By Deborah
I was convicted in December 2025 for subletting my social housing – something that is commonplace and legal only after tenants have written permission from their landlord, which I did not obtain. Taking the law into my own hands to keep safe was counter-intuitive and risky but I still cannot say for certain that I regret it.
Three years after a traumatic divorce, I found myself and young children suddenly displaced when our private landlord needed her home back. We were put into emergency housing.
Although a lifeline at the time, our council flat soon became an agent of exclusion, experienced as if it were a sort of criminal probation because of all the restrictions and surveillance, the entrapment, and stigma that attended it. Nevertheless, it was a roof over our heads and we were grateful for this as we lay down to sleep in our coats.
I ended up back in social housing in 2016 which remained a lifeline until 2023 when, as part of a mutual exchange that took many months, I swapped to Oxford and became a council tenant.
Almost as soon as we made the exchange to Oxford, I became the focus of a homeless man fresh from prison for breaking and entering. My fear of him patrolling the front door and, at times the back door, was such that I spent an entire week inside the house without food, unable to set foot outside; barricading my bedroom door each night in case he should gain access while I slept, and making plans to defend myself. Finally, to trick him into thinking that I no longer lived there, I decided to sublet to some students.
The students I sublet to, like me, sometimes had to hide until he was gone and would often see him guarding the front door. On one occasion they showed me a broken knife he had left; on another they requested compensation for their laundry which he had thrown all over the back garden in a rage.
What was seriously concerning was that Oxford city Council did not follow up on my report so that the next tenant might be offered some kind of protection.
Although I was wrong to break the law in this way, there is a bigger issue at stake, namely a shortage of affordable housing and the stigmatising of those who live in social housing. It is seen as a free-for-all at best, but usually as a byword for failure; a home for life in a dead-end street.
When I sublet, I was not claiming benefits and not making any profit. I was merely trying to hold on to a lifeline. The student tenants were themselves desperate for housing and the rent I charged was not hidden.
While I was wrong not to wait for permission from the Council, trust and communication were non-existent. They ignored emails and I never had any contact with – let alone advice or support from – any of their housing officers.
While I did expect to get into trouble for breaking the rules, I did not expect to be scapegoated because the Council wanted to raise awareness of new subletting laws which came into force in 2023.
This effectively forced me to plead guilty. The choices on offer were to plead guilty and have the case closed at a Magistrate’s Court with just a fine, or to plead not guilty with the case transferred to Crown Court and the possibility of a custodial sentence.
I felt that I had been tried, judged and sentenced by those making the accusations. If a guilty sentence can be given at the point of accusation by the accusers, where is the justice in such a process?
I am sharing my experiences for one big reason. It shows how vulnerable social tenants who are ignored by their landlords even when they report serious antisocial behaviour can end up facing a range of choices, all of them bad.
The choices I faced were to continue putting myself or my children at risk, or to escape the danger, even if it meant breaking the law by subletting. I was driven to the latter because I knew my landlord would not act on the antisocial behaviour (ASB) of an individual terrorising me and my neighbours.
We must continue to fight to raise awareness of the devastation and desperation caused by ASB, and demand better from those able to do something about it. For more on SHAC’s ASB Campaign, please see here.
12 November 2025
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