One block of flats taught me everything about Britain’s housing crisis

While living with these appalling issues, tenants have also been slapped with rent increases (Picture: Carla Denyer)

Damp, mould, rot; filthy brown wastewater coming up through the bath plughole so fast that you have to stay up through the night to bail it out with a bucket before it floods your whole flat.

These are the conditions that tenants at Queen’s Court in Bristol have been living in for years, which I saw first hand when I visited the flats recently.

This situation first came to my attention when I was a councillor. The people who lived there were desperate for the property management company who looked after the building to take action on the terrible quality of the flats – but despite mine and their best efforts, time after time, the company’s response was woefully inadequate. 

I supported the residents to report the problems to the local authority, leading to the council sending an enforcement notice to the company in charge, but their repairs were shoddy – such as boxing in a mouldy wall with plasterboard rather than actually fixing it.

When I visited recently – my first time back at Queen’s Court since being elected as an MP last July – I was shocked to see that conditions at the flats were still absolutely squalid. 

I was shocked to see that conditions at the flats were still absolutely squalid (Picture: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)

The tenants showed me the mould growing up their walls, the damp they are being forced to breathe day-in-day-out, and they told me about the terrible impact their housing conditions were having on their mental and physical health.

One told me: ‘I feel trapped in this place. I won’t invite my friends around out of shame. I’m never happy to come home after a long day.’

Another said: ‘It’s an everyday task to clean the mould. We had an incident one morning where there was water running down the walls, in the corridor, bathroom and one of the bedrooms. We have also been left with no running water for three days.’

But it’s not just about poor conditions. While living with these appalling issues, tenants have also been slapped with rent increases as high as 10% – with some even threatened with eviction.

The power imbalance between renters and those who rent to them is enormous (Picture: Carla Denyer)

I’m determined to get change for the residents at Queen’s Court and I’ve written to the management company to make it clear that their treatment of residents is unacceptable and cannot contain. 

But hearing these ordinary, hard working people’s stories has reinforced to me the deep injustice facing so many renters all over the country.

Parents trying to raise their children in damp, mouldy flats – having to fight to get basic repairs done. Young people are shelling out half of their wages in rent each month, not wanting to complain about disrepair or neglect in case their landlord raises the rent further.

The power imbalance between renters and those who rent to them is enormous. 

But even with the new protections in the bill, there is more that needs doing to protect renters (Picture: Carla Denyer)

And while there are plenty of conscientious landlords who provide a good service to their tenants, there are too many who take advantage of the power they have to make maximum profit while doing less than the bare minimum to keep their properties to a decent standard.

The Renters’ Rights Bill currently going through Parliament will deal with some of the worst excesses of the rental system – most crucially, abolishing Section 21 (no-fault) evictions, which is what some tenants at Queen’s Court are facing now.

But even with the new protections in the bill, there is more that needs doing to protect renters from rogue landlords – like giving tenants the right to withhold rent for serious disrepair, or making it easier to get rent paid back following an illegal eviction.

High rents are making life impossible in cities across the country (Picture: Carla Denyer)

But perhaps most crucially, we need to bring down rents overall across the country so renters can’t be held hostage by the fact that they simply can’t find or afford somewhere else to live.

Heartbreakingly, one of the tenants at Queen’s Court told me: ‘I was born in this city and I now might have to leave because there’s no place for me here anymore.’

High rents are making life impossible in cities across the country – forcing people to stay in homes that are making them sick, pushing people out of the places they’ve lived their whole lives, and in too many cases, leaving people without a home at all.

It’s time for the Government to bring in a system of rent controls so that landlords can no longer bleed tenants dry, while providing less than the bare minimum.

Instead, they need to ensure that everyone can afford a safe, secure and comfortable home.

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