Our current landlady is the very image of one of those landlords who’d be spared the guillotine.
She’s an older, polite, maternal (white, middle class) woman who just happened to have enough money to buy a spare house, and is renting it to top up her pension. She reads The Guardian and asks after my family and does the occasional repair when necessary. She’s not one of those evil landlords.
She also just repeatedly lied to our faces about our contracts to try to get us to forfeit most of the rights we have as tenants. She also visits frequently, criticising how we live and reminding us that our home belongs to her. She also condescendingly and unnecessarily explains to us how boilers and washing machines and carpets work.
She explains to us how renting works.
She explains it with an indulgent smile, like a grandmother talking to a child, as if she’s being terribly patient about correcting our misunderstandings.
She lies because as much as she wants to convince us, everyone else, and even herself that she’s a good person, our entire relationship is based on the power she holds over us. She uses her wealth and position in society to extort payment from us, who have nowhere to live. We sacrifice to her the majority of the income we spend our lives earning, just so we can have a roof over our heads. But any time we don’t show proper deference to her, she could have us out on the street in weeks or months. We’d lose our home, because to her it is merely an asset which in no way belongs to us, the people who live there.
Today she repeatedly lied to us about our contract, and about the law, because she wanted us to have the minimum legal power possible. If I didn’t organise with a local tenants’ union, I wouldn’t have known my rights. And if I didn’t have the security of being a member of that union behind me, I never would have had the guts to challenge her. My housemate had no idea she was lying, and would have trusted her, signing away what few rights we had under the law.
As part of this tenants’ union, I’m always fighting with the worst landlords - the ones who keep people living in squalor, the ones with a dozen properties, the ones who are violent and abusive. But today has reminded me that even the “nice” landlords are still scum.
A genuinely good person who has enough spare money to buy a spare house (which is a lot of money! they wouldn’t need more!) would just let people who need a home live there, not bleed them of their income for the privilege of a warm place to sleep.
But more importantly, join a tenants’ union, and take back the power they hold over you. It was one of the most empowering things I’ve ever done.
In London, I recommend London Renters Union.
In Scotland: Living Rent.
In the rest of the UK: ACORN.
+ there are tenants’ unions all over the world, and housing co-ops where everyone who lives there part-owns their home and there’s no landlord to answer to
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