AIBU to hate the line "why should people on housing benefit live in homes that working people can't afford?"

[standupandbecounted]

"Why should people on housing benefit live in houses that working people could not afford?"

I keep seeing this line being thrown about in the media. Along with stories about families, usually with an average of eight kids, claiming a shocking level of housing benefit.The government is going to cap housing benefit to prevent this. Reasonable, but not the whole story.
A a less publicised proposal is to drop the level of Local Housing Allowance(LHA) from the 50th centile to the 30th centile.Local housing allowance is currently set at the median-middle value- of private rents in your local area. In my area the LHA is nowhere near the proposed cap. The maximum I can claim for a 2 bedroom property (I have 2 kids) is 126.92 per week. For a three bedroom it is £150 per week. Shelter have estimate that the average loss for a for a two bedroom tenant in my area will be £12 per week.( I assume this is based on predicted rent levels)
Loss per area here

I am renting a two bedroom flat for myself and two children, aged 18 months and 5. There is no outdoor space, it is not large and not in an exclusive area. The soundproofing is poor and the tenants upstairs are fond of partying way into the early hours. Hardly luxury housing that working people can't afford. I believe this myth about HB claimants living in the best properties does not represent the reality for the majority of us. I have tried to find somewhere better but most landlords will not take HB or children. I have put my name down on the waiting list for council housing but have been awarded thr lowest priority level. I will never get one with that banding.

The thing that upsets me most is the "working people" bit, a lot of HB claimants ARE working people! Housing benefit is also available to people who don't earn enough to cover their rent. Most low income people cannot access council housing anymore. They are forced to rent on the private market, where rents are to high to be affordable on low incomes. This is the case in most areas, not just London.

So, AIBU to feel angry that people on housing benefit are being misrepresented and subjected to unfair cuts?

mamatomany "You will live where you live now"

Oh good. I'm currently homeless btw.

Loads of people put off having kids for several years because they can't afford them, can't house them, can't afford childcare but can't afford to give up work.

It's nothing new!

Housing is no less affordable now than 20 years ago. The prices are higher, but interest rates are massively lower.

Anyone else remember 12% interest rates?

It was the reason we had to put off having dc2 for a few years. Couldn't afford NOT to work; couldn't afford childcare for two.

Yes, it's tough, but you just have to get on with it. Never ocurred to me to expect the state to pay for me to have more kids when I wanted them

That's a risk everyone takes whenever we have children. It's tragic, and unpredictable - and of course no one can factor in the possibility of having a child which will need 24 hour care forever. One of my children has a disability, and it's shit, though fortunately does not stop either of us from working (though necessitates hospital appts and emergency time off)

I would have liked 4 children, but the childcare cost have broken us financially and one of them would have probably had to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs for several years!

Nobody has said they expect the state to pay for them. A lot want rents they can afford. There is a difference.

But pasty - so do hundreds of thousands of people - often couples who are both working, and struggling to pay their housing and childcare.

You should have borrowed the Crystal ball Riven,that some seem to have on here

I still don't get HB. I mean, I do in the sense of seeing what it's for, but where I come form there isn't any HB, only benefits, and they are lower than here. Hence when I was unemployed for five months I lived in a single room with no running water and the nearest loo down two flights of stairs, shared with a kinda reggae/steel band...did somebody say noise?

IMHO, OP, YAB a little U, because you seem to expect not to live like the very poor while on benefits. I think this is what gets up everyone's nose. I appreciate that you are also saying that you don't live in luxury, and that the press implies that you do, but your circumstances sound quite pleasant compared with those I knew. I didn't expect a bigger and better handout, I fear. And btw, there was no allowance for heating, and the company cut the gas off for six weeks in winter because none of us could pay. I didn't have kids then, but more by luck than judgement

Actually, I'm not leaving it at that.

mamatomany
You will live where you live now, you'll just pay less for it or rather the tax payer will

I am homeless, and trying to find somewhere to live. The places that are out there to rent are beyond my budget, as my budget is limited to whatever LHA I am entitled to. And this is without taking into account how few landlords accept LHA, and how many expect higher deposits for it (where I get that deposit from is anyone's guess, of the first month's rent up front for that matter, seeing as LHA is paid in arrears)

Even if I was living somewhere, reducing the amount I can pay in rent (bearing in mind a lot of people already top up their rent as LHA doesn't cover it) would mean I'd get evicted if I couldn't find the difference. Yes it may take a while, but I'd still get evicted and still need to find somewhere to live. I refer you back to the last paragraph.

So I ask again, what wonderful ideas are there to stop people becoming homeless?

I Know plenty of people that work and get housing benefit, why can't you understand that!

Not all people who get HB are unemployed

sieglinde Oh well that's ok then, there's worse situations out there, so that's what we as a society should aim for.

Would you put a disabled person in the situation you lived in? Or children? Because these are some of the people reliant on housing benefit.

Constance wearing, that is part of the problem. if we did not have to house people from other countries, then there would be more social housing for the indigenous population. i don't blame people for being unhappy about it.

Hi, Kaloki. No, not saying it should be an aim, but shouldn't people aim at sonething better for themselves? I mean, I don't live like that now.

Clearly the disabled wouldn't be able to manage in any old house, we can all see that, but look at it from a different viewpoint; what about the disabled people in full-time employment paying tax to support the other disabled in what may be the same or even preferential circumstances? I have for instance a friend with MS who is still in full-time work... she can't afford to convert her house very much and lives in dread of getting worse, as of course she must. If she was paying less tax perhaps she could take care of herself better??? And she has children too.

As for children, as everyone has known for over a century the difficulty is that you can't easily cure child poverty by giving money to their parents, in any form.

If the housing authority rates are set at £1,000 a month then the rents will rise to £1,000 a month.
If they are reduced to £500 a month then they will reduce to £500.
I am sorry you are homeless but giving you more tax payers money to give to landlords that are hooving up property that should be being bought by people as homes rather than investments to top up the already wealthy is causing the tax payers to be priced out by their own hard earned cash, do you not see that is a problem ?
I appreciate you are just looking for a roof over your head I really do but there is a bigger issue here and it needs resolving.

Yes but on a Tuesday I am poor by Wednesday I am not so could it be a mid week cull please ?

I'm not saying it's right or wrong...just trying to explain why people vote Conservative here. Others said that working class people don't tend to do that, but ime they do. And I do think it's strange because out of Labour and Conservative, the Tories are least likely to level society out.

Of course I can see it's a problem, but with no safety net in place then all that is going to happen is people stuck in a homeless trap.

Like Labour did, either

Part of the problem is in pigeonholing people as 'poor' or 'rich', 'working class' or 'middle class' in the first place.

I have been ridiculously poor at some phases in my life. There were certainly times, not only as students but during the early years of work on low pay that we never turned the central heating on (hell, we lived in rented flats that HAD no central heating!). Beans on toast was the order of the day for dinner, and I remember climbing straight into bed after a days work because it was the warmest place!

But my life isn't like that now, due to a number of factors - yes, of course there is sheer chance, that I wasn't born with a disability or run over by a bus at 18 and rendered incapable of work. But actually the biggest factors are things we are in control of. Such as choosing whether to study hard or piss about. Choosing whether to get a Saturday job at 15 or stay in bed all day. Choosing to put off having children until we'd been working a fair number of years. Being prepared to move away from my home town to get work and afford to live, rather than believing I had some god-given entitlement to live within a 5 mile radius of where I was raised.

I wasn't born with any advantages (other than being born in the Western world, which globally makes pretty much every MNetter comparatively well off). I went to a pretty shitty school. My parents weren't well off. I've never had handouts.

So - would I count as rich or poor?

No party is saying their will be no safety net but certainly for some working people their financial situation can be worse than those not in work and their housing worse and that is the problem we need to address. It's not quite nasty enough yet to be sufficient an encouragement for those that could work to work.

Sieglind You friends condition could degenerate to the point where she can't work and neither could her partner who would have to look after her. I hope not,but it could. That is the point at which I would expect the state to guarantee her decent housing and enough benefits for her to live a dignified life. It is also the reason why the welfare state needs defending against the holier than thou begrudge it brigade.