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?

standupandbecounted Well yes you should have picked a bloke who didn't piss off, i'm surprised you don't agree it can't be a great situation to find yourself in.

PMSL at this prejudiced bullshit myself. When the public sector job cull sets in people will realise benefits are no bed of roses and the stigma stinks.

Mamatomany please tell me how you can tell...

Lol well I guess you look at his track record and hope for the best, there's no magic formula is there.

He should be paying for his children though and we need the USA model of jailing people for non payment.

Sick of arguing with bigots. Leaves the pointless bunfight...

KalokiMallow You will live where you live now, you'll just pay less for it or rather the tax payer will. It's hard to get somebody out of a property, takes months and costs a fortune. The landlords will not go through that process for £12 a week when the market is falling and they could end up in negative equity or with an empty property.

Am sure that working people can afford some of the homes that people on HB live in. Most people on HB have small houses, flats, no garden and tiny rooms. My kitchen is the size of a match box and my back yard is a tiny corridor , not big enuf to swing a gerbal, and i have one DS still living at home.

It's easy IMO to juggle 4 children's needs and I don't see how my parenting caused autism? For us it is that simple. For toehrs maybe less so of course but if I were in work I would be juggling far mroe children, it's the nature of what I do. DS3 is nto disadvanatged by anything that happens here but simple reality- if you can barely talk or struggle to make contact with relaity then you are absolutely disadvanaged in everything. Actually think my children are advantaged by being part of a family that fgights every step for independence and for them. But that cannot affect the basic ASD.

The MH thing is interesting: know through old work of a few people who gave up work for a while and were back well within weeks; DH otoh when he ahd MH issues years ago worked all the way through and whilst it did minimise dependency it also emant that the illness (in GP's opinion) lasted far longer, he survived a suicide attempt that would have created a widow and fatherless chidlren and put a huge strain on the amrriage that in retrospect I have no idea how we survived- quite possibly I should have left at the time. I am not sure at all that making short term support for those with MH issues will not cause a greater percentage of people with those health problems to need far longer input, both from benefits and health.

I can claim for a 2 bedroom property (I have 2 kids) is 126.92 per week.

Must depend on where you live, here it is £144.

Well you must be a saint SMA because my husband and i find it near impossible to have enough hours in the day to juggle work commitments, 4 children and the home.

'Her first duty to her children is not to get them cared for at the expense of the state - her first duty is to make better choices about when, and with who she procreates with in the first place. Nothing pre-ordains their chances in life more than that. Nothing.

'

Education has value; it cannot work miracles. It cannot oversome disability, illness, widowhood for example.

I have a good aprt of my MA covered now: I am far from uneducated. It gives me mroe options long term but they still take time- there's no other way. DH is an outstanding man with the work ethic of an ox who puts in 15 hour days making sure that he combines the study he needs to complete with building his business, but again it takes time. When your industry moves out wholesale you retrain: retraining is time consuming.

I believe I amde a good choice of DH and that we have done everything possible to mitgate difficult times. long term (by mid 2012) we should be independent agin; far better that than a long term claim.

mamatoMany- no, just someone who happens to get a buzz from it. And has a DH who does everything he can to help.

But then I was a Hometsart manager before I becmae a student then a carer; would be pretty bad if I hadn;t been able to cope in truth. I spent enough time telling others how to do it.

It took me three years of looking to find a private rental that would a) accept LHA and b) be within the price range for LHA.

We found one, went for it all guns blazing - it was absolutely appalling. It was so filthy that I actually got seriously ill because of it. I had to totally gut the place, all flooring, all curtains (which were literally rags), wallpaper falling off.

the agent tried to put me off telling me it was (his word) 'horrible'. He wasn't lying - it was disgusting.

I have been subject to a heck of a lot of comments to the effect that we shouldn't be able to live here, because it's a nice area. Had these people seen what we had to cope with, they would have run really fast and done their utmost not to live here.

Yes we now have a nice flat. But the cost, the work involved, the effort involved to make it habitable was extreme. Thankfully, the rent only went up as we moved in and has stayed the same for a couple of years.

I'm scared when it goes up again we'll have to move - and won't find anywhere near this price, because there isn't anything below LHA. I have no idea where they get the 50% figure from, it's BS as far as I can see.

I can cope with a slight cut - I'll have to top up a few quid a month probably. There's no alternative though, this is the cheapest place we've ever seen! So if the rent goes up we're stuffed, it'll have to be a 1 bed flat instead of two I guess.

You do a good job Riv, you seriously do. And I am well aware that if I ahd any more the house of cards would collapse which is a major reason why we would not have any further children 9apart from the genetics)

Dh has been given a bursary atm allowing ds4 to go to a CM twice a week for 3 hours a time- which is when I sleep. So whilst I am still shattered, it's not like it used to be thank goodness.

"it is everyone's interests to complete their education and look for interesting work, not just the middle classes"

Yes, it is.

But try telling that to a child who's left primary school unable to read and write, has a chaotic home life, parents who are unable/unwilling to support him or her educationally, and has to be educated alongside 29 other disadvantaged children by exhausted and demoralised teachers.

"You wonder why mental health issues are spiralling out of control? It's because sometimes however hard you try to "take responsibility" for your life, your future, and your children"

I agree with you toxickitten. We have the highest transport, housing and childcare costs in Europe, and there are a lot of people here who work their arses off and struggle to get by. I totally understand why people become demoralised and just give up.

No, I understand that Cleo and I am not some heartless person who thinks children should be made to sudder for the mistakes/fecklessness of their parents. But unfortunately, until we as a society stop enabling those very people to continue doing as they are doing, there will always be those children in those circumstances.

And Riven, I don't always agree with everything you say, but re: the contract - BRING IT ON.

Perhaps men will be a little bit more responsible with their birth control when they realise they cannot just walk away from the financial responsibility once they get bored. But women have a part to play in this as well. In this day and age they are not all poor innocents who got taken advantage of either.

You've obviously reached your point of saturation at 4 SMA, I think I reached mine at 3 and a half but nevermind lol
You must as a Homestart manager have seen people for whom two was too many and in all honesty three was beyond them, but they have 4 children, take no pleasure in raising them and every day is just to get through. I know I have in my own family

I don't give a crap about the parents and the shitty decisions some people make regarding their relationships and their jobs.

What I do care about is the children. Every child deserves a decent home.

The contract used to be called marriage, I don't care what people want to call it but yes there should be some sort of commitment to the children. My brothers ex knew all along she wouldn't be staying with him and refused to put him on the birth certificates, as it happens I don't think she was wrong to get rid of him but he should be held to account for the children.

Every child deserves a decent home.

True but what do you do when what's standing in the way of that is the parents ?

we have to do our best mamtomany.

That's all we (society and state) can do.

Perhaps instead of a parenting "contract" we should just adopt what is already done quite effectively in other countries e.g. in America avoiding their child maintenance isn't feasible - it's taken much more efficiently at source in a similar way to tax and if they still don't meet the obligation to provide for any children it's treated in the same way as tax evasion i.e. much more severely. I've even known cases where men have been handed prison sentances due to their inability to provide for their children - of course this isn't an option for most (wouldn't want it to be - they aren't going to pay up if they're in jail are they!) but I think the last one I saw in the newspapers was a guy who'd had literally 8 or 9 children with different women and didn't pay a penny to any of the mothers supporting them. it wasn't that long ago but i forget which state it was.

I wish people on here (not you Riven) would stop using disablity as an excuse for not working.

Lots of disabled people work.