FATHERS, Is Your Daughter Safe with Her Landlord?
Oakfield and the Hanlons tell workmen to let themselves into flats and give them keys without telling or warning tenants that they are going to do so.
Students came to live at No84. 2 boys and a girl. The female student was having a mid day nap in her room, alone in the fat in bed. She told me she woke up to find one of the workmen in her room, just looking at her and staring as she slept. He said, nonchalantly and with no concern, “Don’t mind me Luv, I just like to stand here and watch you sleeping.” She did not know how long he had been there or watching he.r She was in bed, on her own. She could only have had a nightie on or a small t-shirt and knickers. She could have been sleeping without anything on. He did not seem to think it was wrong. She found it creepy.
She also told me that she had at other times come out of her bedroom or out of the bathroom, in just her t-shirt or towel and found the workmen had let themselves in. She found it quite odd and distressing to suddenly be confronted by up to half a dozen men in the flat and on the stairs without warning. They could have been anyone. And she did not know them. So obviously disturbing.
The Hanlons and Oakfield do not think this a problem. But they have affected that young girl for life and totally changed her.
2 years later, I met the girl in the street. She was staying at another address. She told me that even now her confidence and sense of feeling safe has totally changed. She still does not like to be in a house on her own, or even at home with her family. And she says she always waits until someone is going home before she goes home herself. It is
The landlords Daniel Hanlon and Patrick Hanlon want to target the student market. They market themselves as specializing in student accommodation. Daniel Hanlon advertises himself on Linkedin as a Specialist Consultant in Student Accommodation. There may be interest and empathy with the student market by the Hanlons. They were both young once and away from home at Woolverstone Hall and they are both fathers of children now old enough to be at college or away from home. It may also be that student lets do not have the same rights and expectation of standards as assured shorthold tenants. It is much easier to ignore, evict and not provide any further accommodation if the students object or raise concerns.
Oakfield and the Hanlons are negligent as to their permanent and long term tenants, and even protected tenants. How much more so when it is easy to be got rid of and easy to ignore students, who are new and naive at what they should expect or confident enough to stand up for their expectations and rights.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND ROGUE LANDLORDS WHO WOULD PREY ON STUDENTS.
