- Photos show the grim conditions inside a London house where up to 40 tenants lived at a time.
- The landlords exploited migrants and poor Londoners, packing five to a room in bunk beds, SWNS reported.
Photos show the grim conditions inside a London house where officials say "slum" landlords stuffed up to 40 tenants at a time into a four-bedroom house.
Last week, a local city council banned the property dealer, Jaydipkumar Rameshchandra Valand, from renting out or managing properties in the UK for 5 years. The banning order came five years after the Brent Council found him and three others guilty of making £360,000, or about $457,000, off dozens of tenants in Wembley, in northwest London.
The landlords rented the 1920s house for £6,000 a month, with 25 to 4o tenants at a time each paying between £40 and £75 a week, UK news agency SWNS reported.
The landlords had divided the four-bedroom house into seven bedrooms on the first floor and two bedrooms on the second, packing as many as five people — mostly Indian migrants and poor Londoners — into bunk beds in each room, a Brent Borough Council representative told SWNS.
The kitchen was in such a state of disrepair that it was unusable and residents had to have all their food delivered, SWNS reported. There were only two bathrooms for all the residents to share, and some even shared the same bed, sleeping in shifts, SWNS reported.
Fire exits were blocked throughout the house and large holes appeared in the ceilings, exposing the dilapidated wood slats holding up the house, SWNS photos show.
One tenant even lived in a shed made out of pallets and tarp surrounded by bags of rice, with no light or heat, SWNS reported.
When UK Border Force officers first raided the property in 2016, they said it was the "worst" example of overcrowding they had ever witnessed, the Brent Borough Council representative told SWNS.