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Comment by fj39dkf | Hacker News Reader

He evicted us because he could rent it out for more money.

Something about your comment makes me think there's more to this story.

Nothing at all. Paid on time every time and basically decorated the place. Went on the market for £100/month more the moment the tenancy expired and he evicted us.

The guy ran umbrella companies to hide his assets and address and to rip people off, got caught going through our stuff.

He’s still a landlord and has been the director of about 12 companies now in the last 20 years all dissolved.

Who’s the bad one? Hmm

Edit: also the place we had after that I rented for 11 years with no problems direct from landlord and they were excellent and we were excellent back.

> Who’s the bad one? Hmm

And you basically did a disservice to all his future tenants by not reporting him to the police after being caught by you illegally accessing your home and destroying your property? By not reacting you basically silently allowed him to keep doing this. I would understand that he had some kind of power over you and you were afraid to react and report him, but you choose to confront him by being asshole to him, without doing the right thing and reporting him to whatever authority in UK is responsible for this.

Because of that, both of you are bad, though he is a bit worse.

Please don't scold people like this on HN. Threads here are for good conversation, and scolding makes conversation bad.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Actually it's not quite that easy. If you think anyone even gives a crap about this sort of stuff then you're mistaken. Even today.

Firstly, I spoke to the police and they said they couldn't do anything because I likely couldn't prove he was snooping and couldn't prove that it wasn't against the terms and it wouldn't be worthy of their time investigating it and it was probably a civil or contractual issue. "go see a solicitor". Which I couldn't afford.

Secondly, local housing officer was contacted and I was asked to attend the local council about it and I sat there for 4 hours and was told to go home because they had run out of time. I got a letter apologising and attempts to get a second appointment were fruitless.

This was option three.

This was one of the points in my life I realised there is no magical state run safety blanket who will protect you from dickheads.

Sounds familiar. I have some friends suing their old landlord for essentially walking off with their entire deposit (several thousands of £). They moved out of that place more than a year ago - the case is still working its way through the courts. Nothing is simple.

Oh screw that. Come into my home when I'm not there, and enter my 2 year old daughter's room? If the police don't see that as a crime, it's vigilante time. The chances your landlord wasn't attempting some creepy perverted shit is zero to none.

Have you considered some of the landlord's actions might not have been illegal? Anyone from the UK that can chime in on this? Is there an authority responsible for this?

Here's a clause from a U.K. (England and Wales) lease agreement that is pretty standard:

35. Landlord's Covenant for Quiet Enjoyment

The Landlord covenants with the Tenant, that, so long as the Tenant pays the rents reserved by and complies with the obligations of this lease, the Tenant shall have quiet enjoyment of the Property without any interruption by the Landlord or any person claiming under the Landlord except as otherwise permitted by this lease.

There are clauses covering emergency entry for repairs (e.g. burst water pipes, leaking gas) in short-term rental agreements but - as others have said - they require "reasonable" notice in almost all cases aside from dire emergency, and the tenant can still refuse entry.

I don’t know abounthe UK but I’m pretty sure I’ve had a lease agreement when I was a student that gave the landlord the right to enter at Will.

It could still have been illegal, but it was definitely in the lease.

It's not quite that straightforward here in the UK. Well it is but the other way. The landlord has no right to enter a property outright. The property is for exclusive enjoyment by the tenant according to law. They can give 24 hours' notice and enter to do repairs etc but you can refuse that outright and they have no rights beyond that without taking you to court.

If they turn up unannounced this is actually harassment under UK law.

We had some rather unpleasant slum landlords between the 1950s and 1970s which caused a few laws to be introduced. Unfortunately the nature of being a landlord seems to attract certain people who find new and creative ways to be dicks. Not the majority of landlords I will say who are mostly pretty good, but enough to cause problems.

> If they turn up unannounced this is actually harassment under UK law.

They probably have to do this repeatedly to meet the threshold for harassment.

You might be interested in the not very good movie "Pacific Heights" about a psychopathic tenant, if you want to see a fictional telling of how bad it can get for a landlord.

I certainly understand how bad it can get for landlords. I'm not excusing any bad tenants here for sure. I will at least read the synopsis for that film :)

If you ever get stuck with another terrible landlord, it might even give you some ideas. :)

Hahaha that's never a good thing :)

Doesn't have to be. That landlord move was so popular here in Toronto, that they outlawed it.

For example, $75k in fines:

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/02/24/landlord-fined-7...

Totally agree. Good to hear this level of enforcement is taking place.

Why? I agree some of the actions are taking it too far, but this part is not that far-fetched. It happens.

I thought I went too far for a few years to be honest. Now I realise that no protection whatsoever was afforded to any private tenants back then other than taking the landlord to court which was expensive, time consuming, resulted in unpaid days off work and generally a waste of time. The moral high ground doesn't necessarily drive the point home either.

Now we have a deposit scheme in the UK which stops landlords doing this because the deposit is held in trust. The landlord has to prove it. Therefore there's escrow and a third party involved. Not being in this scheme is illegal and results in fines that go directly to the tenant as well.

This action is not necessary now, but changing the locks still is because it's your personal space and security and you genuinely don't know who has access to that unless you do it. Could even be the previous tenants with key copies.

There are two types of eviction in England: section 8 (non-payment of rent) and section 21 (no blame).

There are strict protections around section 21 during the "fixed term" (normally 6 months to a year), but after that it's pretty easy to get tenants out even if they've done nothing wrong, and it's common to evict tenants, re-paint, then re-let the property at a big markup.

If you're a tenant in England it's probably a good idea to talk to the landlord each year about a small rent increase.

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