Housing benefits loop of doom! – Anyone have any good ideas on how to house my mum (80)

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I’ll try to keep this short.

My mum is 80, lives alone, and is currently in a private rental. She’s about to run out of savings and will soon be eligible to claim housing support and pension credit.

Her current landlord has said they won’t accept tenants on benefits, apparently due to insurance reasons, so she’ll need to move out.

We’ve looked at helping her ourselves by buying a small buy-to-let property and moving her in, but the council has told us they won’t pay housing benefit if she’s renting from family, even with a proper tenancy in place.

We also looked into shared ownership and part-buy schemes, but again, we’re being told she can’t live in a property as shes not the leaseholder, but they won't sell to her.

She can't get a mortgage.

So where is she meant to go?

There’s no social housing available in our area at the moment and we’re doing everything we can to give her some stability, but we keep hitting walls.

If anyone knows of a way through this or any schemes we’ve missed, I’d really appreciate it!

And would it make a difference with the current landlord if you acted as guarantor?

I get that, but her money can buy her a rental for the next year or so until she can scope out her social housing options for the future - it doesn’t sound like she us in need of benefits right now

The current landlord doesn't need to have a guarantor or know anything about benefits at all! It's mad that OP is continuing the thread as if it's a done deal that her mum has to move out - it really is not!

She's in a rental! She's paying her rent from her money already?!

Yes I do, but ultimately human housing needs come first

I agree with you, it was a bad idea to tell the landlord that will be the case (if they have). If they haven't then keep quiet and they won't know!

She is but she will run out as her outgoings are higher than her incomings, hence trying to look to the future and what we can achieve for her benefits wise.

Do you think her rent will be higher than she could get in benefits? Could you top up the shortfall if she stayed?

You keep saying threshold - there's no fixed savings threshold for claiming pension credit and if a housing benefit claim is dependent on a pension credit claim then the capital limit for housing benefit is ignored

Yes we will need to top up, hence thinking if we got a BTL at least our top up is staying in the family so to speak, rather than to the landlords and agent fees.

We don’t expect HB to cover any rents in our area.

It doesn't matter what the agency has in its terms and conditions. Contractual clauses that contravene the law are unenforceable. They cannot evict based on receiving HB.

Well unless she is eligible for pension credit she would not get housing benefit until savings drop below 16k anyway.

I believe there is and it's £10000, my dad has just started claiming

The first 10k of savings is disregarded but some people can have loads more than 10k savings and still be eligible for Pension credit for example if they have a very low state pension or they also get a disability benefit and live alone which can raise the pension credit threshold hugely. It all depends on pension amounts, savings, disability, carers premium etc

That's only for deductions based on your capital.

For working ahead benefits, there's a full stop threshold. So maybe at £15500 savings you'd still be entitled to £100 or so a month in UC, but at £16k savings your UC cuts off completely

For pension age benefits they didn't want a rule like that because of course plenty of pension age people have big pension savings pots, but not enough for them to live on for the rest of their lives.

So instead there are deductions from your pension credit entitlement for capital over #10k, but no absolute cut off,