing ME to apologise so he didn't lose his lodger!! With an enormous sigh I wrote the lodger a letter apologising for... well I'm not quite sure what, my kindness? It didn't really help to be honest, the lodger had had enough and was in a foul mood every day after that. I even got him a birthday cake, card and some presents which was awful, he said thank you and went straight back up to his room. That hurt quite a lot.
The lodger then moved out, apparently it was all my fault! The random men, terrorising puppy, 3 cats and another dog, threats of being kicked out etc were not a problem but me cooking him dinner was the problem. Yep, I totally follow that one.
Things settled down a little between me and the landlord but I was pretty nervous about his issues with dating. He seemed to go on a date, invite them straight back to the house and then ask them to move in, all that in less than 24 hours. Naturally I was not welcome as a lodger if he got into a relationship, so every date I was thinking "oh, this is it, homeless by tomorrow morning".
A small aside which I won't go into too much as it really upsets me just thinking about it (and my god we haven't even got onto Landlord Number 4 yet) is that the landlord did not look after his pets at all. The amount of times one of the cats was hurt and needing veterinary treatment he just did nothing. To him the latest Samsung mobile phone or tablet was top of his priority list rather than a cat with the fur and skin ripped off it's back... yes that really did happen.
I had been here almost 1 year when the inevitable happened. Landlord went on a date, fell in love in 1.7 seconds and he was ditching the house to move in with his new boyfriend and child. I was given less than a months notice.
That landlord was such a nice person he even dumped all but 1 of his animals. The puppy and the 3 cats were thrown away to people and rescue centers like an old used toy that wasn't wanted any more.
I had to find somewhere to live, clear out my garage and find somewhere for that and raise money to move, remember, I am DSS scum of the earth so I always get shafted for several months rent in advance *IF* I manage to find someone to actually take me!
I viewed and viewed and viewed and viewed and spent almost £200 in petrol alone for viewings, I looked at over 50 places and 49 of them refused me as I did not work. I had 1 offer. It was in the middle of nowhere, the landlord was creepy weird, the house was a mouldy horrible place full of massive spiders but the rent was reasonable. I had no option.
A friend of mine stored everything from my garage at his workshop for a nominal fee each month and he also moved me as well, super!! All the paperwork, deposit and rent up front would be done that night when Landlord Number 3 came home from work...
As Willie Nelson once sang "On the road again...."
For quite a few months things were excellent, we got on really well and became friends, I was introduced to the family and all was tickety-boo. The only down side in all of this was my previous landlord bombarding me with phone calls and text messages every single day, several times a day and night. He would not leave me alone. He was wanting my address. 1 minute he was aggressive, the next he was begging me to help him from fixing his PC to lending him some money. It was disturbing and the last time he rang me I told him he had to stop harassing me or I would go to the police.
Thankfully he did not ring again that night. I tried to pop to the local chemist to get a prescription but the road was closed due to a fatal accident. On my way home I did think about dropping into the police station to chat about my last landlord or to even go to his house and tell him face to face to leave me alone but I left it in the end hoping the message had sunk in and it seemed to have. I didn't hear from him for the next 3 days.
My landlord became quite unwell with stress, depression, anxiety and previous medical issues and had taken time off work, it was looking long term so he purchased himself a puppy. On the drive to get this puppy I received a text message. It was from my last landlords mother stating that he had been run over and killed whilst cycling to work. I instantly burst into tears from shock and my landlord who was driving at the time was really confused as he knew all about my landlord and the constant phone calls. I was absolutely devastated. It didn't take long for me to put 2 and 2 together and realise that night the road was closed was because my landlord was laid dead in it.
I went to the funeral 2 weeks later and I was also called into the police station to give evidence as I was the last person he spoke to before he died and there was a reasonable amount of evidence (from me and 2 others) that he may have committed suicide. The guilt I felt was horrific. I hated myself. To this day, 2 years later the police investigation is still ongoing as to what really happened.
So, we had a new puppy in the house. Although very cute I was not too pleased with the constant chewing of my belongings, poo, vomit and wee in the house to clear up and the bin spread over 3 rooms almost every day.
It soon became apparent that Landlord number 2 had some pretty big money issues and a bit of a nutcase ex boyfriend. The solution came in the form of another lodger, who was also gay. We all went out to lunch and got on very well. My landlord fancied him... uh oh. I knew this wasn't going to end well but what can I do?!
It did not last long before things went wrong and I found myself piggy in the middle. The new lodger did not like the puppy, he was pretty annoyed about the pooping, bin emptying and chewing of items and tensions between lodger and landlord started to form. The lodger was also a Pagan. I don't have a problem with this, I do however have a problem with a cauldron in the back garden and rituals and spells being performed, creepy is an understatement.
If that wasn't bad enough the landlords ex boyfriend appeared (from America) one day and brought a dog back and left it there (originally the dog was theirs when they lived together). The dog was lovely, no fuss at all and I really bonded with her. She had been abused and used as a puppy farm so it was important to get her weight up and have her trust humans again.
Landlord then went back to work leaving me to look after a puppy, a nervy dog and 3 cats. I'm sorry I was wanting a room to rent not a full time job which I paid to experience!!
Landlord announced one day that his ex was moving back in. We didn't have to go anywhere immediately but we should look for somewhere else to live. Fireworks erupted between other lodger and landlord, I was literally cornered in the kitchen with no escape.
That eventually all fell through so landlord got back on the dating scene and me and the lodger started to 'enjoy' the company of random men being brought back to the house who the landlord had only just met, literally for a coffee... "come back to mine, stay over". I had 1 guy walk into my bedroom at 2am thinking it was the bathroom and he barely spoke a word of English!!
The other lodger now also had money problems and things were tight. I felt sorry for him, the upset the landlord had caused us both was quite a strain and me and the other lodger got on really well. So I decided to cook us all a big roast dinner. I love cooking, it sucks cooking for 1 so I thought it would be great to bring us all together as well. That went down like a 10 ton sack of poo. Lodger accused me of treating him as a charity case and was pretty vicious.
I then had the landlord wishing ME to apologise so he didn't lose his lodger!! With an enormous sigh I wrote the lodger a letter apologising for... well I'm not quite sure what, my kindness? It didn't really help to be honest, the lodger had had enough and was in a foul mood every day after that. I even got him a birthday cake, card and some presents which was awful, he said thank you and went straight back up to his room. That hurt quite a lot.
The lodger then moved out, apparently it was all my fault! The random men, terrorising puppy, 3 cats and another dog, threats of being kicked out etc were not a problem but me cooking him dinner was the problem. Yep, I totally follow that one.
Things settled down a little between me and the landlord but I was pretty nervous about his issues with dating. He seemed to go on a date, invite them straight back to the house and then ask them to move in, all that in less than 24 hours. Naturally I was not welcome as a lodger if he got into a relationship, so every date I was thinking "oh, this is it, homeless by tomorrow morning".
A small aside which I won't go into too much as it really upsets me just thinking about it (and my god we haven't even got onto Landlord Number 4 yet) is that the landlord did not look after his pets at all. The amount of times one of the cats was hurt and needing veterinary treatment he just did nothing. To him the latest Samsung mobile phone or tablet was top of his priority list rather than a cat with the fur and skin ripped off it's back... yes that really did happen.
I had been here almost 1 year when the inevitable happened. Landlord went on a date, fell in love in 1.7 seconds and he was ditching the house to move in with his new boyfriend and child. I was given less than a months notice.
That landlord was such a nice person he even dumped all but 1 of his animals. The puppy and the 3 cats were thrown away to people and rescue centers like an old used toy that wasn't wanted any more.
I had to find somewhere to live, clear out my garage and find somewhere for that and raise money to move, remember, I am DSS scum of the earth so I always get shafted for several months rent in advance *IF* I manage to find someone to actually take me!
I viewed and viewed and viewed and viewed and spent almost £200 in petrol alone for viewings, I looked at over 50 places and 49 of them refused me as I did not work. I had 1 offer. It was in the middle of nowhere, the landlord was creepy weird, the house was a mouldy horrible place full of massive spiders but the rent was reasonable. I had no option.
A friend of mine stored everything from my garage at his workshop for a nominal fee each month and he also moved me as well, super!! All the paperwork, deposit and rent up front would be done that night when Landlord Number 3 came home from work...
As Willie Nelson once sang "On the road again...."
Thursday, 17 July 2014
Landlord Number 1
I left my last blog post as I was about to move in with Landlord Number 1 on a snowy day in January 2012.
My first problem was trying to fit my entire life into a bedroom. I had done a sterling job of reducing my 'junk' over the years before moving and in my temporary storage unit I thought I had done really well, apparently a suitcase or two would have been better. At £55 per week for storage I applied for a council garage, problem number 1, I was not entitled to a council garage as I was only a lodger. Thankfully my landlord heard my phone call conversation (this would become an issue) and he said he had a garage as his house was council. He simply called the council and 'pulled some strings' and got me a garage, voila problem solved, my £55 per week storage unit was cleared and put into the garage which was a much more affordable rate of a mere £27 per month!
Problems 2-about 500. The state of the house. My bedroom was filled with fruit flies, when I say filled I really mean it, they were everywhere. The problem was my landlords obsession with buying everything in the reduced aisle of Morrisons, cramming it into the fridge and leaving it there to rot. The fridge was like a path lab at Porton Down.
Some comments on this photograph from my Facebook friends;
"What the f**k is that?"
"there is life Jim but not as we know it ...."
"Wear a bio-haz suit in there..."
So I had nowhere to keep food, yet another expense, I bought myself a desktop fridge, kettle and toaster to store in my bedroom. I couldn't use the kitchen, it was filled with leftover food and bubonic plague, this chilli had been there for 3 weeks, surprisingly there was no mould, perhaps even mould was too disgusted to grow there?
So I took up glamping in my bedroom and lived off Super Noodles;
So now you know what the kitchen was like, here is the lounge, a place to kick back and relax;
Some more Facebook comments;
"How do u sleep on that bed?!"
"Like a bat?"
So back onto the garage, a few days after I moved my bits n bobs into the garage I received my confirmation with a covering letter which stated I was entitled to the garage as I was co-habiting with my partner. My partners name was my landlord! Freaked out I asked my landlord what was going on and ohhhh my goodness he flew off the handle, at that point I realised my landlord had a few mental health issues. Terrified I took myself in a taxi to my boyfriends house for a few days.
I called the council and put them straight that I was not his partner, I was a lodger and did not know him and certainly did not like him. Problem number.... 50? 167? 3,412? The house was council (well local housing association), he was not allowed to sublet. For several weeks I thought I was going to be homeless but thanks to a very kind lady at the council she realised I was in a terrible situation and wrote a letter to me and my landlord as confirmation that he could sublet. What my landlord did not know was that I had every intention of leaving ASAP and had been searching for a new place since day 1 of moving in! The council knew this and they were happy that I would be out soon and as soon as that happened they would disallow him to sublet in the future, they really were fantastic and very understanding towards me.
Over time there were many many issues. My landlord would open the door and walk into my bedroom from 5am till gone midnight. I asked him if I could fit a lock on the door and again he flew off the handle. One day I opened my bedroom door to find him walking up the stairs in just his underpants grinning at my like a deranged idiot. I shut the bedroom door and he tried to open it, I was scared. I was continually looking for somewhere else to live but the same issues kept coming up, I was on benefits and no-one wanted me, I was treated like scum.
Eventually I found out the problem about me being on benefits, there were, as I found, 4 types of people.
1 - Thinks anyone on benefits is a scrounger and despises them for "stealing their money"
2 - Doesn't want to declare a lodger to avoid tax on the money and an increase in council tax, me being on benefits means they cannot get around this
3 - Doesn't like the idea of someone being in the house constantly as they don't work, thinks I probably deal drugs
4 - The rare type who doesn't mind
I have also discovered that there are 2 reasons why people want lodgers;
1 - They are desperately in need of the money
2 - They want their own personal slave
Landlord Number 1 was in serious money trouble, less than 24 hours after I moved in bailiffs came to the door over him not having a television license. £145 out of my wallet later and they were sorted. He did not take the money off my rent as he said he didn't have a television, that presumably included the 2 televisions in the house that were his which he watched every night.
Back onto the troubles with Landlord Number 1. He stayed up late into the night watching pornography at an audible volume. I invested in ear plugs.
He frequently became aggressive with me and constantly asked me for extra money and an advance on the rent. If I said no he would threaten me with eviction. One night he locked me out of the house and I had to call the police.
He constantly told me he knew my boyfriend and his family and said he was trouble and no good for me. He would come into my bedroom, sit on my bed and beg me to leave my boyfriend. I spent many nights with my boyfriend as I was too scared to go 'home'. It wasn't a home, it was a living nightmare.
One day when I had had enough I weighed up the cons of just fitting a lock without his permission. My boyfriend came over to do this and my landlord seemed mildly agreeable especially when I stated he could keep my deposit, a hefty £450.
2 days later I came back from the shop and my landlord had unscrewed the door lock and hidden it. At that point I had bought a motorbike for transport so I went to Toolstation and purchased 3 more door locks and simply put them back on when my landlord removed them. I had had enough at this point and was going to look at rooms all over the place and literally begging people.
One day I found a really nice but tiny room, it was a converted single garage. The landlord seemed lovely, despite his advert stating absolutely no DHSS (FYI to discriminatory people, DHSS doesn't even exist anymore, for several years, so get your facts right!!), so no DHSS but he waived that as I loved animals, he had 3 cats and I also loved gardening and he seemed happy to take me on so I had found somewhere to live, I was shocked, excited, happy and ultimately scared about how Landlord Number 1 would take it.
The answer to that was BADLY. Items were thrown around, he was screaming, shouting, then crying, he literally fell to the floor crying, grabbed my leg and started to beg me not to go. I did still feel sorry for him, he was a very messed up guy and deep down I know he was a good kind person, he was a very lonely old man being screwed over for money by some Russian girl he 'met' on Facebook, he was literally sending her almost every penny he earnt on a promise that she was coming over to marry him, I really did feel dreadfully sorry for him.
The next day he was angry man, the day after he was even angrier man, he became threatening and started to slam doors and just randomly shout "RARGHHH" around me to intimidate me. At my wits end I decided that maybe I should be angry myself. I shouted out everything that I had to put up with as a PAYING lodger, I put him down, insulted him, call him every name under the sun, said I was leaving and that's that, he's walking away with my deposit and he should be grateful I was not involving the police. He told me that he would leave me alone if I left him with an extra months rent to give him time to find another lodger. I agreed and handed it over in cash the same day, I was that desperate. Originally it was going to be a month before I moved into the new place but my landlord moved that up by 2 weeks.
So 2 weeks later my boyfriends Land Rover was once again loaded up and I moved in with Landlord Number 2, it was the end of May 2012, I had lasted 4 months there and trust me when I say it was 4 months too long!
To be continued...
My first problem was trying to fit my entire life into a bedroom. I had done a sterling job of reducing my 'junk' over the years before moving and in my temporary storage unit I thought I had done really well, apparently a suitcase or two would have been better. At £55 per week for storage I applied for a council garage, problem number 1, I was not entitled to a council garage as I was only a lodger. Thankfully my landlord heard my phone call conversation (this would become an issue) and he said he had a garage as his house was council. He simply called the council and 'pulled some strings' and got me a garage, voila problem solved, my £55 per week storage unit was cleared and put into the garage which was a much more affordable rate of a mere £27 per month!
Problems 2-about 500. The state of the house. My bedroom was filled with fruit flies, when I say filled I really mean it, they were everywhere. The problem was my landlords obsession with buying everything in the reduced aisle of Morrisons, cramming it into the fridge and leaving it there to rot. The fridge was like a path lab at Porton Down.
Some comments on this photograph from my Facebook friends;
"What the f**k is that?"
"there is life Jim but not as we know it ...."
"Wear a bio-haz suit in there..."
So I had nowhere to keep food, yet another expense, I bought myself a desktop fridge, kettle and toaster to store in my bedroom. I couldn't use the kitchen, it was filled with leftover food and bubonic plague, this chilli had been there for 3 weeks, surprisingly there was no mould, perhaps even mould was too disgusted to grow there?
So I took up glamping in my bedroom and lived off Super Noodles;
So now you know what the kitchen was like, here is the lounge, a place to kick back and relax;
Some more Facebook comments;
"How do u sleep on that bed?!"
"Like a bat?"
So back onto the garage, a few days after I moved my bits n bobs into the garage I received my confirmation with a covering letter which stated I was entitled to the garage as I was co-habiting with my partner. My partners name was my landlord! Freaked out I asked my landlord what was going on and ohhhh my goodness he flew off the handle, at that point I realised my landlord had a few mental health issues. Terrified I took myself in a taxi to my boyfriends house for a few days.
I called the council and put them straight that I was not his partner, I was a lodger and did not know him and certainly did not like him. Problem number.... 50? 167? 3,412? The house was council (well local housing association), he was not allowed to sublet. For several weeks I thought I was going to be homeless but thanks to a very kind lady at the council she realised I was in a terrible situation and wrote a letter to me and my landlord as confirmation that he could sublet. What my landlord did not know was that I had every intention of leaving ASAP and had been searching for a new place since day 1 of moving in! The council knew this and they were happy that I would be out soon and as soon as that happened they would disallow him to sublet in the future, they really were fantastic and very understanding towards me.
Over time there were many many issues. My landlord would open the door and walk into my bedroom from 5am till gone midnight. I asked him if I could fit a lock on the door and again he flew off the handle. One day I opened my bedroom door to find him walking up the stairs in just his underpants grinning at my like a deranged idiot. I shut the bedroom door and he tried to open it, I was scared. I was continually looking for somewhere else to live but the same issues kept coming up, I was on benefits and no-one wanted me, I was treated like scum.
Eventually I found out the problem about me being on benefits, there were, as I found, 4 types of people.
1 - Thinks anyone on benefits is a scrounger and despises them for "stealing their money"
2 - Doesn't want to declare a lodger to avoid tax on the money and an increase in council tax, me being on benefits means they cannot get around this
3 - Doesn't like the idea of someone being in the house constantly as they don't work, thinks I probably deal drugs
4 - The rare type who doesn't mind
I have also discovered that there are 2 reasons why people want lodgers;
1 - They are desperately in need of the money
2 - They want their own personal slave
Landlord Number 1 was in serious money trouble, less than 24 hours after I moved in bailiffs came to the door over him not having a television license. £145 out of my wallet later and they were sorted. He did not take the money off my rent as he said he didn't have a television, that presumably included the 2 televisions in the house that were his which he watched every night.
Back onto the troubles with Landlord Number 1. He stayed up late into the night watching pornography at an audible volume. I invested in ear plugs.
He frequently became aggressive with me and constantly asked me for extra money and an advance on the rent. If I said no he would threaten me with eviction. One night he locked me out of the house and I had to call the police.
He constantly told me he knew my boyfriend and his family and said he was trouble and no good for me. He would come into my bedroom, sit on my bed and beg me to leave my boyfriend. I spent many nights with my boyfriend as I was too scared to go 'home'. It wasn't a home, it was a living nightmare.
One day when I had had enough I weighed up the cons of just fitting a lock without his permission. My boyfriend came over to do this and my landlord seemed mildly agreeable especially when I stated he could keep my deposit, a hefty £450.
2 days later I came back from the shop and my landlord had unscrewed the door lock and hidden it. At that point I had bought a motorbike for transport so I went to Toolstation and purchased 3 more door locks and simply put them back on when my landlord removed them. I had had enough at this point and was going to look at rooms all over the place and literally begging people.
One day I found a really nice but tiny room, it was a converted single garage. The landlord seemed lovely, despite his advert stating absolutely no DHSS (FYI to discriminatory people, DHSS doesn't even exist anymore, for several years, so get your facts right!!), so no DHSS but he waived that as I loved animals, he had 3 cats and I also loved gardening and he seemed happy to take me on so I had found somewhere to live, I was shocked, excited, happy and ultimately scared about how Landlord Number 1 would take it.
The answer to that was BADLY. Items were thrown around, he was screaming, shouting, then crying, he literally fell to the floor crying, grabbed my leg and started to beg me not to go. I did still feel sorry for him, he was a very messed up guy and deep down I know he was a good kind person, he was a very lonely old man being screwed over for money by some Russian girl he 'met' on Facebook, he was literally sending her almost every penny he earnt on a promise that she was coming over to marry him, I really did feel dreadfully sorry for him.
The next day he was angry man, the day after he was even angrier man, he became threatening and started to slam doors and just randomly shout "RARGHHH" around me to intimidate me. At my wits end I decided that maybe I should be angry myself. I shouted out everything that I had to put up with as a PAYING lodger, I put him down, insulted him, call him every name under the sun, said I was leaving and that's that, he's walking away with my deposit and he should be grateful I was not involving the police. He told me that he would leave me alone if I left him with an extra months rent to give him time to find another lodger. I agreed and handed it over in cash the same day, I was that desperate. Originally it was going to be a month before I moved into the new place but my landlord moved that up by 2 weeks.
So 2 weeks later my boyfriends Land Rover was once again loaded up and I moved in with Landlord Number 2, it was the end of May 2012, I had lasted 4 months there and trust me when I say it was 4 months too long!
To be continued...
Thursday, 10 July 2014
A bit of history and Landlord Number 1
I am going to start this by going back and giving you a brief history. It may well come across as arrogant and me showing off but I am simply looking back with fond memories and pride, something I have very little of these days.
I moved out of the family home at 19 and into my first flat. Less than a year later I was working 3 jobs and I bought my first house (with a mortgage of course). I moved around a lot making healthy profits on homes I lived in and found it was a good way to make money and only have 1 job. Soon enough at the age of 26 I owned almost outright a 5 bedroom town house. Big and impressive but unfortunately I had not researched this one well enough, it was in the biggest hell hole of Milton Keynes. I lost a LOT of money selling it to escape, quite frankly, with my life.
I found myself in a small 1 bed maisonette in I quote "the nicest place to live in Milton Keynes". Somehow my motorcycle still got stolen there and police cars were a regular sight.
It was sometime in 2007, a year after moving to "the nicest place in Milton Keynes" that I started to fall asleep at work. This progressively got worse and worse and I honestly just thought I had worked myself into a slump and needed to rest for a while, especially to stop moving house (11 times in 6 years).
Fast forward to 2010 and I was diagnosed with M.E/C.F.S which at that point was pretty debilitating and getting rapidly worse.
I lost my job in 2011 and could not find a job as I quite literally couldn't get out of bed. Stupidly I had no sickness protection on my mortgage so things started to go bad.
I eventually sold my flat in January 2012 and moved to Dorset for a quieter life for some R&R. I had booked myself into a B&B as I couldn't manage to secure a place to live due to not being able to travel, I was going to rent as I had used up most of my savings by not getting onto the benefit system as I thought this was a short term thing. I thought it would be easy....
I very quickly (if reluctantly) got onto the benefit system and was told to pop back for housing and council tax benefit when I had found somewhere to rent.
At least 50 estate agents and private landlords refused to rent to me because I did not work, even though I was offering 6 months rent in advance, happy to sign a 1 month rolling contract and give a hefty deposit.
I went to the Council for help with getting on the council house register... apparently there is none "for someone like me", I felt like an illegal alien. I had moved voluntarily so was entitled to nothing particularly because I had no local connection to the area. I was then told that even if I found a house to rent I would not receive housing benefit!!! WHAT?!! I am under 35 years old, that is the age someone, somewhere thought up to have as a cut off point. A cut off point for what? If you are under 35 years old you are only entitled to rent a room in someone elses house and thus will only be paid a very small amount of housing benefit for being a lodger. A quick note on this, you get £58 a week for a room to rent. That's roughly £230 a month. Rooms to rent are anywhere from £325 - £500 a month. Eating was clearly not going to be a priority then!
I had no option, I was forced to be a lodger.
Back to the first problem now... no-one wants a benefit scrounging scumbag avoiding work (this is how the government, Daily Mail, a LOT of people and Jeremy Kyle view 'people like me'). With my smart suit on, references, a CRB check in hand and a clear criminal record I clearly was either dealing in drugs or about to commit a murder, I have to say the latter did cross my mind on several occasions over the way I was spoken to.
I eventually found someone to rent me a room. He was weird with a capital W and lived in what I thought was perhaps a housed branch of the local rubbish tip. Apparently he was an ex ghurka, he was a live in landlord, single and in his 50's so I (a single 31 year old woman) would be sharing a house with some weirdo I had never met before that had no legal requirement to be checked out before renting a room to someone. Scared... MUCH!! With no-where else to go and a massive B&B bill I had to take it and hope something else came along, preferably a woman looking for a lodger. So I moved in on a snowy day in January 2012.
To be continued...
I moved out of the family home at 19 and into my first flat. Less than a year later I was working 3 jobs and I bought my first house (with a mortgage of course). I moved around a lot making healthy profits on homes I lived in and found it was a good way to make money and only have 1 job. Soon enough at the age of 26 I owned almost outright a 5 bedroom town house. Big and impressive but unfortunately I had not researched this one well enough, it was in the biggest hell hole of Milton Keynes. I lost a LOT of money selling it to escape, quite frankly, with my life.
I found myself in a small 1 bed maisonette in I quote "the nicest place to live in Milton Keynes". Somehow my motorcycle still got stolen there and police cars were a regular sight.
It was sometime in 2007, a year after moving to "the nicest place in Milton Keynes" that I started to fall asleep at work. This progressively got worse and worse and I honestly just thought I had worked myself into a slump and needed to rest for a while, especially to stop moving house (11 times in 6 years).
Fast forward to 2010 and I was diagnosed with M.E/C.F.S which at that point was pretty debilitating and getting rapidly worse.
I lost my job in 2011 and could not find a job as I quite literally couldn't get out of bed. Stupidly I had no sickness protection on my mortgage so things started to go bad.
I eventually sold my flat in January 2012 and moved to Dorset for a quieter life for some R&R. I had booked myself into a B&B as I couldn't manage to secure a place to live due to not being able to travel, I was going to rent as I had used up most of my savings by not getting onto the benefit system as I thought this was a short term thing. I thought it would be easy....
I very quickly (if reluctantly) got onto the benefit system and was told to pop back for housing and council tax benefit when I had found somewhere to rent.
At least 50 estate agents and private landlords refused to rent to me because I did not work, even though I was offering 6 months rent in advance, happy to sign a 1 month rolling contract and give a hefty deposit.
I went to the Council for help with getting on the council house register... apparently there is none "for someone like me", I felt like an illegal alien. I had moved voluntarily so was entitled to nothing particularly because I had no local connection to the area. I was then told that even if I found a house to rent I would not receive housing benefit!!! WHAT?!! I am under 35 years old, that is the age someone, somewhere thought up to have as a cut off point. A cut off point for what? If you are under 35 years old you are only entitled to rent a room in someone elses house and thus will only be paid a very small amount of housing benefit for being a lodger. A quick note on this, you get £58 a week for a room to rent. That's roughly £230 a month. Rooms to rent are anywhere from £325 - £500 a month. Eating was clearly not going to be a priority then!
I had no option, I was forced to be a lodger.
Back to the first problem now... no-one wants a benefit scrounging scumbag avoiding work (this is how the government, Daily Mail, a LOT of people and Jeremy Kyle view 'people like me'). With my smart suit on, references, a CRB check in hand and a clear criminal record I clearly was either dealing in drugs or about to commit a murder, I have to say the latter did cross my mind on several occasions over the way I was spoken to.
I eventually found someone to rent me a room. He was weird with a capital W and lived in what I thought was perhaps a housed branch of the local rubbish tip. Apparently he was an ex ghurka, he was a live in landlord, single and in his 50's so I (a single 31 year old woman) would be sharing a house with some weirdo I had never met before that had no legal requirement to be checked out before renting a room to someone. Scared... MUCH!! With no-where else to go and a massive B&B bill I had to take it and hope something else came along, preferably a woman looking for a lodger. So I moved in on a snowy day in January 2012.
To be continued...
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