In Pas-de-Calais, a landlord took a radical decision to fight against his tenant’s unpaid bills: he had all the doors and windows removed from the accommodation. An illegal technique in the middle of December.
When you rent accommodation to another person, it is not always easy to get along well with your tenant. In Pas-de-Calais, an owner is faced with this situation. The tenant of her accommodation, a mother who lives with her daughter, has not paid her rent for several months.
“They didn’t insure the house. In fact, we agreed together that she would pay. She owes me five months’ rent,” the owner explained to France Info.
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Faced with this situation, the owner decided to take strong action: he had all the doors and windows removed from the accommodation. By carrying out this action in the middle of December, he is seeking to force the tenants to leave.
A house without doors or windows
Thus, on December 20, workers intervened in the house, claiming to be doing insulation work. However, they removed all the doors and windows and never put them back, leaving gaping holes in the home. Since the intervention of the workers, the owner of the house has been unreachable.
Photo credit: iStock
Consequence: the family who lives in this house now lives in the cold and is exposed to intrusions. To try to protect herself, the mother installed boxes in the windows to keep the cold out and no longer dares to leave her house.
“I feel empty. They took away this window which we insulated as best we could with cardboard. It’s still December,” laments the mother to TF1 Info.
This is not the first time that an owner has taken drastic decisions to scare away his tenants. Last July, a landlord decided to remove the roof from his house to force out a woman who refused to pay the rent.
Although they are being adopted by more and more owners, these methods are completely illegal. For this reason, the mother filed a complaint for breach of trust and is currently looking for social housing. The town hall was also contacted. If he decides to act, the prefect can order the owner to restore the situation, or even to rehouse or compensate the tenants. A situation that happened to a landlord last February, who was ordered to rehouse her tenants who had not paid the rent for 3 years.
