A protest was held this morning (December 6) outside a Bristol shop after the landlord refused to return his former tenant’s deposit. Aelisha Dickson, who was paying £1,300 a month for a basement studio flat, left the property two months ago after her landlord failed to fix a huge leak.
“The carpet was so wet I couldn’t take my shoes off in the house,” explained Aelisha, who discovered a leak a month after moving into the flat. By September she was still waiting for her landlord to fix it she decided to move out and found another flat on October 9. She is still waiting for her deposit to be returned.
Her landlord, Sirfan Hussain, who rents out several flats from a building on Jacob Street, Old Market, claims that he had already agreed to return her deposit and pay her compensation for the additional costs she incurred as a result of the leak. He claimed that the only reason he had not given her the money back before was because he was unable to get in contact with her after she left at the beginning of October.
Aelisha was never given a rental agreement but said that she made sure the landlord sent her a text message to confirm the payment of the deposit. When she moved in, there was no fridge-freezer and when it did arrive it was full of mould and she had to clean it herself.
In the end her mother was worried about her safety because there were no fire alarms in the property and ended up sending her some in the post before supporting her daughter to secure an alternative privately rented property nearby. Aelisha claims that she has spoken to other tenants who did not get their deposits returned from Mr Hussain and that there were students living upstairs at one point without a working bathroom, but Mr Hussain denies these claims.
The landlord, who has been renting properties on Jacob Street for the last five years, said that he has never had problems with other tenants but when he did, they were able to resolve them without the situation escalating. While he blames the hard rain and storms for the leak, Aelisha said that water would continue to come into the flat on dry, sunny days.
She said: “I put my foot down and all this water would come up. I tried to explain several times that it was a continuous leak. I thought it was the rain at first but when it was sunny it was still happening.
“It would dry it all up and then the next day it would be back. He’s done very little. Some of the issues he knew about like the gap in the roof and water that was coming down from that.
“The jobs were half done. There were skirting boards that were missing and hot water that wasn’t working. I just want my money back.
“I didn’t pay rent in September because it was flooded, I couldn’t even take my shoes off when I went into the house. He said that rent will be coming out of the deposit and I told him that was illegal and that I have withheld the rent for a very valid reason.
“It feels like he’s bitten off more than he can chew, he’s trying to make out that he’s doing people a favour but when I’m paying him £1,300 a month he isn’t doing me a favour. I have chronic fatigue syndrome – it was just exhausting and it was difficult to manage having to come home to be so completely drained by just having to function for the day and then deal with this wet that was coming up.
The landlord’s response
Mr Hussain said: “We were on the verge of writing out a tenancy agreement but then the flat occurred a leak so she said, ‘the flat’s occurred a leak’ and I said I will try and sort it. Then it just kept going bigger and I couldn’t find out where the leak was coming from. Then she said she was going to leave and I said that was fine, so there was no point putting a tenancy agreement together because she was going to leave.
“Leaks occur and I don’t have control of that. We had hard rain, like a month ago we had a storm. It happened, I was busy but I said I would try and sort the leak out but then she made a decision that she was going to leave and I said that’s fine. It’s not a one or two day job.
“It occurred from the roof after we had the crazy rain. I have been a landlord for five or six years. I have no issues with other tenants or properties and usually if there is an issue I end up sorting it with the tenants.
“There was a little mould in the fridge and she cleaned it, I’m not denying that. She was willing to do that, she told me, ‘you need to clean that’ and I didn’t.
“Two months ago, I tried calling her and she didn’t answer. When she did leave she didn’t give me the key, she just left the key in the flat. Then two weeks later I had a message on my phone from ACORN and I said that I would just pay it. She did buy a dehumidifier and a wet vacuum because of the leak and I said to her that I would reimburse her that money.
“They attended my shop this morning but I was a bit busy and asked why they were protesting because I had agreed to pay the deposit. They said that I hadn’t told them when I would give the money back. “