When all the students come back

Well , who is looking forward to the students returning to their uni towns? I will tell you who: university finance departments, landlords and ladies, Sainsbury’s. Once this list would have included bars and pubs, and local shops. Once it would be local residents looking forward to new trends in music and art, and even philosophical debates down the Royal Park Pub. Most, if not all university lectures can be online. Practicals obviously need equipment, but possibly students could to access that at a local home university. Quite this a drastic step I realise. This would involve cooperation between institutions, but hey, this is a global pandemic, but I say where there’s a will... It seems that the exasperated parents have already dropped off and got rid of the most determinedly antisocial partygoers, probably a thousand or so, given the reports we have from Moorland Avenue, Saint John’s Avenue, Hyde Park Road, Cardigan Road, the Norwoods, Victoria Road, the Broomfields, the Langdales. But many more thousands are set to descend on the city. We hear of one uni has actually asking students to come back early. Is to this ensure they will get their fees, or to get them inside the city boundary before lockdowns return? Hopefully these are students who have come here to study. Nonetheless they will have been looking forward to freedom, freshers week and meeting up with old friends. To have them all descend on Leeds at once is the recipe for an almighty spike and heaven help the students and the unis when they get the blame for Leeds’s first football game in the Premier League to be behind closed doors and when all the pubs get closed again. We suggest that the council and the universities get together, be creative and come up with an intelligent plan.

Open Letter to All Leeds Universities

Open letter to All Leeds Universities

As one university spokesperson wrote to us, indeed your students are not solely responsible for the situation. In many ways the students are just victims, collateral damage in a system, an infrastructure which which has evolved, consisting of entitled students and their entitled parents, lazy and unscrupulous landlords and ladies, and the criminal drug pushers who work for themselves at the expense of us all. (And of course it isn’t all landlords/ladies, it isn’t all students, but it is all druggies.) Let us also add in a council and a police force who either genuinely don’t realise just how bad the situation has become, or don’t have the will or the capacity to change it.

However, as far the students are concerned, they may not be solely your students, and it is not all students, but the party-goers are all students. And the students are only here because the universities are here. And this gives the unis both the responsibility and ability to do something about the situation.

Presently there are two distinct types of party-type antisocial behaviour. The raves such as the one that happened on Woodhouse Moor were not organised by students and were mostly locals and nearly all from other areas of Leeds. But in the late afternoon the organisers were conspicuously walking round the back streets round our way so presumably they were looking for students to invite. And students’ parents and the universities should be really worried about this.

 Only five years ago my daughter came back from work at the pub to find that someone had climbed the tree in our front garden and then dropped onto the pavement where she then died. Only later did we discover that she been persuaded to take drugs for the first time and, the very next day, was going away to university to do a post-grad course. How tragic this was was brought home when her parents came up from her hometown to see where she died and meet the person who found her. As they stood in the garden looking at the tree and described the life she had been about to lead we just felt that their daughter was our daughter or sister.

But this letter is not just about noise, parties drugs and alcohol abuse. Anti-social behaviour also includes incompetent  waste management. Students either don’t care or don’t know how to recycle and, for example, don’t realise or care that you can’t, in Leeds, put glass into a green bin, and that you should not leave bins out on the pavement. Also, on Leaving Day just wheeling mattresses and sofas out onto the street for someone else to deal with is the disgusting height [or depth] of anti-social behaviour.

Hyde Park Road Leeds

And then  there are few things more insensitive than parking in front of a neighbour’s drive. Obviously the council hasn’t helped by painting white parking lines down some streets (eg Moorland Avenue), but you would think that the presence of a parking area, especially if there is a vehicle in it would be a giveaway. The implications for anyone who has to drive to work [and arrive on time] are frightening.

In general the graffiti and the fly-tipping (apart from the aforementioned mattresses) aren’t directly the students’ fault, but by treating the neighbourhood badly you invite others to regarding it as a dumping ground.

Local residents who live here all round keep the area afloat - just. We keep the shops, the takeaways and the pubs (what’s left of them] ticking over. Without us the area would die altogether. So when the two entitled parents told one particular resident on two separate occasions within one week in July 2020 that she living in the wrong area, said parents should realise that without us, their children would not last the distance.

 

What are the Lettings Agents' Responsibilities when their Tenants Take Anti-social Behaviour to these Heights?

This is us at Moorland Residents Inc writing to the letting agents, wondering what their role would be regarding their tenants and their tenants' behaviour. 

We are writing to you as you are the letting agent for a number of multiple occupancy houses in the area.

As you may be aware from local newspapers [Yorkshire Evening Post, Leeds Live, Radio Aire], a number of students are regularly hosting loud parties, often starting in the afternoon and continuing into the early hours of the morning. This has been going on years at the weekends, but the parties and attendant anti-social behaviour escalated at the beginning of June when students who had left Leeds at the beginning of lockdown returned to their student accommodation.

The anti-social behaviour includes hiring sound systems, partying in the gardens and in the streets, stealing wood to burn and chairs to sit on from other houses. It includes overt drug taking and excessive alcohol consumption, and screeching with laughter until 6am.

Apart from the partying the students leave the bins in streets, overflowing, with no differentiation between recycling and landfill rubbish, and this rubbish includes glass bottles. The state of the bins encourages rats, invites the regular fly-tipping of white goods and broken furniture, some brought out from the HMOs themselves.

The noise levels are at the worst they have ever been. Longterm local residents are suffering from the psychological and physical effects of sleep deprivation, made worse by the fact that many residents are having to work from home. Plus some students are ignoring rules regarding social distancing and limited numbers in houses. In some instances, they are also causing property damage to the houses they are renting.

Since March 23rd the police have acted on multiple noise disturbance and lockdown breaches, and then on July 1st, the Council brought in a Public Space Protection Order and I’m reporting a breach of this PSPO at [as well as instances of flytipping. This has made the area unsightly and created health risks.

To make matters worse, some students have come already come back to Leeds, almost as if for a holiday. They are certainly not working themselves, and the universities aren’t back yet.

While the police can act on breaches as they occur, we would like to know how yourselves as letting agents will act to ensure that PSPO orders are obeyed as well as dealing with repeated breaches. Besides impacting on the health of residents, the breaches are damaging the resident-student relationship and the marketability of the properties themselves. We residents are keen to restore good relationships with student occupants but in order to do this, steps do have to be taken to resolve the problems caused by non-compliant individuals.

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Landlordism 21st century in Hyde Park Leeds

There is more to the nuisance neighbours than the student neighbours themselves. They are almost collateral themselves as the unwitting agents of landlordism.

In pre-Covid times the student parties would reach antisocial heights shortly after exams then would continue until Change-over day, then we locals would be able to relax over summer.

But not exactly. With summer, come the letting agents, the builders and cleaners. The house owners don’t actually get their hands dirty themselves. In fact some of them don’t even live in Leeds

The un-builders, on the house owners’ orders, via the agents have quite dismantled and looted the beautiful Victorian buildings of Hyde Park Leeds. These houses were built by their predecessors from an age of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and said predecessors worked till they dropped to install all the beautiful banisters, architraves and ceiling roses. These days, with the removal of the banisters and the stairs themselves there is space enough to create another little flat in what had been the entrance hall, and is now just another money earner. And the age of Victorian architectural facades is exactly that today, not just looking at the difference between the backs and fronts of our houses, but the front exteriors and all interiors.

Besides the builders there is another subgroup which you could call cleaners but with a by-line in fly-tipping. The ex-tenants-to-be themselves start by leaving unwanted possessions in and around the bins. The fly-tippers take the rest and just leave them anywhere in the street. Most astonishing of all is that in our particular area they leave filthy sofas on St John’s Grove which is a private road and a cul-de-sac, where there is absolutely no passing traffic or trade. And there they stay until a local long-term resident neighbour calls the council. This has a knock-on effect on Moorland Avenue, the in-effect back street to Moorland Road and Avenue, being the street that outsiders dump their unwanted fridge-freezers in, as well.

There is a convention whereby, if you want to recycle some items you leave them at the bottom of your path or garden, and if they’re not taken within a few days you just take them to the tip yourself. But to leave rubbish of this size and unquality on the one street which no vehicles were supposed to go down and goes nowhere is mind blowing. And to think that is acceptable to drive to the through road backstreet and leave tall freezers ready to topple over on our 4 year-olds is sickening. Despicably dangerous.

Hyde Park - not a Student Village Actually

letter to papers June 16 plus 2020

So far we’ve had no known cases of Covid 19 in Hyde Park, but the students doing a Cummings seem to be trying their best to change that. In a backstreet only 1000m long we had no less than three parties this Saturday night (14 June) keeping ourselves and our children awake, presently almost unable to function as we face another day and week working from home, often juggling childcare with paid work.

25 years ago we had problems when the drug dealers chose Moorland Road and Hyde Park Road for some pitched battles with the police, and on July 10, 1995 we watched in dismay as the local pub went up in flames and our cars were torched, night after night.

After that local residents decided enough was enough and they created Unity Day (sadly cancelled for Covid this year), in which all people of all walks of life could come together as a community on Woodhouse Moor and take part in activities from dogshows to world music.

But here we are in Hyde Park, a quarter of a century later, many of us ex-Leeds University students ourselves, and the area is falling apart again. Graffiti is not just daubed on walls, it stays on walls, bins are all over the pavement, green and black with the same rubbish in them, regular fly-tipping saw two fridge freezers appear in our back street in the last two weeks [placed upright ready to fall on a child],  and then there’s these parties. And of course there’s drug dealers pulling up in the back street as we sit in the daytime with our kids and grandkids on their scooters and watch small packets exchange hands out of car windows. Sometimes the drugs are delivered to the door, only they get the wrong door – can be rather a frightening experience.

And despite the best intentions and best efforts of Noise Nuisance, they just don’t have the person power, the actual power or the PPE to stop them. The team attends, they leave, the music goes back on. The University Neighbourhood Helpline  knowledges the program the problem but can’t solve it.

We who have settled here have in effect become the protectors of the area, this part of Hyde Park actually being a conservation area, despite which landlords and ladies have paved over three back gardens [creating 8/9 spaces] in the last few months and charge non-residents to treat the street as a carpark.

But what is really keeping us awake right now are the parties. There’s no social distancing, not enough toilets, with partygoers stealing wood from some residents and treating the others gardens as toilets. And the party-goers spill out into St John’s Avenue. The morning after the street is littered with broken glass, vomit, condoms, beer cans, shards of glass.  

If there are police to guards statues of of 18th century racists, surely there’s police enough to stop selfish students keeping us from living our normal lives , and from spreading this virus as they do.

Yours faithfully

                                    [on behalf the Moorland Residents Group]

Homeless in Leeds

From a comment on a local chat line"

There is a guy sitting in the rain because he can't shelter under the
Arndale because he gets moved. Where can we tell these guys to go sit to keep dry. He's only a teenager, he's well turned out not intimidating. How heartless are the owners if the
Arndale and what can we do? I have given him some money for a coffee so he
can sit inside somewhere but it's not a solution

 

This is Joe Kent's detailed, informative and, I think, encouraging response:

"It is certainly a complex and difficult situation, I have worked for many years (too long unfortunately) supporting homeless people and trying to find solutions - here is some information and what I have found out over the years that I hope will help with this dilemma:

If you see people who are sleeping rough then there is a great reporting tool you can use called Street Link. http://www.streetlink.org.uk/

You can download it as an app on your phone and report straight away - this will get your sighting and report sent to the Leeds Rough Sleeper outreach team within less than one working day
Despite cuts to the council (really massive cuts - I think it is up to around 50% of their budget since 2010 now) there is still a Leeds rough sleeper team - and it is a good one too. It is run by CGL / Change Grow Live ( they used to be called CRI) and they have some really good people working for them.

That team will go out in the evening and very early morning to find people and connect them to services such as the Crypt. They respond to reports on Street Link.

The other key place to go to is Housing Options in the city centre - they can pay deposits and get people into private rented accommodation very quickly.

http://www.homeless.org.uk/ is a national directory of hostels you can search
There is also an outreach team run by BARCA-Leeds who work with the top cohort of people in the city who have insecure housing, addictions, are re-offending and mental health illness. This is very challenging work and the team re-establish connections with services and stabilise people to improve their situation (Don't refer to this one, they work in partnership with other agencies and target people with most complex issues)

There is still a network of supported accommodation / hostels in Leeds, but this has been cut severely and next year will see further reductions. This is secondary type provision that acts as move on for people from various situations including from the Crypt.

There is no doubt that rough sleeping is rising - there is an annual rough sleeper count by most councils (and most councils do interim surveys) to check numbers seen sleeping rough. These are independently invigilated and they do provide a very good annual benchmark of the numbers of people found on the streets. The methodology was set up by Shelter in around 2002 I think and Homeless Link provide independent invigilators.

Many agencies and politicians complain that these figures are not accurate as you can never find everyone because people hide away (there was one on the radio today) which is true. But by doing the same method every year you have a good indication of the trends. And also reporting is very good from a range of agencies to find people hidden away - the rough sleeper team know most spots around the city.

A good estimate is to consider a ratio of around 4 to 1 - for every one rough sleeper counted in a snapshot count there were around 4 people in insecure situations who might have been on the street that night.

So in Leeds, the figure has recently been around 15 - 20 people. This probably means that they are in a larger group of around 60 - 80 people in Leeds who are in and out of the streets. They just happen on the night of the count to be on a friends settee, in temporary accommodation such as the Crypt, in prison, back temporarily with their family, etc.

Leeds manages this situation really well - Manchester rough sleeper counts are usually around 10 higher than leeds over the years. In recent years they have shot up to over 80 whilst Leeds has remained largely steady - this is for a number of different reasons including the disbanding of a team centrally and other factors.

There are now huge numbers of people in tents in Manchester, people may have noticed that there was briefly a tent city in Leeds. The story behind this is rather surprising - it was part of an organised protest by a very angry man who has a house in Harrogate. He started off through a Facebook page criticising everyone and building a network of supporters.

In September they set up tents outside the Town Hall, they brought in people from Sheffield, Nottingham and other places. Some locals were from Leeds. They drove off the rough sleeper team, attacked the Crypt and other services and ended up moving to the old site of the swimming pool. The object seemed to be self-publicity and there were live Facebook feeds.

It all ended in horrific circumstances, a group of men attacked the camp with baseball bats and the camp dispersed. We suspect it was a drug debt from someone in the camp. The same people have now moved on to Hull and started the same pattern again.

From talking to people who lived on the streets for many years, a common theme is that the distribution of tents and food can trap people in a lifestyle on the streets rather than other services that are linked into solutions that lead people off the streets and back into housing. I can see that the tent city in Leeds did briefly offer people a community and this is an important issue.

A key factor now happening are the high levels of extreme poverty in our society - the foodbanks in Leeds are now serving people who are in work as well as people on benefits and the many people who are now sub-benefits due to either dropping out of the complicated system altogether, or being suspended from benefits - the film I Daniel Blake very accurately shows how this can happen. The new system of Universal Credit is gradually replacing the current benefit arrangements, this is very concerning for many reasons which is clearly recognised by he Government because it is being introduced very gradually. Almost by stealth.

A foodbank in South Leeds is in danger of running out of food which just offers staples and basics
The whole situation (i.e poverty on a mass scale) has seen a rise in begging associated with desperation and hunger (in my opinion).

From my previous and current work all surveys in different parts of the country showed that around 70% of beggars are not homeless despite what props or stories they may use. Unfortunately from the story here I have to conclude that the young man in the Arndale was not homeless and was begging.

A large proportion of beggars also have addiction issues - either alcohol or drugs. The majority of others, particularly in good spots for begging will be part of a network (often a small one) and will be paying a fee to others who will drive them off unless they do so.

The story of being made to sit in the rain does not ring true - is there now security monitoring the pavements at the Arndale? And the Crypt has only ever housed single people since the 1930's - they only have very small single rooms and are not kitted out for families or children, including managing the safeguarding issues. There is no exclusion of people without dependants.

Also, there are not any hostels in Leeds that will charge an entry fee or deposit.
There is no doubt that people are driven to begging by desperation, but there will be a dual narrative running here - the life history of that individual that has put them in this situation (there will be something around neglect and abuse for the young man you encountered, I have no doubt) most likely to be combined with a current situation of addiction and/or exploitation. There is a need, but what is the solution? It is not simple unfortunately.

I hope that this helps with some understanding. I have worked in this field for too many years, I wish there was a straightforward solution because I am sick of what happens. I, too, have been caught out many times with giving money to people who were scamming me, but in the final analysis I don't really mind, it is a human and kind thing to do, and it is fantastic that people on this network and in our community do care. What we need are better solutions."

When the train driver attempted to smash the Underground Speed record . .

When the train driver attempted to smash the Underground Speed record, and went for 0 to 60m.p.h. in under 6 seconds at Oval, I was thrown across the carriage with such force that its took the following forty plus people to put me back together:

From the Underground staff (Femmy and Andy), then the paramedics, nurses, auxillary nurses, cleaners, physios, dinner staff, docs, surgeons, anaesthetists, ambulance drivers and all the rest were

Mitch, Elizabeth, Andy, Omar, Marlie, Anni-fried, Ruth, Renata, Abdul, Priscilla, Doreen, Faduma, Grace,  Ziyad, Tomas, Sharon, Vera, Amanda, Dgemal, Jenny, Abigail , Gloria, Maria, Dean,  Katie, Adele, Ads, Andrina, Ali, Janet, Adayam, Helena, Elena, Elina, Natasha, Alex, Denise, Hawa, Adriana, Melda, Intisah, Mr Berwin, Zandile, Simonette, Lizzie, SK, Justice, Karlene,  Jayla, Rico, Rob, Vicky.

Waiting on the platform at London Bridge

I don't think I ever cried with the pain [well, not much], but the very thought of what all of these people at St Thomas, working as a highly organised professional team, did for me, and all the others around me makes me well up with gratitude and admiration every time. [It would probably have been cheaper to train the driver to pull off smoothly though, and then I wouldn't have missed the MU Teachers Meeting]].

saw more London friends . . .

If any names wrongly spelt or people missed out, and you read this blog please let me know.