Peabody: This is Declan's Stage One complaint about appalling new terms of tenancy without prejudice to any future court proceedings
What is your complaint (Please add as much detail as possible including any reference numbers you may have)?
CAS-506345-C3J0K0
My wife and I have been living in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiate (RSI) property that is owned by Peabody. Our tenancy has been twice renewed like for like as requested. The original two-year term expired in 2016, and again in 2018 but Peabody agreed to new tenancies on like-for-like terms on both occasions. In an email of 27 April, Housing Officer Rukia Khatun asserted in relation to the third agreement granted that "the terms are the same and a like for like as requested". In a further email of 1 May, Ms Khatun falsely accused me of not signing a like-for-like agreement.
On 27 May I received an email from Area Housing Manager Rosealeen Sogunro about the third renewal of our tenancy. I responded to this email the next day. Taking both of these emails into consideration, together with an updated document titled 'Comparative Screenshots', please can you formally respond to me under your complaints process (stage one). As requested, these documents to support my complaint will be emailed to you after I have submitted this form. It remains my contention that Ms Sogunro's apparent insistence that I have been offered a tenancy "like for like as requested" confers an obligation on her to produce such a document. Instead, my wife and I have been falsely accused by Ms Khatun of not signing a like-for-like agreement, and I have been provided by Ms Sogunro with assurances that are not reflected in the template agreement to which she refers.
My wife and I are currently not protected from a 'no fault' eviction in a weekly periodic tenancy. Despite Ms Sogunro's assurance that no action of this sort will be taken, our legal position in respect to Section 21 possession poses a 'threat to life'. It also has a destabilising effect on our tenancy and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. For example, my wife cannot resume a volunteer position she held in the community for four years. I am also forced to maintain a suspension on my voluntary work in the community.
There is too much pressure and uncertainty for us to be even able to volunteer in the community. In addition to holding down two part-time jobs, we are battling St Mungo's (in court) and Peabody to stabilise our tenancy under the threat to life of a 'no fault' Section 21 eviction notice. Last week I had to deal with both Newham Benefits Service and Peabody because our weekly rent transactions have not been appearing in your customers' portal since 18 May (the day after our fixed-term tenancy ended). This level of pressure and uncertainty is not only unfair to us, but also is unfair to the community centre my wife has been volunteering in since June 2016.
How would you like us to resolve your complaint?
To resolve my complaint I request a tenancy like for like as requested, as has been issued twice before, and not a tenancy agreement that is not remotely the same document. Substantial and/or adverse variations include: unspecified visiting support that neither I nor my wife needs; the removal from the agreement of the rent cap for social housing; the both of us remaining liable for rent and service charges until the end of the fixed term if Peabody does not agree to the termination of the tenancy despite our one month's notice in advance; and the stipulation of a much shorter length of time in rent arrears for possession.
To take the last example, the stipulated time in arrears for possession has been reduced from 8 weeks to 14 days. This in itself renders unsignable the tenancy offered, thereby destabilising our tenancy and inhibiting our ability to exercise our rights. Newham Council has already twice suspended my housing benefit because of erroneous notifications from the Department for Work and Pensions that we had vacated. We have not had any contact with the Department during our tenancy due to being part-time employed.
I reiterate in conclusion that I have no legal protection from a 'no fault' eviction in a weekly periodic tenancy, which poses a threat to my life. I am an asthmatic who is almost 60 with a long history of serious respiratory illness, thus placing me in the high-risk group for COVID-19 and other viral respiratory infections. That my wife and I should be forced to live under the threat to life of a 'no fault' Section 21 eviction notice in an RSI designated property in these circumstances is wholly unacceptable. There is no question that such an eviction would return us to the streets for the third time through no fault of our own, and this time with little or no prospect of ever being housed again.
