A rogue landlord illegally evicted his tenant and left his belongings outside his home.
Hadji Amani Bin Amani had a tenancy agreement with his then friend Adil Lahmer but Lahmer evicted him from his Warrington home with days notice in December 2020 after telling him he needed to quarantine in the house in line with Covid restrictions.
Liverpool Crown Court heard Lahmer’s actions caused a ripple effect which left his tenant homeless, jobless and unable to see his kids for a significant stretch of time.
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Lahmer initially tried to suggest the tenancy agreement between the pair was not valid but a judge told him this afternoon that it should be "a feature of anyone’s moral compass that they could not simply throw a tenant out on to the street".
Ryan Rothwell, prosecuting, said Lahmer and Mr Bin Amani had been friends for a number of years and Mr Bin Amani had been a lodger in Lahmer’s home on Watkin Street since 2017. In mid-2020, Lahmer decided to move to Germany and began exploring the idea of selling the house.
Mr Bin Amani asked if he could rent the house from him with a view to later buying it and the pair then signed a tenancy agreement to formalise that arrangement and make Mr Bin Amani alone liable for council tax and energy bills. They signed the contract at the end of October and Mr Bin Amani paid rent for a number of months.
However, days after he paid more than £500 for December’s rent Lahmer called him and said he would be returning from Germany and needed to quarantine in the home due to Covid restrictions. Mr Bin Amani told Lahmer he could not be forced to leave but Lahmer later accessed the flat, changed the locks and left Mr Bin Amani’s belongings in bags under a canopy at the back of the house.
The 38 year old initially told Mr Bin Amani he would speak to him about the tenancy agreement but then ignored his pleas to settle the issue and told him to take him to court. Mr Bin Amani became homeless and had to give up his job in the immediate aftermath of his eviction.
He went to Warrington Borough Council’s emergency homelessness service for help, causing officers there to launch an investigation. In a statement to the court, Mr Bin Amani said his eviction had also derailed his higher education studies and deprived him of a place to host his children, who live nearby.
Lahmer initially denied allegations that he had illegally evicted his former friend, telling police there was no valid tenancy agreement and that Mr Bin Amani was simply contributing towards utility bills on an informal basis. However, he pleaded guilty earlier this year after accepting the agreement was valid.
Ben Berkson, defending, said Lahmer accepted his guilt and he maintained his actions stemmed partly from a misunderstanding of UK laws governing tenancy agreements. The judge, Recorder Richard Leiper QC, said Lahmer had been in the UK since 2012 and his position as a property owner who entered into a tenancy agreement meant he had no excuse not to understand the law.
Recorder Leiper said: “He let his home to someone. He wanted to come back from Germany and had to put himself in quarantine. The only place he could do that apart from a hotel was the property and so he booted out the person he let it to and made him homeless, a person who was supposed to be his friend.”
Mr Berkson said Lahmer was now himself homeless and sofa surfing because the stress of the court case had caused him to reduce the number of hours he was working and that as a result his Watkin Street home had been repossessed.
After Recorder Leiper indicated Lahmer’s actions had passed the custody threshold, Mr Berkson appealed to him to suspend any prison term. Mr Berkson said: “He is sorry, he has learned a lesson and I believe he would learn a further lesson if he received a suspended sentence which would then mean that if he committed any further offences he would go to prison.”
Sentencing, Recorder Leiper agreed to suspend a 24 week jail term but said Lahmer had done little to put things right with Mr Bin Amani and questioned again how he could ever have thought the way he acted was acceptable.
He said: “You had entered into an agreement with him. It would be a feature of anyone’s moral compass that they could not simply throw a tenant out on to the street simply because they had a need to use the property.”
Lahmer was handed a 24 week prison term suspended for 18 months. Recorder Leiper also ordered Lahmer to pay £500 compensation to Mr Bin Amani and £1,000 in prosecution costs to Warrington Borough Council.
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