One way to piss away a half-hour if you’ve stalled on your pandemic hobbies: ring a few letting agents and ask if they take registrations from people who claim benefits.

It is unlawful now for letting agents to discriminate against people who claim benefits – a ruling which presents awesome chances to get agents on the phone and listen to them try to get round it.

I did this on Friday afternoon on behalf of N, a homeless mother of 2 whose story I’ve been documenting. N is the woman who in earlier this year was trying to stop her council from evicting her and her 2 kids from their homelessness hostel even as she was in hospital giving birth to her second.

The good news is that the council seems to have parked the Let’s Evict A Woman And Newborn Into the Snow idea. Probably a good shout.

The less good news is that this returns N to the part in the Ask Your Council For Housing Help process where homeless people must impress council officers by performing useless self-help homefinding activities.

Chief among these, of course, is the inevitable council instruction to the homeless person to ring around local letting agents to find ones who accept benefit claimants onto their books and who have properties that claimants can afford. I imagine that current statistics show that benefit claimants have a better chance of winning a house than finding a private landlord who will rent them one, but through the motions we must go.

And went.

I rang 3 East London agents on Friday afternoon and am happy to report that there has been a degree of evolution since discrimination against benefit claimants became illegal. In the good old days – pre 2020 – letting agents would just tell you to piss off the second you said “benefits.” Things have advanced to the point where they start with an enthusiastic Yes, You Can Register! before they ask you fuck off to Gumtree.

Some ok chat between those points, though, and as I say, the approach to rejection has really improved. Letting agents have certainly learned to say the right thing before moving onto the reasons why they’ll have to do the wrong one (main reason: the landlords on their books say Absolutely Not to universal credit in as many words. They don’t say those actual words, because nobody is allowed to, but there’s more than one way to say No, as we’ll see. You do come away with a feeling that landlords would prefer to torch their property than see someone who receives universal credit on it).

But as I say – 10 points for agent attempts to find a line on this side of the law.

First agent I spoke to could not have sounded keener on the idea of signing up people who he knew his landlords would shoot him on sight for presenting.

“We do indeed!” he trilled when I asked if his agency accepted universal credit claimants onto its books. “In all honesty [I bet] – us, as a company, we got no problem…”

Sadly, what the company did have was a lengthy roster of landlords with a problem. In as many words, the agent conceded that he’d have a better chance of homing a carcass than someone who signed on. Landlords on agent books were just less likely to consider universal credit tenants, “for various reasons… [can’t get] insurances things on their mortgages, blah, blah, blah… but yeah.. happily take your details…”

So bit of a downer there, but there was some positive news. It emerged that the landlord reluctance about benefits wasn’t about prejudice as such. It was more just a question of greed. This struggle, as they say, is real. At the end of the day, like the rest of us, landlords are just people who sit up half the night trying to get the big questions straight. Like – what kind of twat would rent to someone whose local housing allowance capped 2-bed rent money at around £1200pcm when that same twat could bleed a “professional” couple for £1700 and more?

Not the sort of twats you’d find on our man’s books, that’s for sure.

“Yes… see this is going to be the next problem… so a one bedroom at the moment is coming in generally at about £1400… supply and demand, everyone coming back to the centre… 2 bedroom [flats]… they’re going to be upwards… of, say, £1700. That’s going to be the biggest difficulty [for someone paying full rent with benefits]…you throw a load of offers in front of a landlord… sadly, they probably wouldn’t consider your friend, Kate. They’d probably take like 2 people working for JP Morgan earning like a combined salary of £140 grand a year…”

Boo.

Still – we ended the conversation with 2 useful suggestions for anyone who receives universal credit and would prefer a proper home to the next 40 years in a tent etc.

Suggestion 1: get a job at JP Morgan, preferably in senior management.

Suggestion 2: slum it.

“What I would suggest to you… the way you get things like that is to be looking at a different marketplace… the marketplace that I would suggest that you look at is the Gumtree…”

There is actually a third option, which is to ask your council to help you find a place. N is already walking that plank, though, so no need to re-litigate here. Anyway, the best you can really hope for from council is several years stuffed into one room in a hostel with your whole family and then, if you’re on a roll, several more years in some falling-down, mould-coated temp suckhole which the council has neither the time nor the staff to inspect before emptying you into it.

God – some of the temporary places I have seen over the years. As they say, you wouldn’t put a dog in them. Which, now that I think about it, could actually be because dog rescue outfits like the Dogs’ Trust do a better job of vetting homes for their client bases than councils. They really are quite focused. Let’s pick up on that again soon.

Back to our letting agents.

Compared to our agent above, the other 2 were a bit subdued on the subject of registering benefit claimants. There was less of the Cloud Nine feel to the opening remarks: these 2 went more for disciplined word selection and yoga-breathing.

Which is not to say that these agents said No to accepting universal credit claimants on their books. As we’ve seen, everyone’s learned not to say that.

What they did say was that they were happy to take people who received universal credit – as long as they had rich friends: ie, knew people who could be guarantors.

The various bars for these guarantors seemed high. The first agent wanted guarantors who earned 36 times the rent – so, £36,000 for a place that cost £1000pcm (good luck finding either of those). The second only looked at benefit claimants with guarantors who were in fulltime jobs, earned £40,000 or more, could pass a reference check and preferably owned their own home.

I’m not sure that many people in my own intimate circle would measure up to that whole list – maybe 1 or 2?. Suffice to say that most people’s options are probably fairly stark by this point. You can either prostrate yourself before Gumtree landlords, or try to find better friends.

“Would you take registrations from people who are going to pay their rent with universal credit?” I asked.

“Um… [breathe]… potentially… is it going to be like part universal credit, part employment…or…?”

“At the moment, it would be full universal credit,” I said. “[The tenant is] going to be leaving a hostel and the council suggested we ring around…”

“Yes…um…the only way that would work is if she could provide a guarantor. So that would have to be someone in full time employment… they would then have to be referenced… preferably a homeowner, but not necessarily… and it’s the full time employment that matters… generally, a guarantor would need to be on a salary of £40,000+… we’re happy…we’d like to try and help if we can, but our hands are kind of tied….”

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So that was Friday. Maybe not a great day out results-wise on the local home-hunt front, but early days still in the anti-discrimination thing, and as I say, letting agents are now really bringing a human touch to sentiments such as Fuck Off. Am quite sure that we’ll get there in the end. Like equal pay, or finding a soulmate, or even just waiting for your dentist to stop drilling – the special things in life take time.