Selly Oak is the dwelling place of choice for many Birmingham University students. The prevalence of the tax-dodging inhabitant has led to the development of a town that caters for all tastes. Selly Oak boasts late-licensed restaurants, student pubs, a choice of cafes, and somewhere to buy your newspaper opposite somewhere to buy your bong; there is indeed something here for everyone. However, it is a sad fact of life that where you find students you find letting agents, and where you find letting agents you find, well, more letting agents. Selly Oak suffers from an infestation of these agencies; there are no less than eight separate letting companies on the Bristol Road all competing for student business. Thousands of students battle each other every year for the privilege of securing what the agents confidently and unashamedly advertise to be habitable houses for sharing. Courtesy of a crippling deposit and numerous dubious ‘administration' fees, the hung-over student is very likely to have invested in a sub-standard hovel of which only the resident rats are proud. A sweeping generalisation motivated by the bitterness of a personal bad experience? Yes, probably… but dissatisfied renters are not hard to find in this area. Noise nightmare
 | | Wonky cupboards in Joanne's flat |
I live above a popular restaurant on Bristol Road. The house is big, had a Union Jack toilet seat and a poster of David Hasselhoff lounging in a tight white denim suit on the kitchen wall – obviously we signed. Unbelievably though, even Hasselhoff doesn't compensate for the stress I've had living here. The restaurant downstairs has not only not bothered to install any sound insulation at all, but appears determined to convince me of the quality of their superior sound system by playing the same CD on repeat for twelve hours a day. I enjoy countless renditions of the Russian Folk Musicians' Riverdance Bhangra Remix vibrating through my bedroom floorboards. Also, because there's no sound proofing at all, even when the music's off I can hear every word people are saying, a good thing to remember next time you're in a restaurant with a house upstairs – I'm listening, I don't want to, but I am.
 | | Broken pipe |
It got worse. To ensure that we were fully aware of the restaurant's presence as more than just a noise, they decided to show us how good they could smell. The flat next door is often full of smoke from the ovens.
 | | Rubbish in yard |
Over the course of a month, all the restaurant's rubbish was dumped outside our front door, which is next to the kitchens. There is a gap under our front door wide enough for a parade of rats to conga through and I'm sure the only reason they didn't was because they couldn't be bothered to climb the stairs after having eaten all the rubbish. We've been in constant contact with the council and the Environmental Health Department and are waiting to see if anything improves. Half-built house I would like to be able to write this off as just an unlucky experience but it's mainly due to the absolutely heinous house I rented last year that I was seduced by the sight of a working toilet and bedroom door this year. Rented from a private landlord, that sorry excuse for a building not only had no double glazing but makeshift walls. The curtains in my bedroom (the downstairs front room) would billow in the breeze swooping in from the gaps in the window frames and from under the front door.
 | | Rubbish in garden |
During my time there, the toilet leaked raw sewage which proceeded to drip down through to the kitchen ceiling, the shower had to be replaced (a five day job apparently), we were burgled, my flatmate's bed snapped in the middle and the landlord decided to prop the old one up against my bedroom windows in the front garden for a month. And this was all *after* we had threatened the landlord with court proceedings for having accepted our rent for the summer months when it transpired the house was in the process of being built. I turned up to stay during August to find it had no carpets, no doors and no furniture apart from a garden bench holding up the front bedroom's cardboard wall. On top of all this we soon found that the house was the nesting ground for a family of wolf spiders: the gigantic, black, spindly kind. They were everywhere and if I didn't hate spiders back then, I certainly do now. One that hung out on my bedroom door was so large that the man I drafted in from the street to catch him couldn't fit a pint glass over it. It could be argued that the spider situation wasn't the landlord's fault, but I beg to differ – everything that went wrong in my life at that time was the landlord's fault. Rats and sewage
 | | Bed on bricks |
Sadly it seems that I am not alone in having endured seriously inadequate housing during my time at university. One student I spoke to wished to remain anonymous through fear of her landlord. This fear is well-founded considering the landlord spent 20 minutes banging on her front door at midnight on the day he received a letter from the council detailing the house's failings. Having seen a rat run across her living room, the council came once a month to put down rat poison. You can still see the rat holes throughout the house. Last week her toilet blocked and spewed sewage up all over the bathroom floor. It took three days to fix, during which time she and her housemates had to alternate between their neighbours, the library, and the shower. "The landlord said we were using too much paper. Apparently, we should only use one sheet every time we go," she explained.
 | | Shower held with tape |
The house is a mess: the shower is held in place by sticky tape and ribbon; one bed is propped up on bricks and the bath tiles have fallen off so many times that the girls can't be bothered to hassle him anymore about them. When not giving helpful advice or banging on the door in the middle of the night, the landlord employs the age-old tactic of incomprehension: "He pretends he can't speak English and passes me off to someone else." Draught, damp and mould
 | | Mould on ceiling |
Another house I visited had only just has its roof fixed after six months of complaints. On returning from the Christmas holidays to find the damp had soaked the mattress in a bedroom, the landlord finally conceded that he needed to employ a roofer to replace a few tiles. The roofer told the students that the entire roof needed replacing otherwise the mould problem wouldn't go away. He said the landlord was well aware of this. After writing an official letter of complaint, the roof has been fixed but one of the renters is still sleeping under happily regenerating mould. Cowboy builders
 | | Cupboards with doors the wrong way up |
What is shocking about the apathy of landlords and letting agents is that when they finally do drag themselves out of their leather recliner chairs and their £30K cars, they don't act with any logical sense. They appear to go out of their way to use the cheapest, nastiest materials they can find, which then obviously break within a couple of hours.
 | | Hole in ceiling |
Also, they are adamant that they have to use their own personal builder pals. Even when I was wading through sewage last year, the landlord insisted that it couldn't be fixed for at least a week because his plumber man had angina. The suggestion that he call out a real plumber was met with a raised eyebrow and look of contempt. This tendency was demonstrated in another student house where the builder - who spoke not a word of English - and who had obviously never been introduced to a spirit level, produced a kitchen of admirable comedy value. The doors were fixed upside down on the higher cupboards. The builder was careful to follow the example he'd set himself on the lower cupboards, merrily catering to all those 6ft tall and over. The generous slant of the whole unit can be seen in the photo.
 | | Ancient oven |
This house also suffers from a mould problem - the bathroom and one bedroom both being seriously infected. There are also exposed pipes, faulty sockets, an unexplained hole in the ceiling, a window that would probably fall out after a ferocious sneeze and a cooker that's got a good claim to being the first one ever built. Is there any hope? How can landlords and agents get away with this? I'm convinced it's because students are unaware of their rights and don't have the time or inclination to go through the hassle of following up a complaint. Landlords know they can provide the absolute bare minimum and still collect obscene rent every month because every student knows someone else who puts up with worse than they do. When I moved into this house I was just grateful I had a carpet and a bed. There is a new Housing Act coming into effect in late 2005 according to the Bournbrook Community Safety Project based in Selly Oak. This act will mean that every landlord owning a three-storey house with five or more tenants will have to apply for a special license proving they are "fit and proper persons and that their properties are also sound and safe". Local authorities apparently "can apply to the government for permission to have additional powers to license all Houses in Multiple Occupation if they wish". It will be interesting to see the effect this Act has on the standards of housing in Selly Oak. I believe most landlords and agents are experts at finding loopholes and they'll continue fleecing students successfully for years to come. Written by Joanna Usmar Student house heaven Read Joanne's advice to house-hunters to avoid getting stuck in housing hell. Click the link at the TOP RIGHT of this page » Have your say Have you got better photos than Joanne's? Tell us your student house horror stories and send photos to birmingham@bbc.co.uk and we'll publish the best. | 
