A London property company is charging £255 a
week for "studio apartments" as small as three
metres by three metres that tenants claim are
"worse than prison cells" and that breach
statutory overcrowding regulations.
Nineteen tiny, dilapidated rooms above a
McDonald's in Islington, north London, are
earning a multi-millionaire landlord and a sub-
letting company an estimated £400,000 a year
in rent, a Guardian investigation has revealed.
The rent per square metre is more than twice
that for other one-bed privately rented flats in
the same area. Recently built studios on the
same road for students are double the size but
cost less. Rent on the unfit housing was being
paid largely by the taxpayer through housing
benefit, although Islington council has now said
it will no longer pay as the units represent a
"category one hazard" under health and safety
regulations in terms of crowding and space. It
said the taxpayer was being "ripped off". The
council has now issued an order rendering the
tenancies void in two months. It follows a
series of door-to-door inspections of private
rented properties in the borough over the
summer.
The flats represent a new low in London's
housing crisis, where at least 42,000 new homes
are still needed each year to meet demand and
prices are rising at almost 20% a year. The
owner is Andrew Panayi, a wealthy landlord
with 250 properties in north London. He
bought the former hostel in 2004 and, after
fitting plastic showers, two-ring hobs, small
fridges and a toilet, marketed them as studios.
Some tenants have described life in the flats as
"unsafe and inhumane" and have complained of
a lack of hygiene caused by the proximity of
cramped toilets, showers and cooking facilities.
Darren Ricketts, 39, a new occupier who
arrived this week despite the banning order
said he could not believe the lack of space and
cost.
"When I signed the papers I saw the rent was
£258 a week," he said. "I said to the lady,
'That's a mistake: £58, yes, but not that much.'
The landlord must be raking it in. I was
shocked. I am grateful to have a roof over my
head, but this morning I woke up and thought:
'What am I going to do with all my stuff?'"
Another tenant, Nejat Mohamed Ali, 45, said: "I
have bruises on my legs from constantly
pushing the bed around so I can get to the
shower or the kitchen. The hot cooking plate is
less than 60cm from my bed." She added: "I am
very depressed. I used to live with dignity...
councils are supposed to invest in property and
not spend £255 a week on prison cells. It is
abuse of the taxpayer."
Panayi blamed the tenants for making the
homes too cramped by piling in too much
furniture.
"These places are designed for single people,"
he said. "They should have a single bed but
they asked for double beds and the beds are
too big. There's more than enough room for a
single person."
James Murray, Islington council's executive
member for housing, said: "This shows how
appalling the housing crisis has got, where
people who are desperate for accommodation
are being crammed into tiny units and tenants
and the taxpayer is being ripped off by a rich
landlord and a property company who are
skimming off handsome profits."
Harry Lewis, 54, an unemployed father of three,
said the cramped dimensions of his home
meant he could never entertain his children or
family. He said he survived on takeaways and
was suffering from depression.
"I have been here three years and I am
suffering health problems," he said. "You have
to eat, go to the toilet and wash all in this small
space. There are huge issues."
"I'm stressed," said his neighbour, Evzen
Kessel, an unemployed street-cleaner from the
Czech Republic. "All I can do here is sleep. I
spend all day outside because there's no room
here to live."
Panayi has sub-let the properties to Investing
Solutions Limited (ISL), which describes itself
as a rent guarantee company. Many of the
tenants were referred to ISL by Fresh Start
Housing, a charity that sets out to provide
"support for homeless people and those about
to be homeless". ISL receives the £255-a-week
payment from the government's housing
benefit pot and then pays Panayi around £150 a
week. The maximum the government will pay
in housing benefit for a one-bed property in
that part of London is currently £258 a week.
A spokesman for ISL said it was "very, very
shocked" by the decision to declare the flats
unfit for human habitation. It said the high
rent was to reflect the "high-risk tenants" who
often do not have money for rent advances or
deposits and can sometimes have their housing
benefit frozen at short notice. "The ones I saw
were normal studio sized," said Gerry Sandhu,
a manager at the firm. "We don't measure
them. That's the landlord's responsibility."
John van Someren, trustee of the Fresh Start
charity, said it would prioritise rehousing the
people it referred.
Nineteen of the tiny, dilapidated rooms are
being let out above a McDonald’s restaurant in
Islington. Photograph: David Levene
"We will have to ask the landlord what the
heck he is doing placing our tenants into
accommodation below legal requirements," he
said. "Then we will have to ask Islington why
they are paying housing benefit on properties
that they say are in breach of size regulations."
Islington said there is no inspection before
housing benefit is paid out, although an
environmental health officer did visit in 2012
when it was assured the property was a hostel
rather than studios.
Panayi attacked Islington for not consulting
him before issuing the closure orders.
"Islington will have to rehouse these people in
boarding houses once they have been evicted
through bailiff action," he said. "The council
should have come to speak to me first."
He said that from next week he will begin a
redesign to add around a third to the space of
each unit and make them "larger and more .
'I don't understand what they are afraid of'
Behind a battered purple shopfront advertising
accountancy services on Caledonian Road,
north London, works Andrew Panayi – one of
London's most controversial landlords. The 67-
year-old Cypus-born Briton owns 250
properties in the area, including hundreds of
flats and studios as well as shops including a
McDonald's. It has made him, he claims, a
fortune in the "tens of millions".
He became the star of a BBC documentary
about the area in which he boasted of flouting
planning procedures and talked of "milking" his
properties. Hanging on the wall of his scruffy
office is a picture of him slitting the throat of a
wild boar in Cyprus, a set of heavy dumbbells
rests in the corner and a side table groans with
bottles of whiskey and red wine. Pride of place
is given to an icon of Zeus and a faded poster
of a glamour model.
Among his assets is the hostel on Holloway
Road that he bought in 2004 and turned into a
£220,000-a-year cash machine by cramming
already tiny rooms with flimsy shower cubicles,
kitchenettes and WCs and renting them as
studios to desperate home-seekers on housing
benefit. The local council started investigating
his properties after he offered a tiny studio on
a different street for £170 a week.
"I single-handledly improved Caledonian
Road," he said in his defence. "I provided so
much accommodation. I don't understand what
they are afraid of."
He is likely to survive the criticism. The
balance sheet of his rental business, Ploughcane
UK, looks very strong. Accounts filed this year
showed it has net assets of £17m and a
turnover in 2013 of £2.7m, of which £2.3m was
operating profit.
No comments:
Post a Comment