Latest news with #illegalrentals
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Investigations launched as rooms in sold off London police stations 'illegally rented out'
Investigations have been launched after rooms in former London police stations sold off by the Met appeared to be listed illegally for rent. The Isle of Dogs police station building, near Canary Wharf, reportedly has over a dozen people paying to live in it after being advertised on online sites, such as Pictures of one 'flat share' listing show a double mattress in a small room with a mini fridge and a wardrobe for £800 a month. Another shows a mattress in the same room as a shower cubicle and a sink, both by the front door, for £900 a month. One perspective tenant who viewed the accommodation said 40 rooms were available to rent in the building and some listed as 'studios', despite not having a kitchen, were £1,100 to £1,300 a month. A Tower Hamlets council spokesman said: 'We're aware that the former police station building is currently being used as residential or guest accommodation without the necessary planning permission. 'We have launched an investigation and undertaken site visits to assess the situation and initial warning letters have been issued, requesting that the unauthorised use of the building cease. 'If they do not cease the unauthorised use of the building as short term let/guest house, the council has a range of enforcement powers which can be used for remedying unauthorised uses.' The east London station was sold by the Met to DN Private Equity Canary Wharf Limited, owned by David Nourani, for £2.8million in early 2022. Later that year a large cannabis factory was discovered in the former precinct. Requests by Milegate Limited - a frozen food company owned by Mr Nourani - to convert the building into housing were rejected by Tower Hamlets Council and the Planning Inspectorate in 2024. Town hall officers visited the building in late July and discovered it was being used for 'residential purposes' and launched an investigation. Milegate Limited was contacted for comment. It comes after Enfield Council earlier this year served a formal notice to a 'rogue landlord' who was unlawfully operating the former Southgate police station on Chase Side as a hostel. The front counter closed in 2013, and the building was later sold by the Met for £4.1million. Plans to turn it into a 65-bed hostel were rejected last year after complaints from residents, councillors and the Metropolitan Police, with officers raising fears about 'crime prevention, safety, security' as well as 'the safety of lone women and young girls'. An appeal is ongoing. The building was found to be being used as accommodation unlawfully in January. A town hall investigation revealed that rooms in the building were not only illegally advertised for rent, but homeless people were also being placed there by other London boroughs. Councillor Susan Erbil, Enfield Council's Cabinet Member for Planning and Regulatory Services, said at the time: 'The council is committed to taking all necessary steps to tackle rogue landlords who flout regulations and provide substandard accommodation. 'Such practices are unacceptable, and we will always take justified and defensible enforcement action.' A House of House of Multiple Occupation (HMO) licence application was submitted to the council for the building in June after the permitted number of occupants was reduced to 40, down from 99, and the kitchens and bathrooms were reconfigured. In 2008, London had 160 open police station counters. It now has around 36, meaning more than 75% have closed. This week the Metropolitan Police revealed plans to close half its remaining front desks to save money. Scotland Yard confirmed it will break its pledge to have one accessible 24 hours a day in each of the capital's 32 boroughs. A Met spokesman said: 'The decision to reduce and close some front counters will save £7million and 3,752 hours of police officer time per month allowing us to focus resources relentlessly on tackling crime and putting more officers into neighbourhoods across London.'
BBC News
01-08-2025
- BBC News
Rats, mould and dangerous overcrowding - inside illegal house-shares
In the middle of the night, says Maria, groups of people can sometimes be seen moving into houses in her neighbourhood, far more than would seem to fit comfortably in the Victorian terraced of these houses has 10 to 15 people living inside, she estimates. Maria, an architect, suspects they are being illegally rented. "They're everywhere," she contacted Your Voice, Your BBC News after spending years complaining about these homes to her local authority in east London, Newham Council. We began investigating - and found a widespread black-market rental sector where people are forced to live in unsafe videos and testimony from the people living in several properties like these showed unsanitary and overcrowded homes, with adults sleeping on bare mattresses in bunk beds, contending with black mould, rats and, in some cases, conditions that proved to be deadly. Laws across the UK say large house-shares - officially known as houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) - must have a licence, so local councils can ensure each property is suitable for the number of occupants and meets gas, electrical and fire safety evidence in three London house-share hotspots we examined suggests that in some places there are more unlicensed, black-market HMOs than there are legal ones. One London borough told us it has 3,000 licensed HMOs, but estimates there are two or three times that number in shop windows in east London, we noticed many ads for properties that did not appear to conform to licensing laws, often offering a "bedspace" in shared rooms. We also found adverts online that appeared to show mould or dirt in the shared investigate, BBC reporter Gopal Virdee responded to some of these adverts and viewed the rooms, filming with a hidden camera. In one property in Waltham Forest, where there was a shared bedroom advertised at £330 a month, he was met by about 10 young men who all appeared to live there. The room on offer was shared between three people, another was shared between four - and on some of the beds, there was no bedding or even of the men told us they were subletting and admitted there was no HMO licence - as the local authority register confirmed.A company representing the property owner later told us that the tenancy agreement "expressly forbids" subletting and multiple occupancy and that the property had never been let or advertised for those purposes. It said it had taken prompt action when it learned of the contract man who showed our reporter around later told us he had "no involvement whatsoever in the management, ownership or letting of this property". Waltham Forest Council said it would take conditions such as these can be fatal. Nazmush Shahadat escaped a deadly fire in 2023 at an HMO in Shadwell, east London. He had moved in as a last resort, after coming to the UK to study law and finding that the housing he had been promised had fallen "stench" hit him when he first arrived, Nazmush says, "like an old gym with the men's sweat". He says he was bitten by bedbugs and could see mould across the ceiling from his top the night of the fire, there were 18 people crammed into the two-bedroom flat. Many of Nazmush's flatmates worked as food-delivery riders, and the fire started because of a faulty e-bike battery charging under a the tenants' attempts to put the blaze out failed, they fled the smoke-filled flat. Nazmush says they thought everyone had got out - until the emergency services carried out a man on a stretcher. "That's when it hit us straight away, that body - it could be any one of us," he Rahman had only lived in the flat a few days. He died later in hospital aged 41, leaving behind a wife and two children in Bangladesh. Earlier this year, the landlords - husband and wife Aminur Rahman and Sofina Begum - were fined £90,000 for multiple housing offences, including cramming more people into the property than three people the licence permitted. Because such overcrowded properties are undeclared, the true number of unlicensed HMOs across the country is unknown. But an experimental data project to try to detect them has been developed by Ben Yarrow, who runs the landlord and letting agency review website, Marks Out Of flags potential unlicensed HMOs by searching through a range of financial data sources to identify properties associated with large numbers of people who have different has some limitations - it cannot find people relying on cash with no formal paperwork, and in some cases households with big families can be wrongly asked Mr Yarrow to scan specific postcodes in three boroughs which we knew were HMO hotspots. In part of Newham, where there are only 75 licensed properties, he found more than 700 possible part of Tower Hamlets, he found nearly 500 suspected HMOs. The council has publicly listed only 50 HMO licences here, although it said more properties were around Southwark's Old Kent Road, Mr Yarrow found more than 300 possible HMOs, although only 232 were licensed. Southwark Council told us it actively works to identify suspect properties and protect tenants. Tower Hamlets Council said it thought the data was incorrect and that it actively investigates reports of unlicensed Council said it uses advanced systems to identify unlicensed HMOs and follows up all resident complaints, but it said enforcement is time-consuming because tenants are often "among the most vulnerable members of society". It said it had investigated 2,307 alleged failures to licence properties between January 2023 and March this year. Many council enforcement teams appear to be overstretched. According to responses to Freedom of Information requests, only about a third of complaints raised by renters in England between 2021 and 2023 were followed by a local authority government's Renters' Rights Bill, currently passing through Parliament, is due to create a national database of private rented properties in England, which will help councils "clamp down on unlicensed properties", London's deputy mayor for housing Tom Copley told the growth of unlicensed HMOs means it is not only single renters caught up in them - sometimes entire families are crammed into single rooms in shared Judzinskas, who is originally from Lithuania, moved into a shared house in Greenwich, south-east London. Shortly afterwards, his wife joined him. A council officer later said in a report that the property should have been licensed as an HMO. The couple spent nine years there, and went on to have a family in their small room, squeezing in two cots and all their possessions. "People like me, we don't have a choice," he family had to wait to use the bathroom or the cooker, and conditions were unhygienic, he says. They captured video of rats in the with the landlord and other tenants broke down and Marius was asked to leave, he says. The family returned home one day and found the locks had been changed, he says. They tried to climb in through an open window so they could put their nine-month old baby in the room to sleep, but the police were called. They were evicted. Marius is now taking legal action against the people who managed his former home, through a rent repayment order, to try to claw back some of what he paid. Renters in homes where landlords have broken the law, including by failing to register an HMO, can claim up to a year's rent is a particular risk with unlicensed HMOs, says Roz Spencer from Safer Renting, which helps tenants in disputes with issue of unlicensed HMOs is growing, she says. "We are being referred more people and I believe the problem is spreading and the non-compliance issue is endemic." Chris Norris, chief policy officer for the National Residential Landlords Association, says most landlords operate within the law and only have one or two properties that are well looked after. But he says: "There is this view or perception that landlords can get away with it because, frankly, some landlords do."Local authorities do not have the capacity to enforce the licensing regime, he says, but it is only a "tiny minority" of landlords responsible for these bad government says the Renters' Rights Bill will address the situation, "empowering" tenants to act without the threat of retaliation. It says it expects local authorities to "clamp down on rogue landlords" and "HMOs must be safe, well-maintained, and properly managed".But in the meantime, many thousands of people are likely to be stuck in potentially dangerous homes. Additional reporting by Mary O'Reilly
Yahoo
19-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Airbnb allowed rampant price gouging following L.A. fires, city attorney lawsuit alleges
The Los Angeles city attorney's office has filed a lawsuit against Airbnb, accusing the home-sharing platform of allow price gouging and unverified hosts and addresses at more than 2,000 rentals following the January firestorm in Altadena and Pacific Palisades. In a statement, L.A. City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto's office accused Airbnb of allowing illegal rental price hikes and permitting false and nonexistent hosts and addresses on the platform. The lawsuit seeks a permanent order to halt Airbnb from hiking up prices during the existing state of emergency, as well as reimbursement for consumers who were charged higher rates. "Although Airbnb subsequently took steps to curtail price gouging, evidence indicates that illegal gouging on the site continues and may be ongoing,' Feldstein Soto said in a statement announcing the civil enforcement action. 'Airbnb is aware that its verification processes are inadequate … potentially luring prospective tenants into a false sense of security about its hosts and locations.' Airbnb disputed the lawsuit's accusations, saying the platform has played a consistent role in supporting victims with financial aid following the wildfires. Read more: Scams, bidding wars and predatory landlords: One couple's quest for housing after the fires 'Since the wildfires broke out, Airbnb … contributed nearly $30 million to fire recovery efforts in Los Angeles, including free emergency housing to nearly 24,000 people impacted by the fires,' an Airbnb spokesperson told The Times. 'We will continue supporting the city of Los Angeles in its recovery and rebuilding efforts.' The lawsuit seeks fines of $2,500 for each instance of alleged price gouging in L.A., which could reach between 2,000 and 3,000 properties, or up to $7.5 million in total penalties. The lawsuit also alleges that Airbnb's 'inadequate' verification processes left users vulnerable to offenses such as identity theft, robbery, sexual assault, invasion of privacy and voyeurism. Airbnb did not respond to an inquiry from The Times regarding those claims. The unverified and 'nonexistent' hosts alleged in the lawsuit refer to cases of hosts using fake names to represent themselves on the platform. According to the lawsuit, cases include a profile under the name of 'Amber Hiller' that actually belonged to a woman named Akila Nourollah, and a host named 'Greg,' verified using the ID of someone named Guven Sacikarali, a relative of the actual account controller, Ali Sacikaral. Read more: While many were helped, some fire victims say Airbnb's free vouchers are useless While not the correct name of the account owners, Airbnb does allow the use of 'preferred names' in its terms and conditions. The lawsuit also mentions several cases in which verified locations on Airbnb were actually located up to four miles away from the advertised address. If price gouging claims are determined to be true, the lawsuit claims that Airbnb can be found to have violated the state's Unfair Competition Law, California Penal Code Section 396, the Anti-Gouging Law, and the Jan. 16 state of emergency declaration by Gov. Gavin Newsom, which states that it would be illegal for Airbnb to increase the pricing of rentals by more than 10% during the state of emergency. The firestorm that erupted on Jan. 7 ultimately destroyed more than 16,000 buildings in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Altadena. Read more: After disasters, FEMA leases apartments for survivors. But not after the L.A. fires In January, Airbnb released a statement denouncing price gouging and promising to make it impossible for hosts to raise the prices of their properties by more than 10% from their pre-wildfire rates. 'With tens of thousands of people currently displaced in the Los Angeles area and the prospect of that figure continuing to increase, the last thing anyone should encounter is pricing for a hotel room or a home that seeks to take advantage of a desperate situation,' the statement read. The company also pledged to give free $1,000 vouchers to fire victims for Airbnb stays. By Jan. 28, more than 11,000 vouchers had been sent out. However, some fire victims claimed that strict regulations and a lack of response to applications made the vouchers essentially useless. While the state of emergency declaration aimed to prevent rental price hikes during and following the fires, previous Times reporting revealed that prices had continued to balloon in parts of L.A., leaving those without shelter with little options besides expensive stays. Read more: 'Everyone else has moved on': Why L.A. fire victims may be feeling even worse now An Airbnb spokesperson said the cap on increasing rental prices following the fires stayed firm, allowing for no illegal increases. The company cited California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta's early statements, which praised Airbnb's promises to comply with the state's emergency declarations. "They're doing the right thing, I thank them for doing that. We hope other platforms will follow suit and do the same,' Bonta said during a Jan. 16 news conference. However, Bonta's statements came before many long-term Airbnb rates were set. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Daily Mail
19-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Spain blocks 65,000 Airbnb listings in another blow to tourists
Spain has ordered Airbnb to remove more than 65,000 holiday homes from its platform as part of a crackdown on illegal listings. The country's Consumer Rights Ministry said the listings violated existing rules, according to Reuters. Many of the banned listings do not include a license number and some do not specify whether they're run by an individual or corporation, said the Ministry. Pablo Bustinduy, Spain's Consumer Rights Minister, said: 'No more excuses. Enough with protecting those who make a business out of the right to housing in our country.' The minister said his goal was to end the 'lack of control' and 'illegality' in the holiday rental industry. An Airbnb spokesperson told Reuters that the company intends to appeal the decision. That's a 15 percent increase from 2020 while there are thought to be many more that operate without an official license. In 2024, Barcelona's mayor ordered a total ban on tourist rentals by 2028. At the time, Mayor Jaume Colboni said: 'It's very drastic but it has to be because the situation is very, very difficult. 'In Barcelona, like other big European cities, the number one problem we have is housing.' The latest crackdown follows a huge protest against overtourism in the Canary Islands over the weekend. Thousands of people marched under banners saying the 'Canaries have a limit' with some holidaymakers taking shelter in their hotels. A tourist told MailOnline: 'I didn't go out due to the protests, I'm stuck in my Airbnb to avoid the crowds.' One placard read: 'Stop excessive tourism… this is our home,' while another said: 'My misery is your paradise'. A banner declared the Canary Islands 'is no longer a paradise' thanks to tourism. Another sign was inscribed with the words: 'tourists swim in [expletive] , referencing the large amount of sewage water that is dumped into the sea - the majority of it, activists say, coming from hotels and tourist accommodations. Other placards in Spanish said: 'Don't sell your homes to guiris!' Guiri is a Spanish slang word for British and other tourists. Demonstrators could also be heard shouting 'Canarias No Se Vende', meaning 'The Canary Islands Are Not For Sale,' while the blew whistles and proudly held Canary Island flags in the sky. Marchers also echoed the chant 'No hay cams pa' tanto guiri', translating to 'There's not enough beds for so many foreigners.' While another placard read: 'Enjoying a day at your pool? That water could be going on food.'
Associated Press
13-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Honolulu Can Fine Airbnb, Vrbo for Illegal Vacation Rentals. It Never Has
Faced with thousands of illegal short-term rentals that drew complaints from neighbors and limited housing options for residents, the Honolulu City Council decided in 2019 to target not only the operators of those rentals, but the websites that brought them customers. Under the city's law, Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms, as well as operators of rental units, are required to register with the city. Booking platforms must tell the city which properties have been rented, allowing the city to check if those units are legal. Companies can be fined up to $10,000 a day, per unit, if they receive a fee to book an unregistered short-term rental. But in the four and a half years since the law took effect, Honolulu's Department of Planning and Permitting has never cited Airbnb, Vrbo or any other rental platform for doing business with illegal rentals, city officials told Civil Beat. Meanwhile, the number of illegal rentals dwarfs legal ones. Inside Airbnb, an organization that works to combat the negative effects of short-term rentals, says the site has about 7,900 listings on Oʻahu. The city says there are just 2,100 legal short-term rentals here. Dawn Takeuchi Apuna, director of Honolulu's Department of Planning and Permitting, said the city focuses on people operating illegal rentals, not the websites that handle bookings. 'The operator that's posting really is the problem,' she said. The city's own data shows how fruitless that approach has been. Between 2022 and mid-April, the city issued about 2,200 notices of violation to owners or operators. As of January, it had collected just 2% of the almost $90 million in fines it levied. Council member Tyler Dos Santos-Tam said he wants the city to crack down on illegal rentals. 'Frankly, I think that a scenario where the platforms are on the hook would certainly lead to a lot more compliance,' he said. Holding Platforms Responsible For Illegal Rentals Airbnb, Vrbo and other platforms have opened up entire neighborhoods to travelers looking for more of a local feel, and more space, than they would typically get in a hotel. Though that's attractive to tourists and a boon for hosts, elected leaders in popular vacation destinations such as New Orleans, New York City and Honolulu have faced complaints about the collateral damage. 'Neighborhoods may be negatively impacted by the presence of short-term rentals, including escalating real property values, increased noise, illegal parking, and increased traffic,' Honolulu's short-term rental law says. 'There is a concern that homes are being purchased as income-producing investments' rather than homes. The council estimated that there were 8,000 to 10,000 short-term rentals on Oʻahu in 2019, 'far exceeding the number of permitted units.' Honolulu's law was meant as a compromise between short-term operators, some of whom say they need the extra income to make ends meet, and their critics. The law allows rentals of under 30 days in resort zones and some nearby areas as long as those properties are registered with the city as 'transient vacation units.' In addition, the city allows about 800 properties around the island that have operated as short-term rentals or owner-occupied bed and breakfasts since the late 1980s. The law requires companies such as Airbnb and Vrbo to provide the city with data on bookings. And every listing on those sites must include a tax map ID and a registration number. Other heavily touristed cities have taken a similar approach. In San Francisco, platforms that don't take 'reasonable care' to prevent illegal rentals from appearing on their sites can be fined up to $484 for an initial violation and up to $968 for each subsequent violation. In New York, platforms can be fined up to $1,500 for every transaction involving an illegal listing. Come June, platforms operating in New Orleans can be fined up to $1,000 per day for every short-term rental they facilitate. The Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law and Justice applauded Honolulu for holding rental companies accountable. 'Rather than stand watch outside a suspected illegal STR (short-term rental) and wait for a guest to walk through the front door, officials can simply scroll through online listings, identify unregistered units, and issue citations directly to the corporate entities promoting them,' Appleseed's spokesperson Will Caron wrote in a 2019 press release. But Appleseed's opinion has changed. Arjuna Heim, who became the organization's director of housing policy after the council passed the short-term rental law, said she doesn't think the city has the wherewithal to go after behemoths like Airbnb. 'It's hard for a small state like Hawaiʻi – let alone a single county – to fight a hosting platform that has really smart lawyers and is international,' she said. City Hasn't Followed Through On Law Takeuchi Apuna acknowledged that it's challenging to combat illegal vacation rentals. But she contended that the law holding platforms accountable wouldn't help much. To find illegal listings, the permitting department uses software to track registrations and scan booking websites. When it finds one, the department asks the operator to remove it. If that doesn't work, the department asks the booking platform to do so. Yet the city has asked companies such as Airbnb to remove listings only about a dozen times, starting last year. The removal requests include a listing at 2154 Auli'i Street that has racked up almost a million dollars in fines since 2021; the city is now on track to try to seize the property to collect those fines. Takeuchi Apuna said that with dozens of platforms available, including some catering to niche travelers, a scofflaw can simply list a rental somewhere else if a platform removes their listing. Despite having the power to penalize platforms, she said, 'We believe that we will be more effective if we partner with them rather than enforce against them.' Takeuchi Apuna said the city has been slow to crack down on short-term rentals because there are just two full-time short-term rental investigators and because the department has had to improve the software that matches rental listings and registered units. The department also had to rewrite its rules on short-term rentals after the City Council streamlined registration last year. But the 2019 law was written to make the department's job easier. It requires companies such as Airbnb to submit monthly reports listing all bookings. Those reports must include the name of the person responsible for each rental, the address, the transient accommodation tax identification number, and details for each stay, including how much guests paid. Those reports would enable city employees to see if the properties that had been booked are registered. But the rental platforms have never sent them. 'Working together, we haven't been requiring that they provide those reports,' Takeuchi Apuna said. A spokesperson for Airbnb did not answer a question about whether the company has provided reports, instead providing a statement from Airbnb Senior Policy Manager for Hawaiʻi Janel Cozzens that says the company works with the city and complies with all applicable local laws. Dos Santos-Tam said he asked the permitting department for the monthly reports last year and learned that it doesn't have them. He said he didn't pursue it at the time. 'But I would hope that we start asking the platforms for these reports,' he said. 'I think the data that it would contain would be really helpful for further enforcement.' It may be challenging for the city to get those reports. They're required for any booking platform that has registered with the city. No company has ever registered, Takeuchi Apuna said. A few Kailua residents who testified in support of a 2022 update to the city's short-term rental law were surprised to learn the permitting department isn't using all of the tools available to tamp down on illegal rentals. James Gebhard said the number of illegal short-term rentals in his neighborhood seems to have declined during the past 10 years, and the remaining ones aren't as raucous. Still, he said the city should go after booking platforms. 'I think they're overlooking their duties if they don't do that,' he said. Airbnb Fights Back In a Cornell Law Review article published in December, business law professors Keri K. White and Jennifer Cordon Thor wrote that there's evidence that short-term rentals contribute to rising housing costs. They argued that municipalities must get the platforms' help to keep illegal listings off their sites. Airbnb contests the idea that its listings contribute to housing unaffordability, instead blaming slow construction of new housing. Last week, the company published a blog post showing that New York City's median rent continued to rise in the two years after it passed Local Law 18, which severely restricted short-term rentals. In addition to targeting booking websites, New York City's law says owners must be present onsite when renting for fewer than 30 days and that they can't host more than two guests at a time. 'Local Law 18 hasn't improved housing availability or affordability – but it has driven up prices for residents and visitors, hurt small businesses and local resident hosts, and handed more power to hotels,' the company said. The company has fought back against New York and other cities that have held it accountable for illegal rentals. In a lawsuit filed against New York City, Airbnb argued that the law would effectively end short-term rentals in the city. Airbnb listings in the city dropped by about 90% the year after the law passed, according to the company. A judge dismissed the case and said the city's rules were not overly burdensome. Airbnb has sued other cities too, including Santa Monica, California, and New Orleans, contending their laws put the company in the position of enforcing city regulations. Heim, of the Appleseed Initiative, cautioned that booking platforms may be protected by the same federal law that absolves Meta of liability for content posted on Facebook. That's an open question, though a federal judge in California ruled in Santa Monica's case that short-term rental companies can be held liable for transactions involving illegal rentals. Litigation is ongoing in New Orleans. Airbnb has not sued Honolulu over its short-term rental law. The company didn't answer a question about whether it has considered it. A group of short-term rental owners, however, successfully sued the city over its 2022 law that said any property rented for less than 90 days must be registered as a short-term rental. The prior threshold was 30 days. That ruling spurred legislators to change Hawaiʻi law to say short-term rentals don't count as a residential use and that counties can use their zoning power to phase them out altogether. Maui County has been considering that option for almost a year. Dos Santos-Tam said Honolulu should consider it, too. ___ This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
