Yeah, I think it's a pretty edge case, 26k. We don't get anything like that amount. After HB we're on about 12k, with HB it's about 17k, that's working tax credits, HR DLA, CA, HB, CTB, no kids.
Two HR DLA receivers, with one child, caring for each other and starting up a new businesss, living in a 3 bed flat, could conceivably reach that. Say, a family in a car crash and both parents break their necks and they need to put the toddler in a nursery for a part of each day.
Or a family with six children whose business fails and the mum has a nervous breakdown and then they split up. They could hit that.
I can't see how it will affect millions of people in most benefits. Working single parent HB claimants in the South East, most likely, because £400/w is twenty grand.
Yeah, I think it's another HB cap. I don't disagree that HB is out of control, and citing these high rents, it's very easy to get sympathy from the 90% of the population who don't live in London. My rent, frex, is £90/w for a house, so £400 seems like an unbelievable amount. Like a palace. But then the ire is always directed at the claimants, who don't actually keep that money! Landlords do. No one calls them benefit claimants. So the argument is, imo, suspect. It's directing the punishment at the people with the least power in the situation.
I think the answer is council housing, not homelessness, really. And rent control, possibly, but council housing.