I HAVE A friend who lost her job recently through ill health. She isn’t a rich lady of means but she is a landlord.

She bought a wee one-bedroom student flat when in university and through working two jobs while studying managed to pay the interest on the mortgage.

Now, 20 years later she used that flat as security to buy her small semi-detached where she now lives. She is an avid gardener, though her chemotherapy sometimes causes her lawn to get a little out of control.

Financially speaking, she is in dire straits. The rent from her one-bedroom flat after taxes and expenses was a lifeline and a little security.

Unfortunately her long-term tenants moved out, they had kept the place in good order and paid their rent on time. They too were hoping one day to own a flat and rent another and good luck to them.

The new tenant moved in about two years ago, five months before Covid and about four months before her diagnosis. They paid the deposit and for the first few weeks, all was well.

Then they stopped paying the rent, they never paid the council tax and they changed the locks on the property.

Her former neighbours started calling her telling stories of drug use, noise at all hours, drunkenness, threats of

violence to the elderly lady who has lived above for 45 years when she challenged the tenant while he was urinating in the close.

Despite the “no pets” clause on the lease there are two large dogs which bark day and night and never seem to get out.

The stench as you pass the door, she was told, was almost unbearable. Not only are their lives being affected but their properties are being damaged and their house prices being brought down.

She is paying this person’s rent for them and they know she is powerless. She has two mortgages, she has friends who are suffering and pleading with her to do something, her credit is suffering as the council tax and bills pile up and she has cancer.

As a landlord, Lorna Slater sees her as some fat cat sucking the lifeblood from some hard-working and put upon renter and that she should not expect any return on investment or protections in law.

She believes that evictions should be illegal and therefore paying one’s way in the world should be optional (Keeping some Covid measures could make society less heartless, June 25).

This is the problem with the Greens. They seem to be entirely made up of champagne socialists, radicals and the children of the establishment who have no life experience whatsoever.

This cannot be true but their policies while full of ideals and good intentions utterly neglect the ugly realities of life and we all know where the road of good intentions takes us.

Perhaps Lorna Slater could explain to my friend what is socially just about someone who has done the right thing all her life having the small reward for all her hard work destroyed by a feckless, violent, abuser of trust, people and animals while having her lawful right to recourse removed?

In a perfect world everyone would do the right thing. In reality, evictions need to happen.

Perhaps if and when my friend is able to get this guy out her beloved wee flat he could come with his dogs and live in Lorna’s spare room?

She’s making far, far more money than my friend.

Oh, and given every moment of delay to the process beginning means more damage being done, Lorna could help out with the rectification of this?

Asking for a friend.

Leroy Jenkin
via email