Mumsnet Talk

In the long run. For private renters anyway.

As things currently stand, private landlords are getting away with charging extortionate rents that few can afford because the shortfall is made up by Housing Benefit. So if benefits are to be capped, landlords will (hopefully) be forced to lower their rents to affordable levels or sell up if they can't find tenants that can and will pay hundreds of pounds a month. Either will be great for the average Joe IMO.

I would like to think you are right too.

Unfortunately, something always comes along and puts a spanner in the works!

YANBU...& lets hope you are correct.

Disclaimer: I am only talking about rents...I am (at the moment) a little ignorant on any other benefit that may be capped.

I wish it would work sadly I don't have enough confidence that this will combat landlords' greed. It'll just put the homeless rate up and over burden local councils with temporary accommodation costs.

Unless you get a disability related benefit (in which case you are exempt from the cap) I don't see how you could get £26,000 or more in benefits.........so is this aimed at people who have a lot of children and claim?

Landlords are not going to put their rents down.........not in a time when most working people can't afford a mortgage.

Lots of landlords won't accept tenants that are claiming any HB anyway, so it probably won't make a lot of difference. I do agree with you though about greedy landlords.

Also isn't HB capped anyway now? Through the local allowance? In my area, that means that no one can claim anymore than £180 per week HB. Or are they lowering those thresholds even more?

HB is already capped. So it particularly affected those living in the South East.

ive been banging on about having a upper limit to benefits for years

about time they slowly started to sort it out

An average 4 bed house where I live is around £1600 a month private rent. Something has to happen to these rental prices, they are obscene. Three beds are around the £1200 mark.

You do appreciate that buy to let mortgage providers require landlords to have rental income of 120% of the mortgage payments. If you live in the South East where properties are expensive and mortgage repayments high this 20% on top really does push rents up. Landlords don't always have as much freedom as you expect when it comes to rent levels.

But no-one is forced to become a 'buy to let' landlord, surely?

I'm not sure it will do anything to combat house prices or rents

Round my way a 3 bed detached is on sale for £325,000 - the same house next door is up for rent for £1500 a month - that's how much a repayment mortgage would cost on it.

Not that any lenders would lend a couple with 50k coming in that mortgage anyway but they are exactly the couple that would be actually paying a rent like that.

There is NO joined up thinking here. We need massive investment in house bulding (only 4% of Britain is built on), we need to persuade the elderly to sell their properties by making them pay more for their care (it's ridiculous that they have benefitted so much from massive house price increases - the elderly - mostly elderly nhs costs - cost most to the country than the benefits bill).

Does everyone really believe that a perfectly ordinary property that cost £3000 back in 1957 should now be of benefit to someone when they sell for 750K? for no reason?

And that's the reason govts don't really want to tackle house prices - they are the ones benefitting.

Line Runner I was simply responding to the "extortionate rents" comments. Suggesting that there may be other factors to take into account.

YesLaurie you're right

Unfortunately you aren't exempted from the cap if you get any old disability-related benefit.

DLA (need help with personal care or have serious mobility probs) will be exempted.

ESA (not well enough to do any work at all but can manage own personal care) will be included in the capped amount.

And Income Support (not well enough to work fulltime or claim JSA but not sick enough to rate ESA these days) will be included in the capped amount.

The moderately ill will be screwed.

The other thing that has occured to me, for the first time, is just how sneaky the Government is being.

They are using arguments which sound so damn reasonable to do a deeply unreasonable thing.

"Why should someone on benefits get more than the average hard working tax payer??"

Well, who would argue with that?

But of course, they are no talking about capping benefits at 'average pay'. They are talking about capping benefits at £26k.

We all know that rates of payy have come down in the last couple of years. This has reduced average pay.

Would the benefit cap go up if the average pay did? No.

The Government aren't proposing to cap benefits at an 'average' pay rate. If they were, they would be using some sort of index link to determine the cap.

Instead, they are saying '£26k' now. In 10 years time, when average wage may be £30k, or £32k, you can guarantee that the benefit cap will still be £26k.

Depends whether you think the ends justify the means.

I don't.

If peopel cannot afford the rent in one area they will have to move to another area, so landlords in the more expensive area will eithe rhave to leave their properties empty, or lower the prices. You can still get £1600 housing benefit per month which is more than many people earn anyway.

Private landlords are business people and rents react to market forces. If rents are too high and no one could afford them they would have to come down for the landlords to stay in business. If rents are high in your area it means that people are still paying those prices. It is all economic supply and demand forces.

There will always be people who cater to different sectors of the market.

I don't understand this 'cap' at all. £26,000 is more than my partner and I earn together in a year - he is on roughly 15k and I get <£4000 from tax credits/CB I don't believe we can claim any more even though he is barely over the minimum wage. Even his mother who is on disability, HB, and not so long ago had 4 children living at home and a partner on carers allowance didn't get 26k a year. I just have no idea what this cap accomplishes, since legitimate claimants rarely exceed that anyway and those who cheat the system will just find another way to cheat

Housing benefit caps vary from area to area. It's not a flat rate across the country.

Yes, it will undoubtedly bring down rents in the longer term, and for future generations that will certainly be a good thing. But at what cost? And is it the only way?

People will end up getting in terrible arrears and losing their homes. Shelter predict a big increase in homelessness as a result of this. And where are these people going to go? There isn't exactly a surplus of social housing for them to fall back on. Yes they could move to a cheaper area, but the cap will have cut HB in those areas too, so there will be no real change.

Peoples lives will be completely upended. Children will be made first homeless and then have to change schools - two major events for a child that could end up traumatising them, because let's not pretend that eviction is anywhere near the same as a planned house move, and eviction is what it will be because these people wont have the money to plan a move elsewhere - if they did they wouldn't have to leave their current home in the first place. And the elderly, who may be stripped of their increasingly small support network when they lose their homes.

So long term? Yes, it will be A Good Thing. But I don't think that makes it worth doing because in the Short Term it will devastate many people's lives. I'd rather we increased taxation (specifically for big business) than cut money to the most needy.

how is having to move to a different area devestating. It is no-ones right to live in central London.

lots of people move - people in professional jobs seeking promotion. those in the armed forces. I don't see why people on housing benefit should be any different - ok their reasons for moving maybe, but so what - the end result is surely the same.