Monday 21 June 2010
Civilisation.
All the current axe-wielding by the government has caused me to think a lot lately about the issue of eviction. What a terrible thing it is to do to somebody, and how easily the courts, the landlords and the finance houses take the decision. I know somebody who was evicted once, even though the rent was fully paid, because the landlord had defaulted on the mortgage and the property was repossessed. A woman and six kids who had nothing wrong, kicked out of their home because the landlord had spent the rent on something else. And I walked across a mountain in the Western Highlands of Scotland one time, feeling absolutely desolate when I thought of those poor people who had been dispossessed in the Highland Clearances. The rich landlords wanted the land cleared for sheep, because sheep would make them even richer. They say it don’t count ’less it sells. More wealth, more power. More power, less heart. We call it civilisation.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Is that really legal???? He can just decide to do something else with the money and the tenants don't get a say??? Do they at least get their rent back? Or some time to set things in order before they're viciously tossed out into the street??
That is horrible. I was evicted from an apartment once because an old man who had lived below me for several years said that we were too loud. We weren't loud, but on weekends sometimes had friends over and would sit on the balcony and talk. Never loudly, never loud music, never into the wee hours of the morning. But he didn't like it and threatened to move. Since we were young and the apartment managers knew we wouldn't stay for as long as he planned to, we had to move. Management tried to reason with him and told him that he lived in an apartment and that it was inevitable that he would hear his neighbors and that the "noise" we were making was reasonable, but he wouldn't stop complaining. We had to move. Oddly enough before we left something happened to our garbage disposal that we weren't aware of and it caused a water leak that ended up causing part of his wall and ceiling above his sink to fall in. I was glad about that ;o)
Maria: Unethical maybe, but not illegal. The contract the landlord has with the mortgage lender and the one he has with the tenant are legally entirely separate things. If he defaults on his mortgage payments, the lender simply repossesses the property and has a right to do whatever it wants with it. An American correspondent tells me this has been happening a lt in America over the last couple of years.
Andrea: Action on noise nuisance is different here. If there's a complaint, it has to be investigated first by the local council using monitoring equipment. If it's found to be unreasonable and/or made at unreasonable times, the 'offender' has to be given a written warning. If they continue to offend, the next step is to confiscate the equipment. Evictions for noise nuisance are very rare
Post a Comment