A campaign group accused a Sheffield woman of being a dodgy landlord. It cost them £100,000
A campaign group accused a Sheffield woman of being a dodgy landlord. It cost them £100,000
‘They crossed the line’
Good afternoon readers — and welcome to Thursday’s Tribune.
Many of us have had bad experiences with landlords. Things like repairs, deposits and rent increases often cause mistrust and resentment. Most people’s sympathies usually lie with the tenants rather than the landlords — but today’s story looks at a case that didn’t end up the way you might expect. As a result of the direct action they undertook to “defend” one student tenant, “renters’ union” ACORN ended up having to pay a Sheffield landlord £100,000 in damages. We look at what they did and why it got them into such hot water.
Editor’s note: The first section of this edition is going out to everyone on our list, but if you want to read the full newsletter, you’ll need to join as a paying member.
News round-up
💰 Mayor Dan Jarvis says South Yorkshire’s allocation from the UK government’s shared prosperity fund is “nothing more than an outrage” that “drives a coach and horses through the Government’s Levelling Up agenda”. Under EU rules, the county would have received £900m over seven years from 2021 but instead will receive just £38,906,130 core UKSPF allocation (plus £7,256,309 for adult numeracy) over the next three years, with this funding still subject to a competitive bidding processes. “RIP Levelling Up,” he added on Twitter.
⚽️ A former sports stadium in Attercliffe will be renamed in honour of 1966 World Cup-winning goalkeeper Gordon Banks, who grew up in nearby Tinsley. The Woodbourn Road ground — which was formerly used by Sheffield Hallam University as an athletics venue — was taken over by the council in 2019, the year the 81-year-old died. Since then the council has spent £1.5m improving and modernising the stadium and on Tuesday announced the newly-refurbished ground would be known as The Gordon Banks Stadium when it reopens.
🌳 29 new street trees have been planted on Abbeydale Road after the local community raised £7,500 over a two-year period. The trees — which are a mix of native and non-native species including silver birch, London plane, elm, alder, lime, ginkgo and sweetgum — have all been chosen to withstand the pollution of the busy road and help boost biodiversity. The trees have been planted thanks to a pilot project backed by the council which allows community groups to raise money for their own planting schemes. For more, see this Twitter thread.
Worth a look
🖼 Opening on Friday is the Cupola Gallery’s new exhibition Janus Revisited. Named after the Roman god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames and endings, the group exhibition invited artists to respond to the theme of difficult and changing times. Owner Karen Sherwood said the exhibition was initially planned as a response to the Covid pandemic but took on new meaning after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The exhibition starts with a launch event on Friday at 7.30pm and runs until Saturday, April 23.
🪴 It doesn't happen very often but this Easter Sunday, both the Pollen Inner-City Flower Market and the Peddler Market are taking place on the same day. Pollen Market will bring flowers, plants and food and drink (as well as live music and workshops) to Grey to Green in Castlegate from 10am-4pm, while a special “Veg Out” edition of Peddler Market will bring the best vegan and vegetarian street food the UK has to offer as well as music, crafts and entertainment to the events company’s Neepsend warehouse from 2pm-11pm.
🐤 2,500 ducks will be released into the Porter Brook on Easter Monday for the annual Friends of Porter Valley duck race. Setting off from near Holme Wheel Dam at 2pm, the ducks will float down the river for approximately 450 meters before being captured in a specially designed finish line. Ducks can still be bought at £5 for a family of six from the website, in person at both Endcliffe Park and Forge Dam Cafes until Easter Sunday or on race day from the stalls at the start line and near Endcliffe Park Cafe. For a full list of prizes see the website.
🗣 We won’t be publishing a briefing on Bank Holiday Monday, so we really also need to flag up the start of Opus Independents’ Festival of Debate on Tuesday (April 19). Since starting in 2015, the event has become the UK’s largest annual politics festival, and every year brings a huge array of interesting and varied speakers to Sheffield from all over the country. Highlights this year include Jeremy Corbyn, Shon Faye, Armando Iannucci, George Monbiot and Jackie Weaver. For a full list of everything taking place from now until June, click here.
A campaign group accused a Sheffield woman of being a dodgy landlord. It cost them £100,000
On December 13, 2020, in the depths of the first Covid winter, Zobia Rafique heard a knock at the door of her Millhouses home. It was a Sunday morning at 11am, and she was at home with her husband and four children — still in her pajamas. Two days previously, Rafique had agreed to let out a room she owned in a house of multiple occupancy (HMO) on London Road in Sheffield. The prospective tenant — student Aya Ismael Hoez — initially said she wanted the room but then decided against it. A £300 deposit had already been paid.
A few minutes earlier, Hoez had gathered outside the nearby Robin Hood pub with around 40 members of the tenants’ rights organisation ACORN. “If she doesn't listen we will carry on and again we are power in numbers,” she told the assembled crowd via a loudhailer. “So, there's only one of her, maybe two with her husband, but there’s all of us.” Hoez then recorded two statements to camera claiming Rafique had “stolen” the deposit from her before marching the group to her house.
The ruse was that they were carol singers coming to her Hastings Road house dressed in Santa outfits. But the songs they sang weren’t your usual Christmas fayre. “They were singing that I was a thief, a dodgy landlord and saying my company was fraudulent,” Zobia Rafique told The Tribune over the phone from her home on Wednesday this week. “They were saying I was like Scrooge.” The group stayed outside her property for 20-30 minutes, and only left when the police were called.
Rafique described the experience of having 40 people turn up at her house unannounced as “disturbing, demeaning and humiliating”. She says she felt intimidated and ended up on medication as a result of her family’s ordeal. The ACORN action took place just two days after Hoez’s tenancy agreement had been signed on Friday, December 11. At the time the group defended their actions as taking place at Century One Estates’ (Rafique’s company) business address.
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