One of the reasons I wanted to start a blog was screaming into the void of the internet catharsis. I don’t plan for many posts to be this ranty, but I have been meaning to document and share this story for a while.
I was lucky to not have to deal directly with landlords until I was 22 years old, having lived with my parents and in subsidized student housing during my undergraduate education, in the relatively affordable locales of St. Louis, Missouri and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I went to the University of Oxford in the UK to do a PhD (a “DPhil,” they call it there). One year of student housing was mandated by my scholarship, and after this I formed a group with some friends to do a houseshare in private housing, as was the norm. In the UK, which is notorious for having some of the lowest quality housing stock in Western Europe, there are relatively few apartment building with studios or small one/two-bedroom apartments. Everything is a house, often terraced (sharing walls). Student houses were just regular houses with every room except the kitchen and maybe a small living room turned into a bedroom.
Houseshares were from four to over eight people typically, and there were dedicated rental agencies focused only on students. In the UK, local municipalities (“councils”) collect revenue in part from “council tax,” which to my understanding is assessed on the estimated value of the home, akin to property tax from a US perspective. Strangely to me, though, this tax is assessed on the occupants of the property, not the owner—and students are one population that are exempt from council tax. But all occupants of a student house must be students; if one has a job, then that individual is liable for the whole council tax of the property. It’s not paid by the property owners and then trickled down to the rent. And when a student house is vacant, the property owners are back on the hook for the council tax. This is in part a strong division between “student” and “non-student” rental properties and housing agencies in the UK.
I was the “lead tenant” for a group of six, meaning I was the main contact with the agency and for signing contracts, etc. We found a decent-looking property for us, a typical terraced house. We visited it and it seemed like a good location, fit, and price. The housing agent was the “North Oxford Property Services”, or NOPS for short, but the owner of the building was a separate entity, the “Rent Guru.” “Ollie the Rent Guru” if I remember correctly. Cringe, indeed.
We then signed and forked around 8,000 GBP combined for the deposit, first month’s (maybe more) rent in advance, along with nonrefundable fees (which were made illegal by the council the following year). We were also told the house was due to undergo renovations over the summer before we moved in (red flag!). It seemed dated, like virtually all infrastructure in the UK, but plenty good enough for our us in its pre-renovation state.
By this point I had been moving around various sublets in Oxford, staying a few weeks at a time in any given place. I was often in the neighborhood of our new rental home, and stopped by to check on the renovations since I’d seen they had started. I chatted up who seemed to be the foreman of the operation and mentioned I’d be moving in when they were done, and he invited me in to see the works.
The house was definitely being renovated, no doubt, and was an active construction site—but the foreman assured me it would be ready in time for our move-in date. I was a bit suspicious as the only other workers seemed to be a few quite young Welsh lads, who appeared to just be living in the house while they “renovated” it that summer.
The weeks went by and they didn’t leave. Eventually, it was our move-in day. Being frugal students, none of us were in a position to pay rent at two places for a while for the move—our other contracts/sublets expiring the same day meant at least a few of us had to move in somewhere that day. We went to NOPS to collect the keys and move our stuff in before doing the inventory later in the day.
We arrived to the property and were dismayed, to say the least, that the construction didn’t seem to be finished. But instead of anticipating this and making alternative arrangements, the “Rent Guru” just plowed ahead and figured it was totally fit to live in, and we could just move in and maybe have a slight discount on rent until the renovation was done. It looked like this:
Someone from the “Rent Guru” was there to gush about how sorry they were as we unlocked the doors and walked in. The “construction” crew was still there, in the active process of grabbing their tools and belongings and heading out the door, as we were supposed to be moving in.
Then the foreman grabbed me and said “by the way, we weren’t able to get to the structural work on the beam supporting the bedroom on the top floor, so you can’t go up there.” He then pulled out a cordless driver in front of me and drove three long wood screws through the door for the stairs up to that bedroom, drilling it shut directly into the doorframe.
One of the young workers tried to hide his bong from my view as he took it out of one of the bedroom. I have no problem with recreational drug use but maybe refrain from it while you’re supposed to be structurally reinforcing a building?
We were off to a great start—not only was our new home an abandoned construction site, but we just lost access to an entire bedroom in front of our eyes. I took the liberty to snap some photos, including the back garden which they had literally turned into a wasteland:
The whole place had nails sticking out, disabled smoke detectors, exposed electrical wiring, holes in the wall, unattached doors, literal piles/skips of rubbish lying about, no furnishings (contract was for furnished house), doors screwed shut and blocked off, etc.
I managed to chat up a neighbor, also in a student house, who explained how extremely inconsiderate and poorly managed the construction crew had been.
With our evidence, we stormed back into the NOPS agency office, demanding an explanation and a solution for an alternative place to live.
They didn’t believe us. They said we were making it up, stop, you’re being silly, don’t complain. I showed them the photos, and they quieted down some… one grabbed the keys and his moped and rode over to take a look himself.
I explained that clearly the property was not in a condition to be lived in, and that we required the keys to an alternative property that day to move into for at least a temporary solution.
By this point the office had realized there was some palpable tension in the air and the manager came over to us.
She explained that if we weren’t “satisfied” with the condition of the property and refused to move in, that we could instead sleep in the homeless shelter that night. I am not kidding, she said this after we had collectively transferred several thousands pounds into their accounts, months prior, and then they failed to uphold their end of the contract. She was like, yeah, screw you, go sleep in the homeless shelter, you whiny students.
I maintained my position, saying I would not leave their office until I had the keys to another property in hand.
By this point, the moped property scout had returned, and confirmed “yeah it’s pretty bad,” an extreme statement by British standards.
After some heated arguments and raised voices, we emerged with a key to a smaller property nearby that could work as a temporary solution, and the agreement that we would not owe rent until we moved in to some eventual final location.
Over the next weeks we went back to the office many times to sort things out, eventually managing to nullify the cancel with Rent Guru and go to a NOPS property, but in a way that tried to hide from Rent Guru that NOPS was effectively taking their business.
Around a month later, we finally managed to move into another house in the neighborhood—much smaller than the original one we signed for. And we were greeted by the lovely artificial odor of cooking gas. Yes, the gas oven had been left on unlit, for who knows how long. We suspect it may have been from the “gas safety” inspection which is required on many UK rental properties, though this had been a couple weeks prior. We turned off the gas to the stove, opened all the windows and doors and went outside to sit on the street, and contemplated on how housing agencies can be so unfathomably incompetent at their farcical job of “providing housing.”
While we managed to make the house work for us, it was six months (into a twelve-month contract) before we had a key to the back alleyway, so that we could lock our bikes securely in the back garden - I had to make a personal request to the Oxford city council to have a key made for the alley behind the house (it was locked with a burly iron gate due to crime and drug use in the alley by non-residents). NOPS had apparently lost their key and didn’t care to get a new one. All of our bikes were stolen one night when locked in the front of the house, before we were able to get access to the back alley and more secure back garden. We weren’t allowed to store bikes inside per contract.
Two highlights of our final house included me shutting the back door, the vibrations of which caused a piece of masonry to dislodge itself from the wall of the house and fall onto my head. Thankfully, I was preparing to bike to work and had my helmet on. My email to the company:
Subject: back door won’t close - house falling down on our heads
Hello,Our back door is extremely hard to close and doesn’t open all the way.
Today while closing the back door to our house on my way out, a piece of the house fell off and hit me on the head (photos attached).
Also, the bottom of the door is also falling off (see attached photo).
Could you please arrange for our back door to be trimmed so that it opens/closes properly, and fix the bottom of the door as well as the parts of the house that keep falling down and hitting us?
Thanks,
Kirk Smith
The final highlight was when I was accidentally shocked with mains voltage, after unknowingly touching a live conductor that was exposed near the entry doorway to the house. A nail was hammered to hold a wire back, and hammered into conduit where it made contact with a live conductor. Britain, the wealthy Western nation where electrical wiring is essentially just a bunch of extension cords.
I recently found something I had written back then, in response to someone who was soliciting testimonies for a local paper or similar:
Our experience with NOPS and their business partner the Rent Guru was nothing short of abysmal. On our move-in day, they tried to force us into an unfinished, unsafe, house which had been partially “renovated.” When we refused, they told us to go to a homeless shelter - after having taken over £8,000 in advance rent and deposit amongst the house’s tenants. They temporarily put us in a house with one room less than we had people, then moved us again to a more cramped house in a less desirable neighborhood with less space, for the same rent. When we arrived to the third house it reeked of gas as the oven had been left on, had two fewer front door keys than people, and it took us over three months to obtain keys to the back door. The only communal space was unfurnished so we ate off cardboard boxes for over a month, and I once shocked myself with mains electricity from an exposed wire near the front door frame. When in their office for the umpteenth time to sort out an issue, I overheard them laughing at a story of a cabinet falling off the wall onto a tenant. I was continually amazed by the incompetence shown by NOPS and the Rent Guru; they are a blight on the city of Oxford.
And finally, a response to an email about maintenance on a faulty door, in which they tried to force the blame on us and make us pay for a new one:
[Redacted],
I did know perfectly well you were sending someone out, but you never told me if/when they actually visited, and I figured they hadn’t, because the door still didn’t shut.
We initially reported this, you allegedly sent out a contractor who failed to fix it, and now the problem is worse. All we have done is live in the house and use the door. We have reported maintenance issues and you have failed to this one, and there are several occasions when NOPS have failed to respond in a timely manner, potentially due to our intended property manager not showing up for work, or whatever excuse you used last time.
We are not even supposed to be living in this house, we should be in [redacted first house], had it not been for your incompetent business partner, The Rent “Guru.”
You should be thankful we never took the keys to move into [redacted first house], because if we had, you would have a lot more “maintenance issues” to complain about, and likely a lawsuit, as Rent Guru/NOPS tried to force us into a house that was unfit to live, with nails sticking out, no disabled smoke detectors, exposed electrical wiring, holes in the wall, unattached doors, literal piles/skips of rubbish lying about, no furnishings, doors screwed shut and blocked off, etc.
We then moved into [redacted], a smaller house, in a worse location, with no parking space, for the same rent. When we arrived, the gas oven was on, but not lit, and the house reeked of gas. You only gave us 4 working keys to the front door (for 6 people), and it took 3 months and lots of our own time and effort to obtain the keys to the rear entrance of the house. There was not even a table or chairs to eat off of in the living room and we ate off of cardboard moving boxes for weeks. Because there are no locking points out front and we didn’t have keys to the back garden for secure storage, we’ve had bicycles stolen from the front of the house. I’ve shocked myself with 240V mains electricity going out of the door, as there was a nail hammered through the trim into the electrical wiring. Then, when we finally are able to start using the back door, due to my spending hours searching for the proper route to obtain keys, the door/house starts falling apart, literally on top of my head, getting hit by a chunk of concrete.
I’ll mention this - a neighboring 6 person student house on [redacted] St was fully refurbished (and actually finished on time for move-in), and it’s very nice inside. The rent? £500 per person.
We are getting totally ripped off by you lot, and you should honestly be charging us less rent for everything you’ve put us through.
We’re not paying for the door.
Kirk Smith
Phew, I’m getting mad just reading these old emails. Here is to jettisoning that emotion off into the internet, and channeling it into building better, more cooperative housing solutions. Anyway, as I said, catharsis… and demarcating key events that have led me to drifting politically to the left.
What happened next
I built a Luton van up (moving/box truck) to live in and lived in it for a year and half while finishing most of the remaining lab work of my PhD, but that’s another blog post. I also became involved with a nascent tenant union in Oxford and met some cool folks through that, who taught me about housing cooperatives and the like.
I never really understood landlording in the first place—just having enough access to initial capital to get on the property ladder and then pouring metaphorical buckets onto anyone else trying to get on by making them pay your mortgage with their rent. It just seems like a blatantly obvious positive feedback loop which will only lead to an unstable, unaffordable housing situation. I had always thought of the system like this, but my (relatively minor, compared to most) experiences with completely incompetent landlords definitely led me to become more interested in tenant union movements and cooperative housing, which I think are viable methods to fight back.