'They're scum, just scum'. These words, uttered by an absentee landlord during a recent Radio 4 broadcast about housing, sum up the current crisis for many of the families living in poverty in the UK. In many of the more deprived wards over 40 per cent of the population live in homes rented from private landlords. Some of those owners work alongside council housing departments to access improvement grants and work towards reducing multi-occupancy accommodation. They link with social services and other agencies such as Home Start...