Cart IS a landlord

IN RESPONSE to Julie Bedell's quixotic assertion that CaRT is not a housing society or housing agency, Dave Stead writes:
I keep seeing this falsehood propagated that CaRT is not a housing agency, housing association, landlord etcetera etcetera. The wording used keeps changing as different people try to assert their fanciful wishes upon reality but the gist is that CaRT does not have to live up to the responsibilities of a landlord because it was formed to take custody of the waterways not to act as a landlord.

System with tenants

This is simply untrue, CaRT is a landlord as proven by the indisputable fact that people live on boats on CaRT waters. To state otherwise is to deny reality. It may be the case that CaRT wishes it was not a landlord, but it inherited a system with tenants, it continues to make 'residential' moorings available for lease and therefore it is a landlord with all the legal responsibilities of a landlord, its tenants should enjoy the full range of legal rights of a tenant.

Allowing landlords to escape their legal obligations because they inherited some property with sitting tenants years ago would be a terrifying slippery slope if applied to the rental housing market as a whole.

I'm sure there is a lot more to this latest eviction than any of us have been told, but as a general principle I can't help thinking there must be a better way than snatching away the home of a vulnerable person in a traumatic eviction with jackbooted bailiffs and police in attendance, relocating them away from the only stability in their life.

Apart from the humanitarian aspect or anything else, that person is now costing the taxpayer an order of magnitude more than would have been the case if her mooring had been funded from the public purse, as temporary housing costs a fortune and the evictee's need for all forms of support has actually increased as a result of becoming homeless.

My final thoughts are for the evictee herself, I hope she fares well and everything works out okay in the end.

Regards,

Dave S

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