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14/7/25 8:13 pm
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Tenants seeking affordable homes who are afraid to blow the whistle on bad practice are inadvertently contributing to poor standards in the capital’s HMO sector.
Interviewed on BBC Radio London, Sean Hooker, head of redress and ombudsman office at Property Redress, said although they were a small minority, a significant number of landlords were going under the radar which was causing a big problem.
Waltham Forest Council’s enforcement teams have been cracking down on unlicensed HMOs, according to councillor Khevyn Limbajee, (pictured) cabinet member for community safety, who said it had uncovered “horrific stuff”.
“We have seen some bad cases…where people were living in huge crowds…many people sharing bedrooms, kitchens that were dirty and really poor conditions,” added Limbajee.
Roz Spencer, head of service at Safer Renting, explained that it was, sadly “very financially advantageous if you have no scruples to flip what would be a family home into an HMO…which you could probably in many areas get away with doing that without being identified”. She said owners stood the chance of tripling or quadrupling their income.
According to the 2021 census, more than 140,000 Londoners live in an HMO. Problems in the sector are exacerbated by some dubious rent-to-rent schemes and sub-letting, according to Hooker, who said tenants who lived in these properties didn’t have much in the way of rights. This should be addressed by reforms in the Renters’ Rights Bill which would allow them to claim up to two years in rent through a Rent Repayment Order if their HMO was unlicensed.
However, some tenants currently don’t always know their rights or how to get them enforced.
“A lot of this goes under the radar because the tenants themselves don’t want to upset the deal that they’ve got,” said Hooker. “It may be unsafe, it may be overcrowded, but if they blow the whistle, they think they’re going to have to leave the house because the council will come in and close it down.”
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