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?

Tax is evil it does terrible things like fund schools and the NHS

I find that shocking Xenia. I am a proud taxpayer and it would never enter my head to try and minimise my tax obligations.

me either, it seems the rich (and some would say 'the poor') probably pay roughly the same amount of tax-although it's obviously proportionately bigger on a 20k salary than it is on a 90k one

ISAs and pensions are ways of minimising the amount of tax one pays.

If you do not compel big business to pay taxes and treat workers fairly, it will not.

That is capitalism.

But I guess Sting was right. History will teach us nothing.

We're 170 years post-Industrial age and we've obviously learned nothing.

That's what's so disappointing, that all these years along, we're still slaves to human nature, dog eat dog, better you than me, pull up the ladder, I'm Alright, Jack, deserving v. undeserving poor.

What a black, horrible, scourge on humanity. How sickening and sad.

I'd like to think better, of people I meet.

We're skint taxpayers, too. We live in council/HA housing (there's no more council here, it's all been spun off to HA). Our neighbours are a mix of working poor and unemployed, for various reasons, although I've noticed as time goes on, we're getting more and more who fell on hard times and/or working poor like us.

It wouldn't cross my head to begrudge someone a roof over their heads.

It's not really my business whether they are employed or not, and as long as they don't blast loud music or have loud parties, I don't care.

Most of the people I notice begrudging don't even have to live here or in the likes of here, anyhow, so I don't see why they're so het up.

FFS.

Don't know whether they mentally calculate, but I think an awful lot of people take a tiny bit of (misleading) information and make massive assumptions.

Like the stories of people on HB benefit living in mansions costing 100k a year. A few do, which is utterly immoral, but of course most don't. Or on the other side of the coin, some people think if you earn over a certain amount you must be loaded. Erm... Not If you live in the south east, have to pay child care and earn just to much to qualify for any support. It's perfectly possible to be a skint, hard working tax payer.

I blame shitty sensationalist reporting. Rags like The daily mail and the telegraph. But then people keep reading these things, so what can you do? If there wasn't a market for them, they'd disappear.

Too much.

Blimey, spelling goes up the creek when I'm on hols

There are large numbers of people who seem to be unaware of how certain sections of the media are trying to manipulate their opinions.

   [frightened emoticon]

Totally agree. As a teacher I am horrified by the number of pupils whose family newspaper is the sun. With a dollop of the express and mail.
But then a friend of mine teaches in a posh academy/ private school, and the most well read paper in the 6 th form common room is the telegraph.

So as I say, what can you do? I think a lot of people are totally ripe for manipulation, its almost as though they WANT affirmation of a really skewed viewpoint, then they are justified in jumping up and down and banging their fist on the table.

i agree with you Violet,my parents and a lot of their generation read the Mail\the Express (when i was a kid they read the Guardian so i don't know what happened there FFS!) they actually believe it,despite the fact that they are educated and intelligent. They don't believe that a newspaper would have 'an agenda' they don't believe that they are 'allowed' to print stuff that isn't true. I went through an issue once with dd1 and a highlighter pen and we circled all the 'hate' articles - asylum\single parents\immigrants\benefits the usual and she was gobsmacked.
the fact that Murdoch 'called' the election (before it took place) seems to have no bearing on some people,as the (billionaire)owner of the 2 biggest circulation newspapers he said 'we're supporting the torys' and that was that. everyone who reads the sun or the times was drip fed info about how labour had fucked it up...and still people don't see it because it's 'in the paper' [madly frustrated emoticon!]

Out of curiosity which newspaper prints only the truth without any agenda or bias?

Certainly not the Guardian! As far as blatant bias goes it's up there with the Mail. Just because it's read by a more intellectual audience doesn't make it beyond spreading political propaganda.

none beijingaling (and i worked for the Guardian for 7 years) what i do know is the agenda of some is thoroughly nasty and hateful. People like John Pilger seem to be on the honest side of woolly imo HTH.

I think none too beijingaling.

None. Some are worse than others, but all have a bias

What do you think about that new paper "i"? It is tabloid size but not like the daily mail etc in content. It doesn't seem to encourage hate of people, working or not, who get housing benefit etc. like some of the others.(I stopped buying the guardian when they recommended vote lib-dem. (plus it is too big and long)). Also, what about the Mirror?

That's exactly it though. I agree that the mail can be particularly nasty when it comes to playing on the readerships heartstrings.

Everyone reads the paper that fits in best with their view of the world. Some are hateful papers/views but there are some pretty hateful people out there who don't read papers or who read the same papers as you or I. Reading a different paper doesn't make you stupid or hateful though.

IMO this is the problem with an education system that has removed the (possibly science based) questioning that I think should be fundamental. Even though we had done some of it at school it wasnt until I started studying a uni degree that we really looked at reading critically. I still read the same paper as before but in a very different way.

Sorry - total thread highjack. I do think everyone here is fascinating to "talk" to even if I don't agree!

Partly - but the home is a far bigger influence than what goes on in formal education. If parents encourage critical thinking and discussion from an early age, and are seen to question things themselves (whether its what they read in the paper over the breakfast table, or what they see on TV in the evening) rather than blindly soak things up - that counts for a lot more than what can happen in schools/colleges.

I teach some very bright students, who are well versed in how to read texts critically, and its still frightening to see the bigoted views they sometimes express. At the end of the day, what goes on in the home (or what doesn't go on) is the biggest influence

Oh yes I wasn't saying reading certain papers makes you
stupid or hateful. But the papers do write misinformation and bias, so people end up misinformed. Some people are already hateful, and newspapers and radio 'phone ins etc. serve to back up their mistaken beliefs. Don't really think it is hi jacking thread is it? As it is the media and David Cameron, Nick Clegg, and their followers of same political party and persuasion using the media to spread the sort of statements example in the OP of the thread.

I think that (imvho) benefits were quite generous 25 years ago. I believe (based on people who left college with me) that then you could rent a flat in Westbourne Grove (nearish Notting Hill), get the dole (what ever it was then), and still get a full time job for cash, working for work experience, to get (in time) a real job, in a difficult area, like art, publishing, etc.

I think that some people have no idea how much things have changed, esp in the last 3 years of Labour, when they toughened up qualification for Income Support. They gradually reduced the age of the child at which the mother must be ready for work.

My dh was talking to a Colonel/Army type at the start of the Labour Govt, and the Army type was telling him that the army were feeling quite happy because they were going to get the funding they need, and that the new govt were committed to lowering the benefits bill by being more strict, which they did. The interesting thing he said was that ONLY A LABOUR GOVT could do such a thing as 'the people' wouldn't stomach such a cut from the Tories.

I think I am agreeing with the general ignorance of how things really are, not how the Mail, or anyone else, says they are. My dh has long been of the opinion that if you are on bad times in this country you get taken care of. 'Even under the Conservatives', says he. Gah. He is talking about 25 years ago.

I read the Guardian online, but the best bits are the comments, where, like Mumsnet, someone will call bs, if it is wrong.

I don't know why Riven was not given some sort of informal consultation role by Dave. I really don't.

No, its definitely no hijacking the thread. The media is a big influential factor, so this is highly relevant. Its also good to see the debate move forward, as it gets so tedious when it just becomes a shouting match between people who can't think more intelligently than 'rich versus poor'

not hijacking

Glad it wasn't a hijack! :)

To clarify I know no one was saying that reading the mail made you stupid but I do have the impression (sorry if it's wrong) that some people think that if you do agree with cuts or you think unfettered immigration is a bad thing or (as a thread said the other day) if you vote Tory and aren't rich you must be thick.

Violethill you are right that critical thinking should be taught at home even more than school. As it is obvious that many people dont learn this at home though don't you think that it is important that it is taught at school? Otherwise how will the children's children learn?

I remember as a child we had dinner and breakfast together every day (not always Dad as he worked long hours). The TV was never on during meals unless we got take away - prob once a month! We talked about things, discussed news and our lives. I'm not trying to sound painfully precious but I was soo shocked with my DH (who is as conservative - in a traditional not political sense - as I am) when he didn't see this as normal for his DCs. There is no discussion of current events or politics or anything like that. My DCs are smart but anytime I do bring something newsy up I'm looked at like a boring freak!