Safe as houses?
One of starkest consequences of the recession has been the rise in home repossessions due to rent and mortgage arrears. In 2008/9 Stoke on Trent County Court made 2,500 possession orders for rent or mortgage arrears. This represents a 25% increase in orders for mortgage arrears and a 20% increase in orders for rent arrears compared to the previous year.
Not all of these will have led to eviction, as many orders will have been suspended to allow affordable repayments to be made, behind each statistic lies families and individuals experiencing severe hardship and anxiety.
At Stoke CAB the Housing Team dealt with over 400 cases, the vast majority of which were rent or mortgage arrears. This represented a 10% increase on the previous year, achieved with no additional resource. The team prevented 153 people from becoming homeless in 2008/9.
While rent and mortgage arrears are a familiar consequence of recession we have witnessed some new variations on a familiar theme.
One that has affected significant numbers of people in the city in the last year has been the plight of private tenants who are faced with eviction, not because they are in arrears with their rent but because their landlord has failed to maintain their mortgage payments.
In such cases tenants often have very little protection and we found ourselves advising them on seeking alternative accommodation rather than fending off repossession.
Mortgage and rent repossessions have been rising for a number of years and peaked at the end of 2008. Since then the numbers have been falling as mortgage lenders realise there is little point in repossessing homes in the current housing market.
While the recession has clearly had a major influence on the work of the Housing Team they still find themselves facing a wide range of issues when trying to keep a roof over their enquirer’s heads.
'Zoe’s' Story
'Zoe' was living in her partner’s house with the two children when her partner was convicted of a serious criminal offence and imprisoned. Without his income 'Zoe' was struggling to pay the mortgage.
At first the mortgage lender refused to discuss the issue with either ourselves or 'Zoe' as her name was not on the mortgage, but they had previously agreed with her partner to accept interest only payments. On that basis it appeared she would be able to afford the mortgage.
Unfortunately she received a warrant of eviction out of the blue. We helped her apply to the court to have the eviction suspended and represented her at several hearings to decide whether or not the court could make an order in her favour as her name was not on the mortgage. After five months of negotiation and court hearings we finally persuaded the lender to join her to the action and accept an offer to pay the reduced, interest only payment and an amount towards the arrears.
This arrangement was all set to be implemented when without warning the Tax Credit Office suspended her tax credits. This meant 'Zoe' was now unable to meet any sort of payment towards the mortgage and the lenders withdrew their concession.
Faced with 'Zoe’s' imminent eviction we hurriedly contacted the Tax Credit Office by fax and email, to seemingly no avail. We then made a formal complaint which resulted on the day of the hearing with the previous award being reinstated. On that basis the court were willing to order that the warrant of eviction be suspended as long as she maintained the agreed payments.
When we last saw 'Zoe' her short term future had been secured but there were still outstanding issues as the mortgage lenders were now threatening to withdraw the interest only concession and there was still a question mark over her tax credits. However, six months after she first contacted us the immediate threat of homelessness had been lifted from 'Zoe' and her children.
