They should get rid of the housing benefit cap!

It needs to be feasible for local market rent though. Where I live a 3 bed terrace is £900pcm and the HB would be £625. How would that work?! There's nothing cheaper. Nothing.

I see where you're coming from, but I think it’s important to remember that the bedroom tax is a different issue from the benefit cap. The bedroom tax targets people in social housing who are deemed to have "too many" bedrooms for their household size, penalizing them financially if they don't move to a smaller home. While I get that we want to make better use of available social housing, it’s not as simple as just pushing people into smaller homes. For some, moving isn't an option—especially if they have disabilities, or if there just aren’t enough smaller homes available.

As for the benefit cap, that’s about limiting how much housing benefit people can claim, regardless of the size of the property. The two are related in that they both affect people's ability to stay in affordable homes, but they’re different mechanisms and require separate discussions. Both, however, highlight the lack of genuinely affordable housing and the pressure that puts on families, especially those already struggling to make ends meet.

Definitely an issue worth discussing, but we also need a broader conversation about how to meet the demand for all sizes of homes and make sure the system works for everyone.

Maybe people who can afford a five bedroom can buy whatever they want! I wish I could afford a 4 bedroom because I want a spare room for craft/work.
Build more council housing and maybe increase the time you have to live there before you can buy? And have controls on if sell within say 10 years( you have to sell back to council for the price you would pay now)
Housing should be where you live not something you make lots of money on.

Plenty of countries manage public housing so that tenants aren’t required to move out when they reach a certain income level, but the rent formula is always set at a particular proportion - often a third - of household income, whatever that income happens to be. It means that tenants on low incomes can afford the rent, and that if their incomes increase slightly they pay slightly more rent but still see the benefit of having increased their incomes; it also means that tenants who hugely increase their incomes find themselves paying a rent equal to or more than that of the private market - which can act as an incentive to move and give up public housing for somebody who needs it more.

I think that’s a feasible alternative to a fixed point at which somebody is forced to move out of social housing.

The LHA rate is a joke anyway.

When I lived in London 5 years ago, the LHA was 1,200pm for a two bed property. There wasn’t a single two bed up for rent in the borough for less than 1,500pm.

And it’s not easy renting when you claim housing benefit (or UC as it’s under now). Estate agents laugh you out the door and most landlords won’t accept it, even if you are working full time and it’s a top up benefit as it was with me.

The amount of times I was told on here to rent a one bedroom, sleep on the sofa and put the children in one room. No one will rent to you like that!

Unfortunately the ‘root’ is making sure you can house yourself before having a family ?? How do you suggest tackling that? Everything else is just a sticking plaster!
We need affordable housing which is offered for a limited period of time until you can get on your feet again. If you tie social housing into salary then the tenants will just play the system and reduce their hours or change jobs etc to make themselves remain eligible.

I think the rates should be raised so a 2 bed rate covers the average 2 bed house and a 3 bed rate covers the average 3 bed house.
I don’t think the cap should be removed - I also think home owners should think about whether the really need the size house they are occupying. Our house has three bedrooms and four of us live here - we could afford to buy a five bedroom house but we don’t need one. Maybe if people stopped buying 4 and 5 bed new builds for three or four people to live in then the house builders would build more smaller houses or maisonette on the same plots and go some way to solving the supply issue.

Why should I be paying for you to live in a nicer home than I can afford to live in myself?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the housing benefit cap (Local Housing Allowance cap), and the more I read, the more it feels like a scam. It was meant to save money by capping how much rent housing benefit would cover, but instead, councils are spending eye-watering amounts on temporary accommodation, and families are left stuck in the middle.

Before the cap, housing benefit covered private rents—even the inflated ones landlords charged. It wasn’t perfect, but at least people had more options: rent privately or wait for council housing. Now, with the cap, so many families can’t afford private rents and are being evicted, which means councils have to step in with temporary accommodation.

And here’s the kicker: councils spent £1.7 billion on temporary accommodation in 2023, almost double what they spent a decade ago. Individual households in temporary accommodation can cost councils £10,000–£20,000 a year, if not more. The money they’re “saving” on housing benefit? It’s being swallowed up by this anyway.

Plus, the conditions in temporary accommodation are often terrible—unsafe, overcrowded, and miles from people’s support networks. Kids are growing up in limbo, and families have no choice over where they live. Meanwhile, private agencies and middlemen are making a fortune out of the system.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to tackle the root of the problem? One option could be adjusting housing benefit to reflect real rents, so more people could afford private housing again. Another idea is rent caps, like they have in places like New York. If rent control works in one of the most expensive cities in the world, why can’t we try it here?

People always say, “Just move to a cheaper area,” but that ignores the fact that more expensive areas still need workers. Who’s going to do the jobs that keep those places running—childminders, cleaners, hairdressers, carers—if everyone has to move out?

It just feels like the current system isn’t working for anyone (except maybe the landlords and agencies profiting from temporary housing). Why aren’t we talking about this more?

I get where you're coming from—nobody wants taxpayers to simply fund landlords' mortgages. But the reality is that taxpayers are already funding landlords' mortgages—and at an even higher rate—because of the way temporary accommodation works.

Here’s how it happens: landlords know councils are desperate for properties to use as temporary accommodation. Some have even evicted long-term tenants so they can re-let those same properties to the council at much higher rents. Councils often pay well above market rates for these homes because they’re scrambling to meet their legal duty to house people.

In 2023, councils spent £1.7 billion on temporary accommodation, nearly double what they spent a decade ago. Compare that to housing benefit: before the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) cap was introduced, councils spent far less on temporary accommodation because people could afford to rent privately with their housing benefit.

The current cap hasn’t stopped public money going to landlords—it’s just shifted the money into a system that’s even more expensive and inefficient.

The irony is, if housing benefit was set at realistic levels to reflect actual rents, councils wouldn’t need to pay these inflated temporary accommodation prices, and families would have more stability. As it stands, taxpayers are footing the bill for a broken system that benefits neither tenants nor the public purse—just a handful of landlords who know how to game it.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to fix this at the root, rather than continuing to throw money at the symptoms?

I get where you're coming from—nobody wants taxpayers to simply fund landlords' mortgages. But the reality is that taxpayers are already funding landlords' mortgages—and at an even higher rate—because of the way temporary accommodation works.

Here’s how it happens: landlords know councils are desperate for properties to use as temporary accommodation. Some have even evicted long-term tenants so they can re-let those same properties to the council at much higher rents. Councils often pay well above market rates for these homes because they’re scrambling to meet their legal duty to house people.

In 2023, councils spent £1.7 billion on temporary accommodation, nearly double what they spent a decade ago. Compare that to housing benefit: before the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) cap was introduced, councils spent far less on temporary accommodation because people could afford to rent privately with their housing benefit.

The current cap hasn’t stopped public money going to landlords—it’s just shifted the money into a system that’s even more expensive and inefficient.

The irony is, if housing benefit was set at realistic levels to reflect actual rents, councils wouldn’t need to pay these inflated temporary accommodation prices, and families would have more stability. As it stands, taxpayers are footing the bill for a broken system that benefits neither tenants nor the public purse—just a handful of landlords who know how to game it.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to fix this at the root, rather than continuing to throw money at the symptoms?

There has to be a cap somewhere. It can’t simply be that people on benefits are entitled to as much money as they need to pay rent for whatever they want. As previous poster says, the problem is that there’s a lot of pressure on housing driven by various factors which means higher rents and lower income people unable to afford them.

Rent control doesn’t work particularly well in NYC. People who managed to obtain rent controlled apartments decades ago and pass them down through various family members have done well out of it - much as social housing tenants who are able to obtain lifetime tenancies do well. A significant proportion of rent controlled NYC apartments are actually left vacant as it’s more cost effective for the landlord to have an empty property than a tenant paying a very low rent and the costs and responsibilities associated with having a tenanted property.