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In 2023, the Cable revealed that Naomi Knapp, a Bristol landlord barred from letting properties due to poor maintenance and fire safety issues, had got around her banning order by renting them out via short term lets on Airbnb<\/a>.<\/p>\n After we contacted Airbnb, a huge business<\/a> in Bristol, it investigated and removed the listings, which were made via a third party. The council told the Cable it was investigating a potential breach of the banning order, and Knapp put many of the homes up for sale.\u00a0<\/p>\n But almost 18 months later, we have found that multiple properties owned by Knapp have not been sold but are being rented by an even more lucrative route \u2013 for use as emergency accommodation for homeless people (see box). Bristol City Council, which pursued the original five-year banning order against Knapp, is now indirectly paying the rogue landlord, its housing lead Barry Parsons has admitted.<\/p>\n Knapp has got around the order by letting homes on long-term leases to a third-party provider, Auvelle Housing, which took more than half a million pounds of public money between April 2024 and January 2025.<\/p>\n We have no evidence Knapp is still involved in hands-on management of the homes, which would breach her banning order. But her ability to continue profiting, from the same council that went to court to stop her letting properties, demonstrates the limits of such orders. It also underlines how much power landlords wield in cities where councils are desperate for anywhere to house people in need.\u00a0<\/p>\n From ordering homes emptied, to paying thousands to rent them<\/p>\n In September 2023, after Knapp lost an appeal<\/a> against her order, council officers told her to end her tenancies by December \u2013 and she began serving eviction notices. Knapp then owned around 30 homes, mostly in south Bristol, of which roughly a third were tenanted (including to Daisy, the lead reporter of this story). Some tenants later told the Cable<\/a> they had been offered the option of staying past the eviction date and paying cash-in-hand.<\/p>\n Reporting on the stories that matter to you. Only with your support.<\/p>\n In the months that followed, some of Knapp\u2019s properties were put up for sale (at least one was sold prior to the eviction notices). But Land Registry records and property sites suggested most did not ultimately change hands.<\/p>\n In June 2024, two people told us houses belonging to Knapp were being used by the council as emergency accommodation, managed by another provider called Auvelle Housing. Auvelle<\/a>, which was incorporated in September 2023 and has yet to file accounts, has one director, Laurent Chalamet, little online presence, and is registered to 85 Great Portland Street, London, \u2018home\u2019 to nearly 20,000 other companies. <\/p>\n Registrations at the location are available online for less than \u00a350 a year, with one ad<\/a> saying: \u201cThis prestigious address will enhance your company\u2019s image, making it appear more established and trustworthy to clients and partners.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Emergency accommodation in Bristol is managed through joint framework contracts between the city council and South Gloucestershire Council. Auvelle was one of eight housing providers listed<\/a> on a \u00a396 million framework contract for the purchase of emergency accommodation in April 2024, active until 2028.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to publicly available financial disclosures <\/a>from Bristol City Council, Auvelle received its first payment of \u00a325,513 that same month. At this point Labour still led the council under mayor Marvin Rees. Control passed to the Green Party under a new committee-run system, after elections in May.\u00a0<\/p>\n If we\u2019re going to ban landlords because their properties are substandard, and then use them, and pay them, that makes a mockery of the point of the banning order.\u201d<\/p>\n Tom Renhard<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Between then and January 2025, Auvelle received variable monthly amounts of up to \u00a390,997 \u2013 almost \u00a3582,000 in total \u2013 according to the council\u2019s records (further spending data has yet to be released). Publicly available records <\/a>also show the firm received \u00a332,340 in April and June 2024 from South Gloucestershire Council.\u00a0<\/p>\n Earlier this year, we visited 10 of Knapp\u2019s homes, around a third of her portfolio. While some were empty, residents of three confirmed they had been placed there by the council, and a neighbour said another home was being used to house women fleeing domestic abuse. Records show that under the emergency accommodation framework Auvelle is housing both asylum-seekers and families being rehoused due to safeguarding issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n A dilemma for the council<\/p>\n Asked for comment on how the council had begun paying to rent properties belonging to a landlord it had sought to ban, Tom Renhard, Labour\u2019s former housing chief, said he had no knowledge of the arrangement. In the final months of the Rees administration, part of Renhard\u2019s responsibilities were split out to another councillor, Kye Dudd who we have approached for comment.<\/p>\n But Renhard, a councillor for Horfield, said, \u201cThere is a question here [around money going to Knapp] \u2013 if we\u2019re going to ban landlords because their properties are substandard, and then use them, and pay them, that makes a mockery of the point of the banning order.\u201d<\/p>\n Auvelle\u2019s director Laurent Chalamet declined to comment on the arrangements by which he had leased Knapp\u2019s properties before joining the emergency accommodation framework, citing commercial confidentiality. Knapp did not reply to a request for comment.<\/p>\n But Renhard\u2019s successor as the council\u2019s housing lead, Green councillor for Easton Barry Parsons, said because Knapp\u2019s homes had been leased to Auvelle for a period of at least 21 years, she is not legally considered to be involved in their management. This means the banning order is not being breached. Parsons said council officers knew whose homes they were taking on, and that he believes Knapp\u2019s properties make up most of Auvelle\u2019s portfolio.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe lease will mean she\u2019s making money from these properties [on an ongoing basis],\u201d Parsons, chair of the Homes and Housing Delivery Committee, told the Cable. \u201c[But] do we think it\u2019s more important that Naomi doesn\u2019t make any money out of property she owns, or that those homes, when [there are] 1,600 people living in temporary accommodation and 23,000 on the housing waiting list, are available for somebody to live in?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Temporary accommodation: profiting from crisis<\/p>\n As the UK housing crisis has worsened over the past decade, more and more people have found themselves homeless and turned to councils for help. An ever-growing number of households \u2013 126,000 families and 164,000 children, according to statistics<\/a> \u2013 are living in temporary accommodation while they wait for social housing. Emergency accommodation is the type of temporary housing offered to people in greatest short-term need.<\/p>\n The intense pressure on housing presents opportunities for landlords. Aside from the overinflated private rental market, converting properties into temporary accommodation can enable owners to take huge sums<\/a> in public money from local authorities. We have heard from housing workers about many new landlords entering the sector in Bristol, with records suggesting some are taking hundreds of thousands of pounds each month.<\/p>\n Recently some councils have warned the spend on temporary accommodation \u2013 nearly \u00a3750m a year nationally \u2013 could bankrupt them. Bristol is one of a number of councils trying to reduce their dependency on private-sector landlords, by using social housing as temporary accommodation. While this does not grow the number of available homes in the short term, it can reduce the amount of money being handed over to profit-making firms.<\/p>\n Above: <\/strong>Auvelle Housing, whose logo looks a lot like Airbnb\u2019s, took on managing Naomi Knapp\u2019s homes. Little is known about the provider, which is now being used by the council to house vulnerable people.<\/p>\n \u2018More than bare habitability\u2019<\/p>\n Parsons said anyone involved in providing emergency accommodation has responsibilities around tenant safeguarding, including gas and electrical certificates. He added that they must have a DBS check, that the standard of living is \u201cmore than bare habitability\u201d. The council says properties are subject to in-person inspections.<\/p>\n But Parsons admitted the sheer numbers of homes involved mean it is a struggle for the council to guarantee the quality of emergency accommodation, and that it faces \u201cimpossible choices\u201d between people having a roof over their head or not. The Cable has previously visited emergency housing belonging to other providers that is damp, mouldy or in bad condition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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