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6/28/2025, 10:03:16 PM
>Welcome to HMO Britain
>While neighbours suffer, landlords are cashing in on Britain’s demand for houses in multiple occupation.
>Locals have seen armed police and snipers on rooftops, witnessed near-daily drug deals and individuals naked in the street.
>Why? Houses in multiple occupation have spiked in the area in the past five years. Ealing Council officials believe there could be double the officially registered number of 28 on this estate. An HMO is a house share: a flat or house rented to three or more people who aren’t from the same household but who share amenities such as a bathroom and kitchen. They are handy for students, young professionals, singles and couples who can’t afford to live alone. But they are fast becoming a political problem.
>At another, there are six pigeonholes for each “flat” crammed into a three-bedroom house. Tenants are charged £1,200 a month. Some of the landlords are investors based as far away as New York.
>“We once had to flee in the middle of the night and sleep in the car,” said Dragana Tomasevic, a 40-year-old school support worker with two young sons who lives next door to a problem HMO. A local of 20 years, she has had prison-leavers as neighbours. She was threatened with rape, one of her sons developed asthma from cannabis fumes seeping through the wall, and the whole family is sleep-deprived: hearing brawls and screaming in the night, her children have nightmares.
>Another Perivale resident, Agata Michalewicz, 38, who has a six-year-old and a baby, remembers the house next to hers being divided up into a HMO a year after she bought her home in 2016. One of the new tenants shot her pet cat with an air rifle. “We just wanted a peaceful life, to have kids, be safe, and it’s a little hell.”
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2025/06/overcrowded-housing-is-tearing-communities-apart
>While neighbours suffer, landlords are cashing in on Britain’s demand for houses in multiple occupation.
>Locals have seen armed police and snipers on rooftops, witnessed near-daily drug deals and individuals naked in the street.
>Why? Houses in multiple occupation have spiked in the area in the past five years. Ealing Council officials believe there could be double the officially registered number of 28 on this estate. An HMO is a house share: a flat or house rented to three or more people who aren’t from the same household but who share amenities such as a bathroom and kitchen. They are handy for students, young professionals, singles and couples who can’t afford to live alone. But they are fast becoming a political problem.
>At another, there are six pigeonholes for each “flat” crammed into a three-bedroom house. Tenants are charged £1,200 a month. Some of the landlords are investors based as far away as New York.
>“We once had to flee in the middle of the night and sleep in the car,” said Dragana Tomasevic, a 40-year-old school support worker with two young sons who lives next door to a problem HMO. A local of 20 years, she has had prison-leavers as neighbours. She was threatened with rape, one of her sons developed asthma from cannabis fumes seeping through the wall, and the whole family is sleep-deprived: hearing brawls and screaming in the night, her children have nightmares.
>Another Perivale resident, Agata Michalewicz, 38, who has a six-year-old and a baby, remembers the house next to hers being divided up into a HMO a year after she bought her home in 2016. One of the new tenants shot her pet cat with an air rifle. “We just wanted a peaceful life, to have kids, be safe, and it’s a little hell.”
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2025/06/overcrowded-housing-is-tearing-communities-apart
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