Ok, so over the past week I've been unbelievably stressed out because of a load of absolute landlord fuckery. I'm going to do a big thread here explaining it all but I might miss some stuff cause it's so mad and complicated with so many lies so here we go

So, before lockdown I lost all my temp work, obviously, so I left my tiny 4ft by 8ft London cell and travelled up to Scotland. At the time I told my landlord both of these facts the day I travelled up to Scotland and he responded saying that was all fine.

Cut to 18:00 last friday and I received a Whatsapp message from my landlord in which he said "I have experience a big shift regards the whole Corona. I hope you won't mind too much but I have to move you guys to another property of mine" [sic]

and then began to describe another property which was over £100 more expensive and saying that he had to have us moved out in 2 weeks! He then proceeded to talk about how it would be such a huge help for him if I just moved to this more expensive flat within 2 weeks.

responded that I was in Scotland, unable to move and unable to afford an increase of rent of this nature and that I was confused as to why he was having issues as he had told me that he was the homeowner when I first rented the property and as I'm sure he knows

there is a mortgage holiday. His response is where the story becomes even more insane and filled with lies. He responded to me that he is in fact not the homeowner and I must be misremembering (I am not) and that he is in extreme debt so he needs to move us all around urgently

and insisting that the new place he was moving us too was a much nicer 4 bedroom flat At this point it is worth pointing out that a day prior to the landlord sending me these messages one of my flatmates had texted me that a family of three had moved into a tiny single room

My flatmate spoke with the mother of this family and discovered that she had previously lived at the property the landlord was offering us and it was not a 4 bedroom flat but a 9 bedroom student accommodation complex.

A few days and a few messages passed, I managed to fob off the landlord and speak with my flatmate who decided that she did not trust this landlord so had emailed him saying she was moving. He did not reply to her email but instead messaged me to lie that all the other flatmates

have agreed to move to the new house in a bid, I assume, to pressure me into accepting. I then found out that he was offering a room to one of the flatmates at, in his words, "a discounted rate of £550 per month" but another flatmate had found the room he was offering

on spareroom for only £500 per month all while failing to respond to one flatmate who'd turned down his offer and is leaving the tenancy and another who was requesting to view the new flat before he agreed

As I currently stand, I am lucky that my sister lives close by and can pack up my belongings so I have posted her my key and she will take my stuff. I did not want to tell my landlord that I was leaving before she took my stuff because I do not trust him not to either throw out

or confiscate my belongings to squeeze more money out of me. I am just glad I have that option, others in the house have no option but to remain under the thumb of this serial lying landlord.

I was actually in a better position than others (especially the family god knows what will happen to them) as my sister lives so close by but the whole story of this has been the landlord lying about who he is, who owns the property, where he wants to move us to

what the other flatmates were saying and literally everything else

I so so stressed out all week because of this. Work was hard, sleeping was restless and it's been a nightmare but again I was not in the worst position inside the houseshare

Beyond the distress, what angered my most was that all his messages were struck with a tone that he was in such a hard position and we would be doing him a favour if we could just illegally move property during a pandemic and increase my rent by £100. If I could just do that

So anyway, @OwenJones84 I hear you're looking for stories about landlords during covid. I've sent an email about this but here's a thread too

Basically, ban landlords