Christmas Gift from the Landlord

Nope, not for me but…

One of the cadets in my squadron lives apart from his mother, as they have a “troubled history” together. He lives in a flat owned by a housing association – except the guy who the HA gave the flat to is sub-letting it out to him. This landlord is also on benefits and is not declaring this little income to anyone.

Last week, the landlord told this cadet that he had 2 weeks to move out. There’s so many things wrong with this, I don’t know where to start. I’m not that far right now from heading around there and telling him exactly what he is required by law to do. For example, just because there’s no written agreement doesn’t mean the tenant doesn’t have protected rights – an implied tenancy in this case becomes an assured shorthold tenancy agreement by default, and as a result the landlord must provide at elast 28 days’ notice to vacate (Thanks Em).

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that the cadet is struggling to find a decent place to live. And I have a spare room and wouldn’t mind some cash. Oh, wait, hang on….

Yeah, so this looks incredibly dodgy, I’m very aware of that. I’ll have to be incredibly careful, but the cadet himself is a great kid. He’s polite, responsible, mature – make no doubts about it, he’s still a 16-year-old kid and does all the usual stuff a kid of that age does, but he’s been living away from his mother for several years now, and he’s very mature. He qualifies for benefits, so as far as he’s concerned it doesn’t cost him anything to live there – and it’s a damn sight better than most of the places he’s been living in up until now.

So along with the dog that might be coming along (more about that in another post) I may have a teenager living with me. This could get rather interesting…

Oh, thoughts are welcome from you all, I’ve set it to screen all, so if you want to post a comment that isn’t public, that’s cool. Note that this post is set to Friends only… 🙂