housing benefit

There's a few scenarios I can think of:

Firstly that to be a 'new Tory' you have to eb able to tell yourself youa re sociallya ware and justify your own priveledge (am talking about New Tories such as DC ratehr than ordinary voters)- therefore the easy way is to beleive that they are motivating people and helping them, and that if they can get suvccess anyone can (course when you have a family bankrolling your Uni and an address book of contacts it helps....)

There's also a very simple fact: as a poor eprson i think of the boys, it is them having to move to a damp house miles away that scares me, I have done worse and survived: therefore why wouldn't better off tories want to protect tehir kid's priveledges? Same emotion, surely?

And the very simple fact that poor people tend not to shout. So if you are upset shout- start a blog with lots of tags, write letters, anything.... just don't let people forget you.

Totally agree Sanctimoany there are waiting lists for childcare around here.
I thought the budget was supposed not to attack the most vulnerable but it is the poor and middle income who will be hit.

Agree MrsBess:

another scenario, one I know in rl:

Carerr fo relerly father loses CA 9obv notb her main concern but...) when her Dad has a sudden stroke and dies; shhe immediately starts to look for work but is faced with >1 year waiting list forr local childcare providers.

Stuffed.

A year isn't enough when there are so few jobs.

OTOH 5 years I can see- 5.5 perrhaps so single parents can have lat leave before birth, get to school age and then find something.

I think its disgusting that this housing benefit being cut after 12 months of being on JSA has sort of been hushed up and not on budget main points and so many people dont know.
I woould like to put a scenario forward to cameron and clegg.
Single mother with 2 children been put on JSA as youngest 5 year old. Unable to find work after 12 months due to not being able to find a job term time for whatever reason (or the fact there are not a lot of jobs out there due to tories cutting them)
Single mother now has less rent money and children suffer as well.Rent arrears pile up and single mum and children are evicted.

Im disgusted by this policy and the fact that its sort of been covered up

The trouble is, some areas are quite large. Here, for example, when I was looking for a place in my town, where I grew up, the rents are very high. However, 22 miles away, on the edge of the South Hams, on the outskirts of Plymouth, rents are much lower on run-down estates. So, you are forced to not only move far away from all your support networks, family friends, ad-hoc babysitters, and live in a dingey flat, but those cheap rents are few and far between and even fewer want to take on unemployed single parents! In the end I was made homeless with my 3 year old ds, and we were put in B&B FOR 6 wks until they rehoused us. Now, fortunately, we ahve a nice 2 bed flat in my town.

the solution to the problem is lots more social housing and yet no one in goverment has twigged to this, come on Cameron give councils money for housing and only housing so it's not used for the councilors pet projects.While Iam at it it's a case of a few spoiling it for the many.

'She did find some places cheaper but she always got the same reply from agents and landlords themselves: no kids, no dss, no HB. so i'm not sure about the countryside places filing up with that percentage as she found it so difficult/impossible.'

We live in a rural area. Not in receipt of HB but are working poor.

We had major trouble finding a place that would take kids.

But never saw a one that also accepted DSS.

• told you

lego, Private landlords are more willing to accept it than agencies IME, especially if you are not working. It's a bugger to find anywhere though TBH. Took me 3 months and that was a fluke, because my mum said she was so in the habit of checking the back of the paper by the time I did find somewhere that she kept looking, and didn't see anything else suitable until about 4 months later

Sorry if I wasn't entirely clear, I meant that it seemed when I was looking that there were a lot of empty rural properties which seemed on average to be a lot cheaper for bigger houses than the ones in town near the jobs and bus routes etc. And I was worried that if they simply look at a list of properties for rent in an area with X number of bedrooms and take the first 30% with the lowest rent to calculate the figures from, the lower priced rural properties are likely to be in the 30% and the houses actually suitable for working families will cost more. If that makes sense!

I am going to have to check now .....

Wow you are right! It's not £15 a week but I think it is the difference between LHA and my rent. Thanks for that, I feel rich now...

Yes you are right about the 4-weekly thing. It's difficult enough that they pay it in arrears, but I can sort of understand that. I had a separate account for the HB/rent originally, but for some reason my IS ended up getting paid into that account too so I hadn't noticed the difference.

bertiebotts, the person i know, who I talked about earlier on the thread, was looking for a home to rent in a very rural area last year.
She did find some places cheaper but she always got the same reply from agents and landlords themselves: no kids, no dss, no HB. so i'm not sure about the countryside places filing up with that percentage as she found it so difficult/impossible.
i guess it might depend on what area you are in and how keen the landlord is to accept HB and most private landlords don't seem very keen in her experience.

of course if they didn't insist on paying HB/LHA every 4 weeks.......when went is generally due once a month it would make life much simpler for everyone.................

• I bet you do.........I like to think of the extra £15 I get to keep as a "reward" for being so darned clever to find a house that would accept HB and "under budget" too

I didn't look at the figure, I just guessed. Maybe not so much a maths geek after all...

I am pretty sure that I don't get any extra anyway. It must depend on the council.

Yes, it's targeted at people on JSA.

At a time when they (the government) themselves have forecasted unemployment to rise to over 8%.

Let's not focus on house prices that are the cause of this whole bollocks in the first place.

More homeless children and elderly people who've been made redundant but are too young for the new retirement ages and can't find a job!

Great fucking job, DC and Clegg. Can't wait to see you both in hell, tbh.

so yes you can get up to £15 a week more

and psst £574 every 4 weeks is £621 a month

As I read the documentation, the 10% cut applies only to JSA. (And they should be ashamed ... sorry, couldn't help myself but am so cross ...)

from the LHA FAQ's

". What if my rent is less than the Local Housing Allowance that applies to me?

If the rent of the property you have negotiated with your landlord is lower than the LHA rate you may be able to keep any excess up to a maximum of £15 per week.

This excess will not normally be taken into account when deciding other benefits.

If the rent is higher than the LHA rate you will be required to pay the difference or look for alternative accomodation within the LHA rates.

Entitlement to LHA is means-tested and you will need to provide a valid tenancy agreement as proof."

Can anyone answer my question wrt HB?

Does the 10% cut after 12 months only apply to JSA claimants?

What happens to HB if you are on a very low income, possibly less than JSA, but not actually claiming JSA IYSWIM?

You won't ever get more in HB than your rent actually is - you might get less (as the LHA figure for the amount of bedrooms you are entitled to is the maximum) but never more. At least that is how it works in this area. The rate for a 2-bed house is somewhere around £635pcm, I found somewhere for £600, so I get £600 per month in HB, but paid in 4-weekly installments, so it's something like £574 eevry 4 weeks.

This house wasn't advertised through an agency though. I couldn't find an agency who would touch me without a guarantor earning 3 times the rent which worked out at about £22,000+. I don't know anyone who earns that kind of money!

that's in interesting point about those properties that aren't advertised on rightmove/agents.

How will they measure those - unless they have people that are claiming HB moving into them there's not really going to be any way to know about them is there? I mean - can you imagine some poor sod being given the job of traipsing round all the Polish shops, the supermarkets, corners shops, etc etc and scouring the papers to work out what prices those are.

I have to say I'm not sure exactly how much LHA I get........I know the rate when I applied was slightly higher than my rent......

but they never did send me a letter to tell me how much I'd been awarded .

And I tend to get my CTC and my LHA mixed up, they go into my account about 4 days apart and I can never remember which one is which and they're very similar figures.

tocattanfudge I have been playing around estimating different figures based on different areas and rents on rightmove etc (sorry, bit of a maths geek ) - and I reckon the Northants Central one will be around £550 pcm for a 3-bed. That's £126.92pw - the current rate is £126.58, so you're right, it actually goes up slightly.

Like you say though it doesn't help if you live in one of the more expensive areas. And I found when househunting last year that the places to rent out in the middle of nowhere are dirt cheap and there is loads of choice, because most people who need to rent cheaply rely on public transport, hence they must be difficult to rent out. So I am a bit worried that these remote houses are going to fill up the bottom 30%, and as they don't tend to be on websites like Rightmove etc, but just advertised through the local papers I wonder whether or not they will be taken into account by councils.

Perhaps it only takes into account LA and HA rents then