WATER! WATER! EVERYWHERE! Mr Patrick Hanlon, Rogue Landlord and Me

On April 4, 2017 by admin

February 2010 Landlord decided to convert flat upper maisonette above me after Tracy and family move out. Decides to do major alterations and turn it into student accommodation. With separate locks on room doors so he can charge rent per occupant. My rent is £390pm for full one bedroom flat with garden. The students have to pay £420pm each for a room in a shared flat. Weekend 19-22nd February 2010. Workmen upstairs take bathroom fittings out without properly turning off water and go off for weekend. No one in top flat from mid day Saturday. Sunday 21st. I notice water coming through ceiling of both lounge and kitchen. Phoned on call property manager. No answer. Left message. No reply. Water increases in amount and persistency. Left more messages. Spoke to property manager who dismissed and ignored me and refused to come out. I felt frightened to try and go against him. However, water persisted so I contacted non emergency services number and got firemen to come out. They gently got themselves into the upstairs flat. Found the problem and switched off the water. I was very frightened of the landlord and property manager’s reaction, even though I had acted in their best interests and the interest of the property and my own and others safety and welfare. The firemen agreed to leave a note explaining and also contact the landlord and tell them themselves. The firemen were also very concerned about the poor management, condition of the property and the lack of adherence to fire regulations. They put in a smoke detector in my flat and said they were going to make a report and refer the property and landlord to the local council housing department to be inspected. I left a message on Roost and the property manager’s phone. 22nd February 2010 Again contacted and informed property agent. Property manager Mark Youngman and Mr Hanlon came running round. I saw them as they went upstairs to the flat above. I asked them to come and see the damage to my flat when they were done. I knew it was important for the landlord to be able to assess and evaluate the damage and put it back on his contractors or insurance. I knew to leave it would make it worse and cause more damage due to water damage and corrosion and affect on plasterwork and ceiling, as well as electrics which were soaked. Both landlord and property manager Mark Youngman refused It is when an occupant moves out a landlord can change the rent. The landlord sent us all new contracts to sign and said they removed any of our rights and contracts before. I refused to sign. He also advised that his contract removed Miss W’s “sitting tenancy” status as she has been there before 1987. I advised and reminded him and her that it did not. Miss W does not want to get involved because of her own upset and distress. Mr Hanlon asked and demanded that we give him keys to our flats. I did not, as I knew he had no right. My decision has since proved right as other tenants have found people and workmen in their flats without any notice or prior warning. And even let themselves in when they are not there. Give the landlord and property manager, and workmen’s behaviour and attitude to me and my property I am glad I did not give them the opportunity to enter my home and only security of my privacy. Miss W has woken up to find people in her flat, a batch of big strong men, NO warning, no letter of knock on the door. She said she has heard noises and come through to find men in her flat. Or come out of her kitchen to find men just standing there, having let themselves in. She said they do not care how she is or in what state of dress she is in. Miss W said once how she was not dressed in the morning and the demanded entry. She said she was still in her night clothes and dressing gown and not ready. Knowing she is edlerly and from a decent generation and a christian church attending background, you would have thought the workmen would have been considerate and polite. Instead, because she needed to get ready they banged on the door and were very insistant and threatening. She said it was awful. She really hates it there. But as the landlord has partiuclarly set about focusing on her and in many ways making her life miserable I do suspect he wants to force the protected sitting tenant out. By hook or by crook. He has tried to force up the rent and she went through the Fair Rent officer. The landlord was very insistant and aggressive. She was put under considerable unnecessary strain. She won. and even had the rent reduced. I don’t think he ever forgave her for being a small, weak little fragile old lady who was a little bit more backbone and steel than he thought. He does not seem to like small people sticking up for themselves. I am very surprised and very proud. But she still should not have had to go through it. However, he has continue the harassment by since doing the trick of not answering to her needs or repair. She has damaged property in the garden and a massive hole in the back yard dropping down 4 feet to a dark chamber of bricks, stone glass and debris. This was caused by his bad workmen. Never been repaired. he also has refused and avoided mending her boiler, which provides hot water and the heating. She has been without adquate hot water and heating for as long as he has been there. An elderly lady left in a paid private flat she has loved and cared for without heating or hot water. Also, there is no light fitting in the kitchen. Which means it is a dangerous place as she has to do her chores and cook and handle hot pans and kettles with just the light from the hallway outside. Some of this has only just been corrected. But only because I have attempted and still in process of getting it to court. Suddenly, he is doing a lot of work and repair to other tenants which he should have done a long time ago. In the bottome flat in the basement, a young girl lives with her father. When she came 5 years ago she was 2, now she is 7. She is a bright young thing. But she has developed asthma and ill health. Why? Because for the whole time her room has been very damp. Even though she was young child, the landlord kept refusing and avoiding dealing with the damp room. Suddenly, since I have kicked this to court level, suddenly the landlord has called in the experts and damp proof expert. The result has been that the basement flat has had to be ripped out and gutted, 2 walls had to come down, all the skirting board and joists were rotten and soaked like the boards on a the sunken Titanic, there were that soaked and damp and seriously water damaged. The whole of the floor had to be taken up and relaid and cemented. The landlord has had to do so much more and pay so much more than he would have done if he had responded to the tenants complaints in the beginning. The little girl’s health is affected for life. She will always have a respiratory weakness, and it cannot be under estimated, asthma is a serious condition, Although managed effectively 1121 people died of asthma in 2009. Of them 12 were children. This also does not show the real extent of deaths, as when a bad virus and flu goes round it takes the young and the old and those with respiratory weakness too. I do not think Mr Hanlon should be allowed to get away with his affect on a young child’s life and purposely affecting her health for life. Opposing and avoiding and choosing instead to harass and abuse tenants has cost him thousands. tens of thousands and I figured hundreds of thousands. On top of that he really has not been taking the rent to cover it and make a profit and pay his emergency mortgage he got from a last stop emergency morgage site He has had to pay out over 100,000 pounds, and yet only takes at max 18-20,000pa in overall rents for the property. But he is not taking that as there is now no one in the top f

lat. No 3 students. So he is down 3 X 420 per month. and the students have spread the word around. He lets in his workmen when female students are on their own and may be in partial undress. The students said it was scarey, very intimidating and frightening, The boys said they had an agreement, that the girls waited at college until they came home with them, so they would not be in the flat alone. Mr Hanlon counter claim to court said I did not let property manager or workmen in. This is untrue. I have been left with serious damage, an unsafe flat, misuse of my vulnerable female status and outright planned attack and abuse of my disability and distress. It has been tough. but I am still here again. Through the years I have allowed them in and invited them to attend and address issues and do their own work. This is contrary to how Mr Hanlon and his property manager paints me. It is because of their avoidance of doing work and repair, the personal abuse and misuse of my disability and stress and their failure and avoidance to attend and see and check the damage and then do something about it that I do not and will not allow them in when I am on my ow, when they threaten under demands. And given their past behaviour and failure I only see the intervention of an independent adjudicator, independent surveyor and a independent court judgement. I feel their (landlord and council) need to forceably enter my property now b y intimidation and threat is a deliberate act by them to undermine and cover up what a proper investigation would show. That I have been left on my own in an unsafe flat, with neglect and abuse from both landlord, his employee and council and allowed to lived like this in a ever increasing distressful and growing ill health and let the flat continue deteriorating, until they banged on the door to demand more, and I said “NO!”

Category : An Estate Agent