Charity convicted of making money from inferior properties

Alternative Housing, which was established to provide accommodation for homeless people with addiction problems, has been convicted of housing offences six times over the past two years, after letting properties with problems including overflowing raw sewage.The company, which is registered with the Charity Commission, was fined a total of nearly £40,000.Over the same period it received £321,000 in housing benefit.The landlord is one of 61 that have been convicted of multiple housing offences over the past two years, yet are still offering homes to tenants.In one case Alternative Housing was successfully prosecuted for providing bedsits with broken cookers and drains, and without hot water or heating.Other landlords were convicted for providing cold, substandard or unlicensed homes.The list was compiled by the Guardian after freedom of information requests to councils in England and Wales.Data from the three-quarters of councils that responded revealed that 651 landlords were convicted of housing offences between January 2015 and December 2016.They were fined a total of just £3mn — an average of about £4,600 per conviction.Many of the landlords on the list continue to operate in the private rental market, which has doubled in size since 2000 and now includes many families unable to afford homes as a result of rising house prices.The list includes two other landlords with six convictions each: Plymouth landlord John Mayer and Adrian Charles Terry, who has appeared on BBC1’s Homes Under the Hammer.Mayer let out a string of unlicensed bedsits across the city, some of which were so cold council officers reported that his tenants had to wear coats indoors.He had four convictions for operating unlicensed houses in multiple occupation and two convictions for failing to comply with improvement notices and was fined a total of £22,000.In November, Terry pleaded guilty to multiple licensing and Housing Act offences at Wirral magistrates’ court, none of which related to the condition of his properties. He has been convicted six times, all for failing to license properties.A firm he founded, ADR Property Management, which is no longer trading, has five convictions for the same offences.He was fined a total of £150 for the offences, with his firm fined the same amount. The company received more than £22,000 in housing benefit payments over the same period.Wirral council’s housing cabinet member, George Davies, said Terry’s record was “quite appalling” and claimed he had been working against the council’s efforts to raise standards in the sector.Terry, who has no previous convictions, described the prosecution as “ridiculous” and blamed his staff for missing the deadline to register the firm’s properties with the council.”Due to staff negligence the applications didn’t go in on time and they fined me,” he said, adding that the convictions came in just one court case and his record “looked worse than it is” because the council had charged him and his firm with the same offences.Alternative Housing was prosecuted three times in 2015 after housing officers raided a string of its bedsits in some of Bristol’s most deprived neighbourhoods.They found that an electricity meter had been hotwired and sewage was overflowing in the backyard of one small terraced house converted into four bedrooms.In 2016 the charity faced three more cases when council officials discovered it was still putting some of its tenants at risk.A bucket was being used to collect kitchen waste water and there was no gas for hot water or heating in the same house in St Pauls.There were also missing smoke detectors, damp in the bedrooms and insufficient cooking facilities for the tenants.One of the charity’s tenants, Jorge Rias, was found dead in his room in the property in 2016. The Colombian lay undiscovered for up to four weeks.Bristol council’s housing cabinet member, Paul Smith, described Alternative Housing as a “bogus charity” which had done “appalling things” to vulnerable people.”There is nothing charitable about what they were doing.They were using charitable status as a cover for commercial activity,” he said.He added: “In Bristol a large percentage of the private rented sector is looking for young professionals. Those landlords that do take people on benefits have a huge captive market. What we might have once called slum landlords are able to come in and mop people up on benefits because there is not enough affordable homes.”The charity has only one trustee and director, Ghulam Mohamed, who is not contactable at the address filed with the Charity Commission.The charity’s office in Bristol appears to have closed.On Tuesday, a judge at Bristol crown court dismissed an appeal by Alternative Housing,upholding six offences relating to the house in St Pauls after the charity failed to attend the hearing.Kevin de Haan QC said he was “frankly very surprised” that a charity set up to manage property on behalf of very vulnerable people had allowed premises to get into this “very, very poor condition”.The Charity Commission opened a compliance case against Alternative Housing last year and refused to comment on the case.However, a spokesman said: “The commission takes very seriously its duty to maintain public trust and confidence in charities and takes robust action against those who abuse charitable status or who fail to comply with their legal duties.”The Guardian’s list reveals that nearly 60% of councils have not prosecuted any landlords in the past two years.This includes some with large rental sectors such as Redbridge in east London and Croydon in south London.