Cigány család terrorizálja az észak-londoni Totteridge egyik utcájának lakóit – írja a Daily Mail brit jobboldali bulvárlap, címében is utalva az érintettek hovatartozására. A környék idilli lakóhely volt, a hét gyermekes Connors család megérkezéséig.
Az önkormányzat bérel szinte luxusingatlant nekik, amiért 2400 fontos (740 ezer forintos) lakbért fizet a tulajdonosnak. A szomszédok panaszkodnak: Connorsék kiabálnak velük, megfenyegetik (Kuruc.info: ráadásul azzal is fenyegetőznek cigányék, hogy “Nem tudod, kivel szórakozol. Ha egy cigánycsaládot feldühítesz, azt az összes roma megbosszulja.” – azaz komplett, teljes, minden tezsvírt megmozgató revánssal fenyeget [“You don’t know who you’re messing with. You upset one traveller family, we’ll all come after you.” az eredetiben]), leköpik őket, udvarukba szemetet dobálnak, járdájukra ürüléket szórnak, egy gyermekre rálőttek légpuskával.
Saját házuk előtt, sőt még a tetőn is halomban áll a szemét, a környéken pedig megszaporodtak a betörések. A Daily Mailnek egy lakó elmondta: nem hovatartozásukkal van baj, hanem azzal, hogy nem tisztelik a többi embert és azok tulajdonát, és nem értékelik azt sem, hogy az önkormányzat a becsületes adófizetők pénzéből oldja meg lakhatásukat. Connorsék rasszizmust emlegetnek és perrel fenyegetnek.
(MNO - hirtv.hu)
Kuruc.info: A teljes, eredeti cikk ITT van (ill. alább reprodukálva); túlnyomó többségében cigányellenes olvasói kommentárokkal – látható, hogy a bennszülött angoloknak is tele van a tökük ezzel a “nagyszerű” etnikummal. Akárcsak, kivétel nélkül, minden egyes európai és észak-amerikai országnak. Nem csoda, hogy
- az olaszok fegyveresekkel őrzött táborokba zárnak kivétel nélkül minden cigányt (még az olasz állampolgárságúakat is), meg kitoloncolják őket és rendőri félrenézés, vagy éppenséggel aktív segítség mellett felégetik a táboraikat;
- az évenként 400 ezer (!!!) (dolgozni akaró) külföldit befogadó (ebben rekorderek) Kanada még 100 cigányt sem hajlandó beengedni, és emiatt a csehekkel szemben ismét bevezették a vízumkényszert
- Svájcban olyan szinten utálják őket, hogy még a kilenc éves cigánybűnözőket is azonnal magánzárkába vágják, és lesz@rják a fajvédők pampogását
- a csehek nem nagyon sz@roznak: sterilizálják a cigókat
- Írországban fizikailag megtámadják őket - a társadalom nagy részének támogatásával vagy beleegyezésével
- Portugáliában kőkeményen szegregálják az iskolákban a cigányságot
Az önkormányzat bérel szinte luxusingatlant nekik, amiért 2400 fontos (740 ezer forintos) lakbért fizet a tulajdonosnak. A szomszédok panaszkodnak: Connorsék kiabálnak velük, megfenyegetik (Kuruc.info: ráadásul azzal is fenyegetőznek cigányék, hogy “Nem tudod, kivel szórakozol. Ha egy cigánycsaládot feldühítesz, azt az összes roma megbosszulja.” – azaz komplett, teljes, minden tezsvírt megmozgató revánssal fenyeget [“You don’t know who you’re messing with. You upset one traveller family, we’ll all come after you.” az eredetiben]), leköpik őket, udvarukba szemetet dobálnak, járdájukra ürüléket szórnak, egy gyermekre rálőttek légpuskával.
Saját házuk előtt, sőt még a tetőn is halomban áll a szemét, a környéken pedig megszaporodtak a betörések. A Daily Mailnek egy lakó elmondta: nem hovatartozásukkal van baj, hanem azzal, hogy nem tisztelik a többi embert és azok tulajdonát, és nem értékelik azt sem, hogy az önkormányzat a becsületes adófizetők pénzéből oldja meg lakhatásukat. Connorsék rasszizmust emlegetnek és perrel fenyegetnek.
(MNO - hirtv.hu)
Kuruc.info: A teljes, eredeti cikk ITT van (ill. alább reprodukálva); túlnyomó többségében cigányellenes olvasói kommentárokkal – látható, hogy a bennszülött angoloknak is tele van a tökük ezzel a “nagyszerű” etnikummal. Akárcsak, kivétel nélkül, minden egyes európai és észak-amerikai országnak. Nem csoda, hogy
- az olaszok fegyveresekkel őrzött táborokba zárnak kivétel nélkül minden cigányt (még az olasz állampolgárságúakat is), meg kitoloncolják őket és rendőri félrenézés, vagy éppenséggel aktív segítség mellett felégetik a táboraikat;
- az évenként 400 ezer (!!!) (dolgozni akaró) külföldit befogadó (ebben rekorderek) Kanada még 100 cigányt sem hajlandó beengedni, és emiatt a csehekkel szemben ismét bevezették a vízumkényszert
- Svájcban olyan szinten utálják őket, hogy még a kilenc éves cigánybűnözőket is azonnal magánzárkába vágják, és lesz@rják a fajvédők pampogását
- a csehek nem nagyon sz@roznak: sterilizálják a cigókat
- Írországban fizikailag megtámadják őket - a társadalom nagy részének támogatásával vagy beleegyezésével
- Portugáliában kőkeményen szegregálják az iskolákban a cigányságot
- az amerikaiknál olyan mértékben kihúzták a gyufát szegínromákék, hogy ha az ember egy jenkinek azt mondja, “cigány”, automatikusan arra asszociál, hogy “bűnöző”. Ezért van jópár Hollywood-i film stáblistájában egyszerűen csak a “cigány” szó nem nevesített bűnözők helyett. Ilyen pl. a Menekülés New Yorkból, ahol, bár az USA-ban lényegesen több néger él, mint cigó, mégis ez utóbbiak szerepelnek a stáblistában. Biztosan véletlenül.
- Szlovákiában nemes egyszerűséggel lepuffantják őket, ha nem adják meg magukat, és akkor még nem is beszéltünk arról, hogy északi szomszédunknál megölhető bárki, aki betolakodik az ember földjére, lakásába
- a spanyolok összefognak, és teljes településekről kiüldözik őket
- a belgák, franciák, angolok azt mondják, hogy náluk teljesen általános a cigánygyűlölet, és sokkal-sokkal inkább utálják őket, mint a szintén nem közkedvenc muszlimokat, feketéket
- a finnek minden teketória nélkül kitiltják őket komplett településekről, városokból, és ebben minden segítséget megkapnak a cigányügyekben a fehérek javára “lassú” igazságszolgáltatástól, rendőrségtől - vagy éppenséggel simán csak lepuffantják a bűnözőcigányokat. Ami pedig az ottani szegregált iskolák arányszámát illeti, az kiugróan magas. Európa Japánjában, az egyik legfejlettebb, leggazdagabb, legjobb oktatási rendszerű országában. És, persze, azt se felejtsük el, hogy a finn rendőrség - a szegín üldözött romákok szerint is - bűnözőnek tartja a cigányokat - egész biztosan ok nélkül, és merő rászízmusból...
Kapcsolódó, a “bennszülött” angol cigányok bűnözésével kapcsolatos cikként ajánljuk pl. EZT; további hivatkozások hasonló, az angol médiában megjelent cikkekre az ottani kommentárunk második bekezdésében.
£1m neighbours from hell: Meet the gipsy family terrorising an entire street
There are neatly trimmed privet hedges, rose beds and top-of-the-range family cars parked outside all but one of the houses on this broad and leafy avenue in the outskirts of the North London commuter belt.
In the peace and quiet of a summer’s evening, family life in Totteridge — where professional couples pay up to £1million for a substantial home a stone’s throw from good schools, shops, restaurants and trains direct to the city — appears to be a picture of idyllic suburbia.
That is, until the Connors arrive.
You hear them before you see them.
To a cacophony of effing and blinding, a family of nine, packed like sardines into a dusty seven-seater people-carrier, pull up between the piles of rubbish and broken paving slabs on the driveway.
Little hands poke out of the windows with their middle fingers raised defiantly aloft.
John and Serena Connors and their seven children — an Irish traveller family — have been in residence at this five-bedroom £1million home since February, when they were moved by Barnet Council into privately-owned accommodation under the Local Housing Allowance scheme.
The scheme was introduced by the Government a year ago to encourage private landlords to take on council tenants in a bid to alleviate a housing shortage.
Since then, there have been several cases highlighted by the Daily Mail where families, living off benefits, have been rehomed in some of the most exclusive and expensive neighbourhoods in Britain — all at the taxpayers’ expense.
The Connors don’t pay any rent, of course. The £2,400 a month it costs to lease the house is covered by their housing benefit.
And while that fact is galling enough for those neighbours who work hard to pay their hefty mortgages in this desirable postcode, they could have lived with it had the Connors themselves been a little easier to live with.
''They screamed: "You don''t who you''re messing with"''
Instead, since the day they arrived, they have terrorised this formerly peaceful neighbourhood and made life so nightmarish for their neighbours most are now too scared to speak out for fear of reprisals from the traveller community.
However, their next-door neighbours the Kaye family, who have arguably borne the brunt of the Connors’ campaign of intimidation and anti-social behaviour, are so sick of them — and so outraged by the situation — that they feel it’s time to take a stand.
‘They’ve screamed at us: “You don’t know who you’re messing with. You upset one traveller family, we’ll all come after you.” But what option do we have?’ says Hannah Kaye, an office administrator and mother of three boys.
‘I have never done anything to provoke these people. I don’t want any trouble. We have lived in this house for 18 years. It’s been a happy home for us. But since they arrived, I have been literally sick with worry.’
This is not snobbery. As Hannah’s solicitor husband Jeremy puts it: ‘We don’t have a problem living next door to anyone. We don’t care who pays their rent or what they do for a living as long as they’re decent neighbours. But these people aren’t even decent human beings.’
This is not just the matter of the piles of rubbish accumulating all over the property, including on the flat roof. It has nothing to do with the beaten-up van that sits on the driveway or even the filthy language that can be heard spilling from the Connors’ permanently open windows at all hours of the day and night.
It’s about a family with a staggering disregard for other people and their property, and even less concern for the burden they place on hard-working, taxpaying families like the Kayes.
Exasperated, Hannah says: ‘I overheard her [Serena] saying the other day: “I don’t care about the neighbours. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
‘I couldn’t believe my ears. I felt like shouting back: “You’ve done nothing wrong? Swearing at us, spitting at us, throwing sacks of rotten food into our garden, letting your excrement spill from your drains all over our driveway, screaming abuse at my 11-year-old son whenever he leaves the house, shooting at him with an airgun, taking photographs of us in our garden, intimidating us, shouting at each other at all hours of the day and night so that we can’t sleep, making us feel like prisoners in our own home. You call that doing nothing wrong? What planet are you from?”’
She alleges that on one particularly frightening occasion, two of the older daughters confronted her and spat on her outside her house.
Rumours are now circulating that some of the Connors children — five girls and two boys aged between four and 19 — are responsible for a spate of ‘ distraction’ burglaries in the area. A leaflet issued recently by the Metropolitan Police to every house on the street except the Connors’, warned that two girls with Irish accents, aged between 14 and 17, are targeting homes for burglary.
It read: ‘There are various methods, from asking to use your toilet to general stories of hard luck. ALL will end in them
trying to enter your house and steal handbags, wallets, money or anything they can get their hands on.’
Although the leaflet doesn’t mention the family by name, Serena Connors — who denies her children’s involvement — believes that it refers to them.
But despite increasing pressure from the neighbours, the Connors are determined to stay put, and are threatening legal action over what they perceive to be ‘racism against travellers’.
There is no denying that when the family descended upon this salubrious neighbourhood, they were not going to go unnoticed.
Alongside their neighbours’ BMWs, Mercedes and Audi estates, their blue van — with the faded out lettering of a patio-laying business on its sides — is somewhat conspicuous, and as one neighbour (who is too afraid to be named) says, their gaggle of daughters ‘looks like an army of Vicky Pollards’.
‘But we didn’t assume there would be a problem,’ says Hannah. ‘It was only when their rubbish started spilling through the hedge and onto our driveway that we became concerned. Then they took to hurling it over the back fence: bags of rotting food, toys, chair legs, nappies, half-eaten pots of yoghurt, old toothbrushes — anything they didn’t want.’
When Hannah knocked at the Connors’ door to ask them to stop, she says she was greeted with a torrent of abuse from both parents. Since then, the Kayes, a Jewish family, claim they have had to put up with their neighbours yelling anti-Semitic abuse at them. They have reported it to the police.
Knowing that there was no reasoning with their neighbours, the Kayes were at a loss for what to do when the drain in the Connors’ front garden became so badly blocked that raw sewage started to stream across the Kayes’ driveway and into the road.
''We were told they were a good family who went to church?''
‘The stench of excrement was revolting,’ says Hannah.
‘It was like that for weeks, because we didn’t know who to speak to about it.’
Eventually, the Kayes tracked down the Connors’ landlords who, it turned out, were already well aware of the trouble their new tenants had brought with them.
Sapna and Zulfi Bukhari, a housewife and an IT project manager, both 38, live just a few streets away with their three children.
They bought the house as an investment in 2004 for just over £670,000 and renovated it extensively before letting it to a succession of private tenants at a rent of £4,000 per month.
‘It was a very rentable house,’ explains Sapna.
‘It’s on a lovely street, in a quiet area, and near all the best schools. We invested a lot of money decorating it to a high standard and it was popular with families from overseas who were here on business.’
But when the recession hit, the steady supply of affluent and respectable tenants dried up, as fewer companies sent their employees to work in London on a long-term basis.
‘The domestic market was dropping quickly, too, and suddenly we had a house on our hands that we couldn’t get a tenant for,’ says Sapna.
The house stood empty for three to four months, as the Bukharis became increasingly desperate.
‘That’s when the estate agent rang to say that a council department called Home Choice was looking for a place to house a large family,’ she says.
‘My first thought was that I really didn’t want to go down that road, but we didn’t have many options.’
Home Choice, formerly known as the Rent Deposit Scheme, allows council tenants to choose the area they want to live in, finds a suitable property, then pays the deposit on behalf of the tenant.
The rent from then on is covered by their housing benefit.
The Bukharis agreed to accept a rent of £2,400 a month because it was better than nothing and, ironically, they believed ‘it’s better to have someone taking care of the place than leaving it unoccupied’.
‘We were told that the Connors were a “good family” who went to church every Sunday,’ says Sapna, with an ironic laugh.
‘The council officer said that none of their previous landlords had ever had to use their deposit — which, of course, suggests that they have never caused any damage.’
It has since been suggested to the Bukharis that the Connors, in fact, caused £18,000 worth of damage to the house they lived in prior to this one.
However, the fact that the council were obliged to find them this new home indicates that those allegations have never been substantiated.
Zulfi adds: ‘They said that the father had a recent back injury and, because times are tough, he was currently out of work.
‘I had some sympathy for them. That can happen to anyone. I believe we should help people who are less fortunate than ourselves. I believe in the welfare state. But these people aren’t unfortunate, they’re just lazy and ungrateful.
‘They’re abusing a system that should be helping people. If we’d have known that they were long-term unemployed, we wouldn’t have agreed.’
Sapna says she did ask to see the family’s references, or for an interview to be arranged before they moved in, both of which were promised but never materialised.
''These people aren''t unfortunate, just lazy and grateful''
‘We were told that this family urgently needed a roof over their heads, and the priority was to move them in quickly. So quickly, in fact, that the agent gave them the keys before I had even signed the contract,’ she says. ‘There was no going back.’
Within three weeks of moving in, Sapna was called to the house when a radiator was (in the professional opinion of three builders) wilfully pulled off the wall in a first-floor bedroom, causing a leak that led to the collapse of the ceiling downstairs.
Because a landlord is responsible for maintaining a safe standard of living accommodation, a plumber, a builder and an electrician were called in immediately to survey and rectify the damage. ‘But when I said it looked like the radiator had been deliberately wrenched off the wall, things turned very nasty, and the family have never let us in to carry out the repairs,’ says Sapna.
‘At a glance, I would say the damage runs into several thousand pounds — not least because the flooring, which cost £10,000 to lay, was ruined.’
She estimates that she and Zulfi have also called out Dyno-Rod to unblock the drains at the house six times in the past six months.
‘Every time, I stand over this stinking drain making a list of everything the workman pulls out. Toys, batteries, underwear, bottles of nail polish, balloons, food, you name it,’ she says. ‘There’s only one way for those things to get stuck there — they flush it all down the toilet.
‘I had my reservations about renting to them, but all I ever asked was for them to respect the house and respect the neighbours.’
In July, the Bukharis made an unsuccessful application to the court to have the family removed, and they are now awaiting a new court date.
‘Our solicitor has warned us that this may be a long and very expensive process, because it’s such a difficult case,’ says Sapna. ‘Tenants have more rights over a property that they don’t own than a landlord has over the property that they worked hard to buy and spent their time and money on. It’s ridiculous.’
It will be at least four more months of hell for them and the Connors’ neighbours.
In the meantime, the Bukharis can’t stop worrying about any further damage that might have occurred since they were last allowed inside.
‘I have seen the carpets outside on the driveway,’ says Sapna. And she flinches when Hannah mentions that the Connors were seen taking plasterboard into the house and then heard hammering on Wednesday night into the small hours. Zulfi is rightly furious. ‘What gets me is the ingratitude of these people. They could never have moved into a street like that off their own backs because, unlike everyone else who lives there, they don’t believe in working hard for what they’ve got.
‘They’ve got a beautiful house that the taxpayer pays for and they don’t have to work for a living, yet it doesn’t cross their minds how lucky they are.’
But in Serena Connors’s opinion, it’s the Bukharis who should be grateful.
‘She gets £2,400 a month off the council, so she should be happy. And I know we’re up-to-date with the rent,’ she says, standing in the front doorway, revealing more mess and, notably, a brand-new 52in flat-screen television.
A spokesman for Barnet Council says: ‘We cannot comment on individual cases, but I can confirm that any family who recklessly disregard their responsibilities to their landlord would almost certainly be considered “intentionally homeless” by the council.’
At this stage, it is everyone’s hope that no other unsuspecting landlord or neighbour will find themselves stuck with the Connors.
- Szlovákiában nemes egyszerűséggel lepuffantják őket, ha nem adják meg magukat, és akkor még nem is beszéltünk arról, hogy északi szomszédunknál megölhető bárki, aki betolakodik az ember földjére, lakásába
- a spanyolok összefognak, és teljes településekről kiüldözik őket
- a belgák, franciák, angolok azt mondják, hogy náluk teljesen általános a cigánygyűlölet, és sokkal-sokkal inkább utálják őket, mint a szintén nem közkedvenc muszlimokat, feketéket
- a finnek minden teketória nélkül kitiltják őket komplett településekről, városokból, és ebben minden segítséget megkapnak a cigányügyekben a fehérek javára “lassú” igazságszolgáltatástól, rendőrségtől - vagy éppenséggel simán csak lepuffantják a bűnözőcigányokat. Ami pedig az ottani szegregált iskolák arányszámát illeti, az kiugróan magas. Európa Japánjában, az egyik legfejlettebb, leggazdagabb, legjobb oktatási rendszerű országában. És, persze, azt se felejtsük el, hogy a finn rendőrség - a szegín üldözött romákok szerint is - bűnözőnek tartja a cigányokat - egész biztosan ok nélkül, és merő rászízmusból...
Kapcsolódó, a “bennszülött” angol cigányok bűnözésével kapcsolatos cikként ajánljuk pl. EZT; további hivatkozások hasonló, az angol médiában megjelent cikkekre az ottani kommentárunk második bekezdésében.
£1m neighbours from hell: Meet the gipsy family terrorising an entire street
There are neatly trimmed privet hedges, rose beds and top-of-the-range family cars parked outside all but one of the houses on this broad and leafy avenue in the outskirts of the North London commuter belt.
In the peace and quiet of a summer’s evening, family life in Totteridge — where professional couples pay up to £1million for a substantial home a stone’s throw from good schools, shops, restaurants and trains direct to the city — appears to be a picture of idyllic suburbia.
That is, until the Connors arrive.
You hear them before you see them.
 Playing the system: John and Serena Connors, gipsies given luxury housing |
To a cacophony of effing and blinding, a family of nine, packed like sardines into a dusty seven-seater people-carrier, pull up between the piles of rubbish and broken paving slabs on the driveway.
Little hands poke out of the windows with their middle fingers raised defiantly aloft.
John and Serena Connors and their seven children — an Irish traveller family — have been in residence at this five-bedroom £1million home since February, when they were moved by Barnet Council into privately-owned accommodation under the Local Housing Allowance scheme.
The scheme was introduced by the Government a year ago to encourage private landlords to take on council tenants in a bid to alleviate a housing shortage.
Since then, there have been several cases highlighted by the Daily Mail where families, living off benefits, have been rehomed in some of the most exclusive and expensive neighbourhoods in Britain — all at the taxpayers’ expense.
The Connors don’t pay any rent, of course. The £2,400 a month it costs to lease the house is covered by their housing benefit.
And while that fact is galling enough for those neighbours who work hard to pay their hefty mortgages in this desirable postcode, they could have lived with it had the Connors themselves been a little easier to live with.
''They screamed: "You don''t who you''re messing with"''
Instead, since the day they arrived, they have terrorised this formerly peaceful neighbourhood and made life so nightmarish for their neighbours most are now too scared to speak out for fear of reprisals from the traveller community.
However, their next-door neighbours the Kaye family, who have arguably borne the brunt of the Connors’ campaign of intimidation and anti-social behaviour, are so sick of them — and so outraged by the situation — that they feel it’s time to take a stand.
‘They’ve screamed at us: “You don’t know who you’re messing with. You upset one traveller family, we’ll all come after you.” But what option do we have?’ says Hannah Kaye, an office administrator and mother of three boys.
‘I have never done anything to provoke these people. I don’t want any trouble. We have lived in this house for 18 years. It’s been a happy home for us. But since they arrived, I have been literally sick with worry.’
This is not snobbery. As Hannah’s solicitor husband Jeremy puts it: ‘We don’t have a problem living next door to anyone. We don’t care who pays their rent or what they do for a living as long as they’re decent neighbours. But these people aren’t even decent human beings.’
This is not just the matter of the piles of rubbish accumulating all over the property, including on the flat roof. It has nothing to do with the beaten-up van that sits on the driveway or even the filthy language that can be heard spilling from the Connors’ permanently open windows at all hours of the day and night.
It’s about a family with a staggering disregard for other people and their property, and even less concern for the burden they place on hard-working, taxpaying families like the Kayes.
 The £2,400-a-month house in Totteridge where the Connors live for free |
Exasperated, Hannah says: ‘I overheard her [Serena] saying the other day: “I don’t care about the neighbours. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
‘I couldn’t believe my ears. I felt like shouting back: “You’ve done nothing wrong? Swearing at us, spitting at us, throwing sacks of rotten food into our garden, letting your excrement spill from your drains all over our driveway, screaming abuse at my 11-year-old son whenever he leaves the house, shooting at him with an airgun, taking photographs of us in our garden, intimidating us, shouting at each other at all hours of the day and night so that we can’t sleep, making us feel like prisoners in our own home. You call that doing nothing wrong? What planet are you from?”’
She alleges that on one particularly frightening occasion, two of the older daughters confronted her and spat on her outside her house.
Rumours are now circulating that some of the Connors children — five girls and two boys aged between four and 19 — are responsible for a spate of ‘ distraction’ burglaries in the area. A leaflet issued recently by the Metropolitan Police to every house on the street except the Connors’, warned that two girls with Irish accents, aged between 14 and 17, are targeting homes for burglary.
It read: ‘There are various methods, from asking to use your toilet to general stories of hard luck. ALL will end in them
trying to enter your house and steal handbags, wallets, money or anything they can get their hands on.’
Although the leaflet doesn’t mention the family by name, Serena Connors — who denies her children’s involvement — believes that it refers to them.
But despite increasing pressure from the neighbours, the Connors are determined to stay put, and are threatening legal action over what they perceive to be ‘racism against travellers’.
There is no denying that when the family descended upon this salubrious neighbourhood, they were not going to go unnoticed.
Alongside their neighbours’ BMWs, Mercedes and Audi estates, their blue van — with the faded out lettering of a patio-laying business on its sides — is somewhat conspicuous, and as one neighbour (who is too afraid to be named) says, their gaggle of daughters ‘looks like an army of Vicky Pollards’.
‘But we didn’t assume there would be a problem,’ says Hannah. ‘It was only when their rubbish started spilling through the hedge and onto our driveway that we became concerned. Then they took to hurling it over the back fence: bags of rotting food, toys, chair legs, nappies, half-eaten pots of yoghurt, old toothbrushes — anything they didn’t want.’
When Hannah knocked at the Connors’ door to ask them to stop, she says she was greeted with a torrent of abuse from both parents. Since then, the Kayes, a Jewish family, claim they have had to put up with their neighbours yelling anti-Semitic abuse at them. They have reported it to the police.
Knowing that there was no reasoning with their neighbours, the Kayes were at a loss for what to do when the drain in the Connors’ front garden became so badly blocked that raw sewage started to stream across the Kayes’ driveway and into the road.
''We were told they were a good family who went to church?''
‘The stench of excrement was revolting,’ says Hannah.
‘It was like that for weeks, because we didn’t know who to speak to about it.’
Eventually, the Kayes tracked down the Connors’ landlords who, it turned out, were already well aware of the trouble their new tenants had brought with them.
Sapna and Zulfi Bukhari, a housewife and an IT project manager, both 38, live just a few streets away with their three children.
They bought the house as an investment in 2004 for just over £670,000 and renovated it extensively before letting it to a succession of private tenants at a rent of £4,000 per month.
‘It was a very rentable house,’ explains Sapna.
‘It’s on a lovely street, in a quiet area, and near all the best schools. We invested a lot of money decorating it to a high standard and it was popular with families from overseas who were here on business.’
But when the recession hit, the steady supply of affluent and respectable tenants dried up, as fewer companies sent their employees to work in London on a long-term basis.
‘The domestic market was dropping quickly, too, and suddenly we had a house on our hands that we couldn’t get a tenant for,’ says Sapna.
The house stood empty for three to four months, as the Bukharis became increasingly desperate.
‘That’s when the estate agent rang to say that a council department called Home Choice was looking for a place to house a large family,’ she says.
‘My first thought was that I really didn’t want to go down that road, but we didn’t have many options.’
Home Choice, formerly known as the Rent Deposit Scheme, allows council tenants to choose the area they want to live in, finds a suitable property, then pays the deposit on behalf of the tenant.
The rent from then on is covered by their housing benefit.
The Bukharis agreed to accept a rent of £2,400 a month because it was better than nothing and, ironically, they believed ‘it’s better to have someone taking care of the place than leaving it unoccupied’.
‘We were told that the Connors were a “good family” who went to church every Sunday,’ says Sapna, with an ironic laugh.
‘The council officer said that none of their previous landlords had ever had to use their deposit — which, of course, suggests that they have never caused any damage.’
It has since been suggested to the Bukharis that the Connors, in fact, caused £18,000 worth of damage to the house they lived in prior to this one.
However, the fact that the council were obliged to find them this new home indicates that those allegations have never been substantiated.
Zulfi adds: ‘They said that the father had a recent back injury and, because times are tough, he was currently out of work.
‘I had some sympathy for them. That can happen to anyone. I believe we should help people who are less fortunate than ourselves. I believe in the welfare state. But these people aren’t unfortunate, they’re just lazy and ungrateful.
‘They’re abusing a system that should be helping people. If we’d have known that they were long-term unemployed, we wouldn’t have agreed.’
Sapna says she did ask to see the family’s references, or for an interview to be arranged before they moved in, both of which were promised but never materialised.
''These people aren''t unfortunate, just lazy and grateful''
‘We were told that this family urgently needed a roof over their heads, and the priority was to move them in quickly. So quickly, in fact, that the agent gave them the keys before I had even signed the contract,’ she says. ‘There was no going back.’
Within three weeks of moving in, Sapna was called to the house when a radiator was (in the professional opinion of three builders) wilfully pulled off the wall in a first-floor bedroom, causing a leak that led to the collapse of the ceiling downstairs.
Because a landlord is responsible for maintaining a safe standard of living accommodation, a plumber, a builder and an electrician were called in immediately to survey and rectify the damage. ‘But when I said it looked like the radiator had been deliberately wrenched off the wall, things turned very nasty, and the family have never let us in to carry out the repairs,’ says Sapna.
‘At a glance, I would say the damage runs into several thousand pounds — not least because the flooring, which cost £10,000 to lay, was ruined.’
She estimates that she and Zulfi have also called out Dyno-Rod to unblock the drains at the house six times in the past six months.
‘Every time, I stand over this stinking drain making a list of everything the workman pulls out. Toys, batteries, underwear, bottles of nail polish, balloons, food, you name it,’ she says. ‘There’s only one way for those things to get stuck there — they flush it all down the toilet.
‘I had my reservations about renting to them, but all I ever asked was for them to respect the house and respect the neighbours.’
In July, the Bukharis made an unsuccessful application to the court to have the family removed, and they are now awaiting a new court date.
‘Our solicitor has warned us that this may be a long and very expensive process, because it’s such a difficult case,’ says Sapna. ‘Tenants have more rights over a property that they don’t own than a landlord has over the property that they worked hard to buy and spent their time and money on. It’s ridiculous.’
It will be at least four more months of hell for them and the Connors’ neighbours.
In the meantime, the Bukharis can’t stop worrying about any further damage that might have occurred since they were last allowed inside.
‘I have seen the carpets outside on the driveway,’ says Sapna. And she flinches when Hannah mentions that the Connors were seen taking plasterboard into the house and then heard hammering on Wednesday night into the small hours. Zulfi is rightly furious. ‘What gets me is the ingratitude of these people. They could never have moved into a street like that off their own backs because, unlike everyone else who lives there, they don’t believe in working hard for what they’ve got.
‘They’ve got a beautiful house that the taxpayer pays for and they don’t have to work for a living, yet it doesn’t cross their minds how lucky they are.’
But in Serena Connors’s opinion, it’s the Bukharis who should be grateful.
‘She gets £2,400 a month off the council, so she should be happy. And I know we’re up-to-date with the rent,’ she says, standing in the front doorway, revealing more mess and, notably, a brand-new 52in flat-screen television.
A spokesman for Barnet Council says: ‘We cannot comment on individual cases, but I can confirm that any family who recklessly disregard their responsibilities to their landlord would almost certainly be considered “intentionally homeless” by the council.’
At this stage, it is everyone’s hope that no other unsuspecting landlord or neighbour will find themselves stuck with the Connors.
