Wherever I Lay My Hat: The Hastings Housing Crisis
By Louise Hester
Hastings is a buzzing, creative hub, filled to the brim with incredible minds and potential. By very virtue of this, and the fact it is a coastal town, it attracts tourists and residents from far and wide. Therein lies a problem—whilst tourists inarguably bring in money, they also seem to send subliminal messaging to landlords, requesting they kick out existing local tenants and transform their properties into £400 per night AirBnBs. Equally, some out-of-towners (note we say ‘some’, not ‘all’), with extra money in their pockets are forcing rents up and locals out.
Hastings has transformed over the past decade, somewhat via media interpretation, from a locality perceived as a filthy syringe-littered dump to a desired destination, usually with the moniker <insert thriving bustling London suburb name here>-on-Sea, or something equally as shortsighted. The truth is that its residents understand evolution; change is inevitable and often embraced—we’re not stick-in-the-mud refusers, we simply wish to remain in the town we adore.
Hastings has many small businesses, run by low-income individuals, that could not survive in a town with no disposable income. We welcome an ever-growing diverse community of residents who appreciate Hastings, working together for fairness and greater good without harming the cornerstone of the town: the pre-existing community.
However, there is a cloud hanging over many of us within that community, a cloud that will follow us to another town, then another, then another, because it stifles and rains on the renters: the people who are not allowed to reside in the town they grew up in or have grown to love.
CREDIT: Euan Roberts
Pushing the community out of a town makes it soulless. Raising rents so high that they can only be afforded by out-of-towners is sickening. Landlords need to be looking closely at the LHA in the town (take note: weekly rates are currently £74.79 for shared accommodation, £115.07 for one bedroom, £149.59 for two-bedroom, and £195.62 and £230.14 for three and four-bedroom respectively), and basing their rents on these figures and these alone. A recently advertised room in shared accommodation for £700 per month is 115.99% higher than the local council will pay. A four-bedroom property for £1,595 is almost 60% higher. So, what happens in these situations? Fear, is what. Tenants clinging on by the fingertips to keep hold of a property they’ve lived in for years, a property they have created a home within.
Many are afraid to report maintenance issues for fear the landlord will remember they are there, realising that they could kick them out to charge higher rents to someone with more money, releasing a greater chunk of that bloated rental money pie. This fear extends to renters searching for properties to call a home, renters who have been denied the basic human right of somewhere to live because they are on benefits or minimum wage or, in one story, female.
This feels like a social rewind, doesn’t it? Back to a time when tolerance was optional, in which vast and valuable areas of society were shunned with no apology, chased from basic rights and (right now) from their hometowns, followed by landlords with flaming torches, grabbing, hoarding, burning all the money they can find.
Landlords will argue their expenses are increasing and so therefore rents need to rise. The counter-argument would be that they shouldn’t be making a profit from housing anyway, so how about taking the cost back down to where it should be? Cover the property, the bills, the expenses, and let people afford to be warm and feel safe.
Hastings Rental Health has been sent many renters’ stories over the past few weeks. With each story, there is sadness, indignation, and fury. How is this allowed to happen? People are denied a home, or are living in fear and misery. This has got to stop. Please take the time to read these stories, each and every one deserves that. They are edited and so arguably aren’t even the whole horror; can you imagine worse? This is how human beings are treated in their home town. This is the fear. These are the stories.
• “We have lived in a small two-bedroom flat for six years at an affordable rent. I have lived in Hastings my whole life. My landlord has just found out that someone else in the building is paying £275 a month more than us and, knowing we can’t afford it, has asked us to move out.”
• “My landlord has nine properties now, more than half are AirBnB. After living here for almost 12 years, I am being moved on so he can open yet another AirBnB.”
• “One landlord informed me that the rent would need to be £20 higher as I was a woman. Apparently hairdryers use more electricity and women cook more than men.”
• “I moved into a flat in St Leonards in January 2020, the landlord bought it for £99K and after I’d been there a few months she moaned to me that her mortgage was £230 per month, plus £100 maintenance on the building. Yet she was charging me £550 without bills. She tried to increase rent by 8% when I’d only been living there 10 months.”
• “Out of desperation I moved into a property with no hot tap in the bathroom sink, no heating, and windows that let in cold air. The Warm Home Check scheme asked me to ask my landlord to pay towards the work that needed doing and he refused. He has since told me he’s going to put the rent up in the new year. He’s done nothing to the property, yet the Warm Home Check scheme did roughly 9k of work for free.”
• “I moved to Hastings with my baby in January 2020 after fleeing domestic abuse. Me and my child were lucky enough to have family with a spare room (even if it was used as a storage room). I very quickly had a housing options meeting where I was told there was no point putting me on the housing list but I’d be able to claim housing benefit on UC. In my search I found so many properties that were available but as soon as I went to book the viewing and they took my details, I was told they wouldn’t accept children or anyone on housing benefit. In a year of constant searching, I was only allowed to view one property and when viewing, the estate agent told me I shouldn’t go for it as it wasn’t safe for single mums.”
• “A month after moving in, my landlord told me he was considering selling. He gave no timescale, so I set sale alerts on Rightmove so that I would have enough advance warning.”
• “I have been living in a shoddy flat that is constantly leaking and soaking our carpets and there is mould all over. We were told we couldn’t go into the bedroom due to the ceiling caving in, so we have been confined, as a four-person family, to living in our living room. I worry about my health and my family’s health because of the mould, but I am also worried we will be evicted if I complain.”
• “We got a letter through our door last year saying our rent would have to go up 30%. My partner and I talked to the other tenants in our block. A single mum and carer had received the same letter, only their rent was going up 40%.”
• “I’ve been told by my landlady that my rent will go up by £100 in a couple of months. She has no mortgage, so she doesn’t need to increase my rent. She said it was because it’s under market value.”
Share your stories, positive or negative, via [email protected]
They need to see good examples of landlords – and what makes them good – as well as the bad. Please also contact Hastings Borough Council and our local MP to express your views on the town housing situation.
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