Rats, mould and dangerous overcrowding - inside illegal house-shares hiding in plain sight

Maria says that groups of people can often be seen mingling into houses in her neighborhood, much more than would comfortably fit in Victorian terraced houses. According to her, each of these houses has 10 to 15 people inside. Maria, an architect, believes they are being unlawfully rented. They're everywhere, she says. Maria contactedYour Voice, Your BBC Newsafter spending years arguing about these homes to her local authority in east London, Newham Council, Maria argued about them. We started investigating, and discovered a large black-market rental market, where people are compelled to live in unsafe environments. Photographs, videos, and testimony from the people who lived in many of these properties revealed unsanitary and overcrowded households, with adults sleeping on bare mattresses in bunk beds, dealing with black mold, rats, and, in some cases, deadly conditions.

Large house-shares - also known as houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), must have a licence, according to local councils, so that each building is suitable for the number of occupants and meets gas, electrical, and fire safety legislation. However, evidence in three London house-share hotspots shows that in some regions, unlicensed, black-market HMOs are more prevalent than there are legal ones. One London borough told us that it has 3,000 licensed HMOs, but estimates that there are two or three times more in reality. We found several advertisements for buildings that did not appear to be licensed, many of which were selling a bedspace in shared rooms in east London shop windows. In addition, we found ads online that seemed to be mould or dirt in the shared rooms. Gopal Virdee, a BBC reporter, responded to some of these ads and viewed the rooms, filming with a hidden camera to investigate.

Around ten young men who all seemed to live in one property in Waltham Forest, where a shared bedroom was advertised at £330 a month. Three people were divided by three people, and four others were divided between four, and on some of the beds, there was no bedding or even mattress. As the local authority register revealed, one of the men told us they were subletting and that there was no HMO licence. The property owner's firm later told us that the tenancy agreement expressly forbids subletting and multiple occupancy, as well as the fact that the building had never been allowed or advertised for those purposes. When it learned of the employment infringement, it said it had taken prompt action. The man who greeted our reporter later told us he had

no involvement whatsoever in the construction, ownership, or leasing of this house. It will take steps, according to Waltham Forest Council. Conditions that are overcrowded can be lethal. In 2023, Nazmush Shahadat at an HMO in Shadwell, east London, escaped a deadly fire. After returning to the United Kingdom to study law and discovering that the housing he had been promised had fallen through, he went into as a last resort. When he first arrived, Nazmush says,

like an old gym with the men's sweat. He claims he was bitten by bedbugs and could see mould in his top bunk's ceiling. On the night of the fire, 18 people were crammed into the two-bedroom apartment.

Many of Nazmush's residents were food-delivery riders, and the fire started because of a defective e-bike battery charging under a bunk bed. When the tenants' attempts to put the fire out were unsuccessful, they evacuated the fire-filled apartment. Everyone seemed to have been evacuated, but the emergency services pulled out a man on a stretcher, according to Nazmush.

That's when it struck us straight away, the body - it could be any one of us,

he says. Mizanur Rahman had only lived in the house for a few days. He died in hospital at the age of 41, leaving behind a wife and two children in Bangladesh. Earlier this year, the landlords, husband and wife Aminur Rahman and Sofina Begum, were fined £90,000 for various housing offences, including cramming more people into the house than the license allowed.

Because such overcrowded buildings are unidentified, the true number of unlicensed HMOs throughout the country is uncertain. However, Ben Yarrow, who manages the landlord and letting agency's website, has created an experimental data set to investigate them. It finds properties associated with large numbers of people with various surnames, indicating potential unlicensed HMOs by searching through a variety of financial data sources to find individuals with large number of people who have different surname characteristics. It has certain drawbacks: it is impossible to find people dependent on cash without having no formal authorization, and in some cases families with large families can be wrongly identified. We asked Mr Yarrow to scan specific postcodes in three boroughs that we knew were HMO hotspots. He discovered more than 700 potential HMOs in a Newham neighborhood, where only 75 licensed properties are available.

He discovered nearly 500 suspected HMOs in Tower Hamlets. Only 50 HMO licences have been issued here, although the council has reported that more properties have been licensed. Mr Yarrow discovered more than 300 potential HMOs on Old Kent Road in Southwark, despite there being only 232 official licenses listed. Southwark Council teaches us how to spot criminal property and protect tenants. The data was inaccurate, according to Tower Hamlets Council, and it continues to look at reports of unlicensed homes. Newham Council said it uses advanced technology to find unlicensed HMOs and monitors all resident reports, but that enforcement is time-consuming because tenants are often "among the most vulnerable members of society. The department said it had investigated 2,307 suspected license violations between January 2023 and March this year.

Many of the council enforcement teams seem to be overstretched. According to Freedom of Information requests, only about a third of renter complaints in England between 2021 and 2023 were followed by a local authority inspection. The government's Renters' Rights Bill, which is currently in Parliament, is expected to establish a national database of private rented properties in England, which will enable councils to clamp down on unlicensed properties, according to London's deputy mayor for housing Tom Copley. The rise of unlicensed HMOs has meant that it is not limited to single renters who participate in them; instead, entire families are crammed into single rooms in shared houses. Marius Judzinskas, a Lithuanian immigrant, has bought a flat in Greenwich, south-east London, from Marius Judicz Shortly afterwards, his wife joined him. In a study, a council officer said the property should have been licensed as an HMO.

The couple lived in a tiny room for nine years before deciding to have a family, squeezing in two cots and all of their possessions. We don't have a choice, he says. According to him, the family had to wait to use the toilet or the cooker, and the kitchen's conditions were unsanitary. They caught rats in the kitchen on camera. Marius was told to leave because ties with the landlord and other tenants broke down, and the landlord was evicated, and he was questioned to leave. According to him, the family returned home one day and discovered that the locks had been changed. They tried to climb through an open window to put their nine-month old baby in the crib to sleep, but police were alerted. They were evicted.

Marius is now taking court action against the people who ruled his former home by a rent repayment order in order to recover some of the money he paid. Renters in landlords' homes where landlords have broken the rules, including by failing to register an HMO, can request up to a year's rent back. According to Roz Spencer of Safer Renting, which supports tenants in disputes with landlords, eviction is a particular risk for unlicensed HMOs. According to her, the issue of unlicensed HMOs is on the rise. "We are being referred to more people, and I suspect the issue is spreading and the non-compliance issue is endemic.

According to Chris Norris, chief policy officer for the National Residential Landlords Association, most landlords follow the rules and only have one or two properties that are well looked after.