Real Estate

Mould, evictions, vermin: stories of a £30m property empire


When Daud Hussein, a Somali who is blind in one eye, crawled naked and bleeding out of his north London home, it seemed that life could not get too much worse. But it did.

He had been knocked unconscious after he fell when showering in the dark. A candle that had been lighting the bathroom had gone out. Hussein says he was using the candle after his landlord cut off the electricity.

After dragging himself outside to find help, Hussein was eventually discovered by a neighbour, who clothed him and called an ambulance.

Daud Hussein.



Daud Hussein. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian

He spent 10 days in St Mary’s hospital near Paddington station, including four in the major trauma ward, as a result of swelling to the spinal cord that caused him to lose sensation in his leg, down the right side of his body and in both hands.

Yet having been discharged, Hussein could not go home. He suspected his landlord had been trying to make him leave by disconnecting the electricity. Family members passed word from the landlord to Hussein in his hospital bed, he claimed. The message went: “Tell that black bastard that I have evicted him and his shit is outside.”

And so it proved. When Hussein returned to the property the locks had been changed and his belongings removed. Suddenly he was homeless.

The details of the eviction, which took place in May 2015 when Hussein was 46, are contained within the witness statement he filed at Willesden county court when bringing a successful civil action against his then landlord, Bernard McGowan, a convicted property owner who boasts a £30m portfolio.

McGowan is familiar with court proceedings. He has been convicted under the Housing Act six times since 2014, and was fined more than £100,000 for property offences last year.

The Guardian has spoken to five other McGowan tenants who have similar claims of intimidation, electricity being disconnected, locks being changed and deposits never being returned, as their landlord either forced – or attempted to force – them out of their homes. Others with knowledge of McGowan’s practices also claim that he has thrown tenants out without going through the proper legal channels, which is an offence under the 1977 Protection from Eviction Act.

A picture taken last year of a broken wooden stair rail in a Bernard McGowan property.

A picture taken last year of a broken wooden stair rail in a Bernard McGowan property. Photograph: ITV News

Residents in the 25-home development in Kensal Green, Brent, where Hussein once lived, told how beds and tenants’ personal possessions had been strewn outside the front doors of some of the 10 McGowan properties there. They suggest these were other examples of forced eviction that had occurred during the past year. “It’s horrific,” said one neighbour.

But none of this appears out of the ordinary.

Jacky Peacock, a director at a London charity called Advice4Renters, which has helped Hussein and other McGowan tenants build legal cases against the landlord, said: “[McGowan] owns a large number of properties and he does tend to let to people who are either on very low income or maybe benefits who really have little bargaining power and little choice in where they live.”

Peacock claims McGowan will cram tenants in to maximise his rents and “if there is any difficulty with any of the tenants … then he is likely to just evict them summarily”.

“He has almost no regard for the law and if he does get prosecuted he will just carry on in his own sweet way,” she added. “If he does get caught every so often the fine will just be a business expense.”

The claims about McGowan’s business practices range from the forced evictions to dire conditions inside his properties, where tenants are living in homes riddled with cold, damp and vermin.

Last year McGowan was convicted by Brent council and ordered to pay £41,488 in respect of a property in Harlesden where a couple with two children lived in a flat with mice, and mould on the ceiling caused by damp.

Broken heating in a Bernard McGowan property in 2016.



A picture taken in 2016 of broken heating in a Bernard McGowan property. Photograph: Supplied

Council housing inspectors also recorded that the flat had insufficient heating, broken windows and a “large gap at the bottom [of the front door] allowing cold air, rain and also vermin to enter”. McGowan should never have been letting the property, as he had failed the council’s “fit and proper” person test and did not have a licence to be a landlord in the borough.

But there was more. During 2017, he was prosecuted by Brent for another licensing breach at a property he owns in Wembley. He also received two further licensing convictions in neighbouring Camden, where he was ordered to pay a total of £68,435.

Yet still McGowan’s properties continue to be let out. Over the past three months the Guardian and ITV have gathered evidence from tenants in at least four other properties owned by McGowan that suggests the necessary Brent licences are missing. If correct, it could be a criminal offence. Two McGowan properties were suddenly licensed, under agents’ names, at the beginning of October well after journalists started asking questions. Many of McGowan’s current tenants in licensed and unlicensed properties also suggest how problems – such as faulty heating or leaks – go ignored for months.

Properties belonging to the landlord also continue to be let out in Camden, Newham and Hertfordshire, where his failure of Brent’s “fit and proper” test is irrelevant. Failing a fit and proper person test does not mean that all or any of the landlord’s properties are unfit.

Few tenants dare speak out publicly, fearing eviction, but when McGowan is challenged by those with less to lose, he appears weaker. When the Guardian and ITV News confronted McGowan outside his office in Radlett, Hertfordshire, he locked himself inside a cafe toilet for half an hour to avoid questions. In his rush to escape, he jumped into the wrong waiting cab. He declined other requests for comment.


‘He doesn’t care’: former tenant on what it was like renting from Bernard McGowan – video

A former McGowan tenant, Erskine Clarke, told of how he moved into one of the landlord’s properties after a spell being homeless and sleeping on night buses.

His £194-a-week housing benefit pays for a room that measures just 3.5 metres (12ft) by 2.5 metres (8ft) in a shared house in Harlesden where McGowan operated as the landlord until last year, but which is now being renovated. Crammed into the space are a double bed, a fridge-freezer, a microwave, a television, a record player and a music collection.

“The bathroom was mouldy,” Clarke said. “There was the coldness in the house, the boiler not working. [The problem with the boiler] was going on for two years. It kept on cutting out. No hot water, no central heating. I suffer with arthritis as well. When you stay in a cold room every day you can feel it all in your bones and everything. That’s how I feel it most of the time. I have to use crutches sometimes.

“Nobody should be living in the state like it was in. It made me depressed. I lost a lot of weight and got very sick [because of the] cold and depression.

“[McGowan] doesn’t care. I think all he cares about is what money he makes. As long as he gets paid, he’s fine,” Clarke claimed, before asking, in a voice barely above a whisper: “Why does the government just let people do this?”



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