[Josy]

Originally Posted by the truth

housing benefits going direct to tenants...massive danger for health and safety...the majority are incapable of looking after a house...often they simply waste spend or simply steal the money and let the houses go to rack and ruin....meanwhile the houses flood, the dampness spreads the electrics become dangerous , the buildings unsafe and lets not even talk about gas....the government want the landlords to have the right paper work...that's meaningless when you have idiots destroying houses

I have to reply to this part.

Did you happen to see the panorama episode last night which focused on the opposite end of the letting/tenants/landlords spectrum?

These greedy landlords with no morals at all are raking in a fortune (millions it was shown last night) per year from housing benefit. One family of landlords actually raked in 3.5 million in housing benefit payments in one year from their tenants, living lives of luxury whilst the people that are living in their properties are living like sardines in a tin, amongst mould, damp, rats, cockroaches and actual squalor, one landlord was actually opening the tenants' mail as part of the tenancy agreement, I'm talking about an entire building of tenants mail too not just one.

So whilst it's known you have been affected by bad tenants in the past you CANNOT lump everyone into one category, for every bad tenant there will be 10 decent, law abiding, perfect tenants out there.

As to the housing benefit being paid directly to the tenant, after what I watched last night I don't think this is as bad an idea as what you make it out to be.

Speaking of health and safety, these landlords should at the very least be fined for the unsafe conditions that their tenants are being forced to live in.