40 Birmingham homes are going up for auction today. Why didn’t the tenants know?

Dear readers — Over the past month, residents in Handsworth and the surrounding areas have received knocks on their doors from strangers. The visitors were prospective buyers, who informed the tenants that their homes were going to be auctioned off this week.

The news came as a complete shock. Nobody had told these residents — many of whom are vulnerable — that their houses were being sold. As one anxious mother told The Dispatch: “I’m worried I’m just going to be left in limbo. I’ll be homeless again.”

For the residents, this story is intensely local and personal: it’s about their lives potentially being upended. But we’ve been examining the details of the auction, and found that it connects to a financial scandal in the City of London that has seen vulnerable tenants treated as an afterthought by financiers chasing property profits.

It’s also a glimpse inside the murky world of “supported exempt accommodation” in Birmingham, a sector that has ballooned over the past decade and been left largely unregulated. Shocking examples of bad practice have emerged, most recently in relation to the bankrupt provider Midland Livings, who are alleged to have unlawfully entered homes, threatened tenants, and stolen from properties.

That’s today’s story. But before that, your Brum in Brief.

Brum in Brief

📰 Bullying allegations at the council, controversial football matches, and a local politician with a “string of controversies” under his name — all this and more was unpacked in a recent Times feature about Birmingham. Lozell’s Labour councillor Waseem Zaffar, who has developed close relationships with senior Labour figures like Lucy Powell and Shabana Mahmood, comes under especially close scrutiny. Last year it was revealed that Zaffar had met with the fugitive alleged drug dealer Raja Arshad Billu in Kashmir four times in the last five years. His former colleague, Shabina Bano, has also spoken to the paper, repeating allegations that she was bullied by a “powerful cabal” of his supporters. Zaffar was cleared of wrongdoing by the council, and said he was “shocked” to learn of Billu’s alleged crimes. Sources said he now has his sights set on either becoming the council leader or the MP for Perry Barr. (The Times).

👮 The new local police chief has said the force will work tirelessly to rebuild relations, especially with the Jewish community, following the fall-out over the Maccabi Tel Aviv fan ban. Scott Green is the acting chief constable of West Midlands Police following Craig Guildford’s retirement earlier this month after an inquiry found that the force had “greatly exaggerated” its evidence for the ban. On Tuesday, he apologised to members of the local Jewish community and his acting deputy, Jennifer Mattinson, announced antisemitism training would be rolled out for officers. (BBC).

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Top flaggers Raise The Colours (RTC) were spotted in Stirchley again on Monday night after a couple of months hiatus, mostly spent interrogating migrants in Calais. Photos on social media appeared to show the group’s co-founder, Ryan Bridge, being barred from entering The British Oak Pub. Had any run-ins with RTC lately? Let us know at editor@birminghamdispatch.co.uk

“Who are you?” says a voice through the Ring doorbell. “And what do you want?”

No one would fault the occupant of this three-bed terrace in Handsworth for her suspicion. If a stranger knocked on our doors, we’d be reluctant to answer too. But when we explain why we’ve come, in the middle of a wet Thursday in January, the voice softens. 

Moments later, a woman appears. She is barefoot and wearing bright blue pyjamas, her curly hair tied back. As she talks, she gets more and more emotional. “I’m worried I’m just going to be left in limbo,” she explains. “I’ll be homeless again. I’ll have to go back to the B&B.”

Samantha, a 37-year-old single mother, found out a week ago that her home of four years is up for sale; she’s now petrified the new owner, whoever they are, might decide to turf her out. She learned this news from a stranger, an interested buyer who knocked on her door hoping to clinch a deal. The mid-terrace, they told her, was listed on the Allsop auctioneers’ website. They showed her the page on their phone: there was a photo of her front door; next to it in bold was the guide price of £75,000.

Samantha was stunned at first — her social landlord had not informed her. But she had grown used to unexpected visitors. She moved into the property in May 2022, her two children in tow, when it was being managed by a company called Midland Livings, who — in her opinion — weren’t the best landlords: “They never [did] any repairs,” she says, “so I just dealt with it out of my pocket.”

She wasn’t the only tenant that struggled to get Midland Livings to pay for maintenance. In October last year, seven months after the company went bust, administrators published a bombshell report, which found that almost all of Midland Livings’ 1,000 ‘units’ (a mix of entire homes and single rooms) were in a poor state of repair. Administrators also alleged that people associated with Midland Livings (directors, staff and others) used “threatening behaviour and intimidation tactics to pressure residents into signing leases with other companies and to vacate premises at short notice”.

Certainly Samantha, who was not informed when her housing provider abruptly folded, continued to receive visits from people purporting to be linked to it for several months afterwards. “[I] didn’t even know what had happened to Midland Livings, someone just turned up and said ‘we’re your new landlords’,” she says.

One of them was a man called Zain, shown below in a photograph Samantha took on her phone. She says he claimed to be from a subsidiary of Midland Livings called Sahara Housing, and that he “pressured” her into signing forms that stated her housing allowance should be paid to that organisation instead. Suspicious, she decided not to submit them to Universal Credit, which infuriated Zain. Samantha claims he came round, threatened to enter her house and told her “we can get you out” if she didn’t do as he said. Though she stopped answering the door to him, he never acted on this threat.

When The Dispatch calls Zain’s number, the man who answers declines to give us his name. He is also unwilling to answer any of our questions about Sahara Housing. “We have no interest in this,” he says. “You shouldn’t be speaking to me about this.” After he puts the phone down, we send a follow-up email to Sahara Housing, but receive no reply.

In late July, the long-established charity, YMCA Heart of England, took over the management of Samantha’s home. They were “informative and empathetic,” she says, and it started to seem like things were finally settling down. Now, with her home going up for auction, there’s no guarantee what will happen next. When contacted by The Dispatch, a spokesperson for the YMCA explains they were only ever appointed by administrators to manage the property until the end of this week.

That timing is significant, because the auction to sell off Samantha’s home is taking place today. We’ve been investigating this auction for weeks now, and can exclusively reveal that around 40 Birmingham homes are going under the hammer. We have also discovered links between some of these properties and one of Birmingham’s biggest “exempt accommodation” providers, connecting Samantha’s current plight to a scandal almost a decade in the making.

Arrests for bribery and fraud 

Though Samantha only moved in four years ago, to fully understand this story we must follow the money all the way back to 2018. That’s when an investment management firm called Alvarium spotted an exciting business opportunity.