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?

That's shite santasmooningarse. They (DSS) seem to penalise you for trying improve your situation.A friend of mine was doing some temporary street cleaning/dustman shifts for an agency.(all allowed as long as you do below 16 hours,what you earn just gets deducted from your JSA)Theres a lot of form filling and administration involved and it got messed up and his benefit stopped.It was corrected but not before he had one pissed off landlord.They seem to muck up like this all the time.

He has learning disability so 'bettering himself' (i bloody hate that phrase)by doing a course is out of the question. The benefit system does not seem to be flexible enough to allow temporary working .If you get more than 16 hours work you have to sign off and it can take 6 weeks to reinstate benefit.All a shame because temporary work can be your foot in the door to a permanent job.

I don't think people seem to realise how hard it is to get out of the benefit trap. All this stereotyping and snobbery.

Well the obvious difference between people like Philip Green indulging in legal tax avoidance, and poor/benefit dependent people manipulating their situation to get the best from it financially, and maybe doing some cash in hand work on the side, is that one costs the taxpayer/state money and the other doesn't. Anyone wealthy enough to be taking financial advice to legally avoid tax tends to pay a damn sight more into the system than they take out, and a (long term) benefit dependent person (esp. one working cash in hand) generally does the opposite. I'm not making a value judgement - just pointing out the obvious.

To say that Philip Green's legally avoided tax on his foreign wife's dividends has 'cost' the treasury x million a year or whatever is just not true. It just hasn't benefitted from having it - that's all.

That is why simplifying hmrc and increasing vat would work very well. Hmrc costs something in the region of 8bn every year whereas vat is relatively cheap to collect.

It would ensure that what the non doom super rich spend would be taxed as well as taking from the cash in hand brigade.

For once it would be beneficial to middle England who always miss out.

If everybody paid a flat 20% on everything they earned and vat was increased to about 35% I think we'd be better off as a country almost instantly. As tax receipts increase we could reduce vat to a more manageable level to encourage tourists and shoppers.

Move over George Osborne I've just solved a fair few of your problems in one hit.

I'm on a roll now: we could get rid of the stupid fuel escalator which would make petrol and diesel cheaper. That would boost the economy greatly.

It would be so good we'd have to keep an eye on inflation with higher interest rates.

Wasn't talking about cash in hand was talking about permitted work which he declared to the jobcentre.I was mking the point that they should be more flexible with regards to temporary work as there are more temporary positions than permanent ones at the moment.The system should sign people off and sign people back on again more quicky to make it easier to take succession of very short term jobs.This would save money on the benefit bill and would be experience for the claimant.Experience which would make it more likely to get permenant work in future.

Surely higher VAT would mean those on lower incomes would not be able to afford a lot of things. They may not buy a lot on an individual basis but there are a lot of them.It sounds damaging to me.Driving away shopping tourists in theshort term could have a knock on effect on so many other businesses.I'm from Cornwall where the local economy is heavily dependent on tourism.Sounds scary.

The cash you earn from permitted work gets deducted from your benefit.So there is actually no short term incentive to do it.

Cetainly agree on that point standup. The system should be simplified and more transparent allowing people to take casual or temporary work more easily.

To say that Philip Green's legally avoided tax on his foreign wife's dividends has 'cost' the treasury x million a year or whatever is just not true. It just hasn't benefitted from having it - that's all.

benefits are being cut back to the maximum possible(and they are doing it to the disabled claimants too not just the ones who-deserve -it) Funny,but when the middle classes staert to feel the pain and the scapegoats can't be punished any further ,less people will be sympathetic to that view.All the shop assistants on the minimum wage who are having their low incomes topped up with HB paid for by the squeezed middle while he rakes in more money than he could ever spend.

Shop assistants HE employs. Topped up by YOUR taxes.

Yes I see your point but as always there is a delicate balance that needs to be found. Penalising the super-rich to heavily will always drive them and their businesses elsewhere, which ulitmately is worse for the economy and worse for jobs. There is no easy answer - that's why we spend so many hours arguing about it!

I understand that, but suspect the balance is tipped in their favour considering they have more power.

Why should the very rich pay for YOUR middle class child benefits, services, childrens university education? This MY taxes YOUR whatever bollocks...

Well, standup, most of them aren't doing so.

I won't be getting any of the above from the middle of next year. Unless 'services' just means the NHS....and the ungritted road by my door. Our public library is closing. My children are homeschooled, and while in e.g. Canada you get a kind of tax-back refund on that, you don't here. And you don't on schoolfees, either, unlike in Australia, where indy schools get a subsidy and fees are tax deductible.

So I can't see that the middle classes have been unduly fatted here, I'm afraid.

None of you arguing for 'I want to keep my taxes' seem to understand what happens in any society. What happens is that collective protection and benefits allow people to develop slight advantages and disadvantages over one another. What happens then is that some who gain advantages start to assume that their advantages are solely from personal effort/genetic advantage etc rather than a) being only possible because of collective support and b) some luck/statistical probablity. Those people then are faced with the decision to burn up more than their fair share of resources (thus destabilising the availability of resources for the shared and collective support that allowed them to accellerate in the first place) which means that the inevitible consequence is reduced resources FOR ALL. ('the tragedy of the commons') which is why unchecked economic activity will destroy everything for everyone (see Haiti for a real world example, or Southern Nigeria for a partial example (some increased stability is coming in which is very negative for Shell who need instabillity and unregulated employment markets to make the most profits).

What governments do is to protect the whole game (if you like, use monopoly - if immediately you own a property you can charge infinite rents without any salaries being paid out, the game would end very quickly with on super dominant person and other players with no resources, no income who are completely disenfranchised). Conservative governments traditionally see 'protecting the whole game' as 'allowing those with more resources to suck more resources out of the game, so that eventually there are fewer resources for everyone including the wealthy.

Inheritance is merely a way of ensuring that this damaged game extends over generations rather than starting again more equally. WE are facing a world situation where each new area for new reources is bumping into the last and the game will eventually fall apart - we aree seeing some of that happen already in the disparity of incomes - when that magnified to 'no food' versus 'everything yu could want' governments will not be able to protect the game except by killing the poor to keep them out of it and to protect reources for those wealthy left - but they too will subdivide into those who can protect their access to resources and those who can't...

Governments need to have balls to resist businesses because they act as irrespopnsible giant collective citizens - many companies are bigger economically than whole countries.

sieglind are you also immune from crime?....

Most insightful post on mumsnet so far heroine, apart from thesecondcoming of course.

Great post heroine

People on benefits are not the real problem. I mean by all means don't pay out excessive amounts and incentivise work, but I really think they are the scapegoats...

great post heroine...
where is everyone else today...or have they nothing to say in the face of common sense...
personally we get tax credits to top up dps salary. i would like to work,i need to work.
there are no jobs though,and any there are are temporary-so, i am applying for 'the census' it'll pay me say £150 a week for ten weeks, next year,my tax credits will reflect that,so then even though the job doesn't exist next year, i will 'lose' £1500 off tax credits,or £125 a month. Which is a lot when you are living off very little. I am going for it anyway though as i need a washing machine and we have a leak in the roof so will have to just worry about that shortfall next year.
can you see why there are people staying on benefits,I also looked at ft jobs,i'd have been working full time for an extra £150 a month,not inc at work costs and with putting both kids in nursery etc.
dp and i are not lazy,nor are we unintelligent,i have paid in,and will pay in again,i am not going to work full time for a fiver a day,when my bus fare would be £4 a day coming from that.

I think most have had their ant-benefits dig and really don't have much else to say on the matter.