MP: Dealers cashing in on city ‘exempt’ sector
CITY MPs made startling claims about the impact of so-called ‘exempt’ supported housing in Birmingham during a hard-hitting debate in Parliament – with one, Ladywood MP Shabana Mahmood, claiming drug dealers have moved into the sector because it is an easy, risk-free way of getting money.
She spoke out in response to a claim that issuing tougher guidelines to providers in the sector might be enough to stop rogue landlords exploiting it.
More than 22,000 vulnerable and hard-to-house people are currently living in the sector across the city, usually in shared houses in residential streets.
Ms Mahmood said: “The idea that criminal enterprises currently lining their pockets with our constituents’ money will be put off exploiting this business model because of a ‘national statement of expectation’ is absolutely for the birds... that will not work here.
“I am desperate to see vulnerable people no longer being exploited and communities no longer being destroyed, but that measure will not cut it. These are proper operators and they have spotted a loophole in the law.
“They have calculated correctly that, instead of going further into the drugs business, where they might have to do 20 years in prison, they can just get into the housing sector and no one will put them away for it, at all. In fact, they can do so in plain sight and nobody can do a thing about it.”
She said it was no longer good enough to rely on ‘piecemeal action’ in hotspots - “that just creates a ‘whack-a-mole’ system” – and instead called for national law changes that stops the problem dead, while giving local authorities the power to reject applications for exempt accommodation on the grounds of saturation or oversupply. “People dumping has to stop, over-saturation has to stop and local authorities need the power to prevent an over-saturation of supply,” she said.
People dumping has to stop – local authorities need the power to prevent an over-saturation of supply
The three-hour opposition debate on the issue of ‘non commissioned exempt accommodation’ saw Ms Mahmood and fellow city Labour MPs hammer home examples of the devastating impact on Birmingham, with thousands of terraced former family homes and large buildings now given over to the sector.
Preet Kaur Gill, MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, highlighted one shocking example of a hostel off
Hagley Road, now closed, where 25 men and women, including exoffenders, addicts and people with mental illnesses, were living together in miserable, cold and filthy conditions, with a solitary support worker manning a desk in office hours.
She said: “This was not a place where any of us could happily live, let alone get a life back on track following a crisis.”
She also highlighted new findings by Birmingham City Council, following inspections of 400 exempt properties across the city, which found more than 1,000 category 1 ‘risk to life’ hazards in the properties, and another 600 category 2 hazards, which include fire safety issues, asbestos, and excessive heat or cold.
Yardley MP Jess Phillips cited her brother’s experience as a tenant in exempt properties, while a recovering addict, and said Government claims that imposing tougher rules on exempt providers could ‘drive out’
good providers was a fallacy.
“I stand here as a representative of decent providers and with the backing of Women’s Aid, which has sent briefings around to all of us today, to say: “Do not think for one second that regulating this is going to push decent providers out.”
Eddie Hughes, Conservative housing minister, highlighted his own concerns for the sector, telling the Commons he was aware of ‘exempt’ providers waiting outside prisons to encourage released offenders to take up rooms.
The debate came two days after more than 40 housing bodies and organisations, including the National Housing Federation, Crisis and council, signed a letter demanding reform to the “under-regulated” exempt sector.
The government has said it “recognises the problems” with and is considering whether increased regulation of providers is required.
Shabana Mahmood