To think that private sector landlords should not be allowed to charge exhorbitant rents to those on benefits

[therehastobemore]

Just watching the news about benefit caps and i have to voice this.

The cost of private rental in this area is astronomical. FWIW we don't rent we own our house but we are struggling and have considered selling up and renting but couldn't afford the rental. I am not talking about our situation here.

My husband is a builder and the other week went to price a job for a landlord, he wanted his house "toshed over" and brought up to standard as cheaply as possible. His long term tennant was moving out. Single mother with six children, she was on benefits (this is not an assumption, my husband chatted to her). DP said the place was in a poor state or repair and that no way would he want to pay the £900, yes, £900 a month that this woman was being charged. This woman said she struggled to get the landlord to make repairs. I have been in that situation years back and the rental is always over and above what woudl be charged otherwise.

The point being that no way could this land lord have rented this out to folk who were paying out of their own pockets, but because this woman was on benefits and needed somewhere to live he could pretty much charge what he liked so long as a minimum standard is met.

This is a massive drain on the tax payer. Inscrupulous landlords charging maximum rents for properties and the tax payer is paying for it. Never mind that people on benefits through no fault of their own are having to live in substandard conditions.

Just how much is being payed out in housing benefits where the properties are not worth the rent that is being paid???

Heswall, Our council wont pay HB if you are a direct relative of the LL, so if it's the same, that's benefit fraud as well as immoral imo.

Oakmaiden that is how HB is worked out where I live. I am entitled to 2 bedrooms (me and 2 sons) The 'average' rent for a 2bed house here is £184 per week, which is how much I get.

From what I understand the HB cap will be a national cap (I don't know the amount though) But if, for example, it was £100 per week, I would have to make up the shortfall, or move to a cheaper area.

and with the LA sign the tennancy agreement to act as gaurntor that the tennat won't do a runner or trash the place. Will the LA pay the rent to the landlord every month or would that be a breach of the human rights of the tennant [rollseyes]

The cap will just segregate people into ghettos of very poor/poor/working poor/affluent/doing alright/and downright rich.

Social mobility at work in Britain in 2012.

Different surnames littlemisssarcastic, no doubt it is fraud but it happened and they got away with it.
Hubby and I just tried to calculate exactly how much it all added up to over the 15 year period, about £170k all in we think.
One case. Cant believe it's not been done before or again.

Can anyone tell me, when these new rules come in, if a family has to drastically downsize to be able to afford somewhere to live, will HB pay their rent, even if the smaller property they have moved to is too small for their family??

A friend of mine told me that unless you are renting what's deemed as an appropriate size property for your family, that HB can refuse to pay. I'm sure this can't be true, but can anyone confirm that this is rubbish please?

Sadly, I can't believe it's an isolated case either Heswall.

yabu, I work in a low paid job area and know plenty of people who private rent, it's cost them a fortune and the places are awful. They have to put up with music blaring night and day and the smell of canabis around them all the time. One friend rent is 800.00 per month then 132.00 council tax, plus gas, electric etc. She is on minium wage as is her partner. No children, no tax credits.

why should rent only be capped for people on benefits, why not her, she can bearly afford to eat. Why is she not as important.

How about exorbitant rent should not be expected from anyone, let alone if they are on benefits!!

How about it being fair rent for all?

^this

The old rent tribunals actually put a cap on what landlords could charge.

Well I have never heard that littlemisssarcastic and hope it isn't true My friend lived in a house that was smaller than is deemed appropriate until she got a HA house last year, and it was payed for by HB.

OP where are you based? £900 is far from a lot to charge for a property that can house 7 people in many parts of the country.

gaelicsheep, so you are saying that the landlords should be paid the amount a tenant would pay in social housing? Or tht they should get the elevated price because they are providing a service?

Not too many years ago, the rents in my area were around £95 per week and HB was around £75, so the tenant had to make up the difference.

Over the last few years HB cap in the area has gone up to £125, while the rent is only £100 ish.

So if they make a national cap, in the north does that mean that the cap will shoot up vastly here to cover the average rents in London as an example?

Therefore would the average rent go up by £80 p/wk, thus putting a large amount of the money saved from the clutches of grasping LLs in the south into the hands of grasping LLs in the north?

Winkly, im in the south east, and it was a three bedroom property apparently

10 years ago I was on min wage paying £625pcm for a 1bed flat with exP in a highly unpopular and therefore relatively cheap part of south east London. That was a private rental.

I'm saying there should be a flat rate payable for housing and landlords like it or bugger off.

Mortgage payments on 3 bed places in the south east I've been looking at start at £1100pcm. £900 rent is a bargain, more than fair.

Most of the distortion in the housing / housing benefit market dates from around 2002 / 2003, and derives from the Blair / Brown committment to eliminate child poverty.

Just as relaxing the rules on DLA enabled them to keep the unemployment figures down by allowing people to migrate from "jobless" to "sickness", so relaxing scrutiny of housing benefit allowed notional income of families on benefit to rise towards the median income (because HB was counted as part of their income, so the higher the better in terms of setting family income!)

In GB's defence, back then they genuinely believed that they had eliminated "boom & bust", so that this kind of fiscal gerry-mandering was economically sustainable. Not dishonest, but very stupid!

galicsheep :D i like your thinking in that case

But not when the place is falling down around the tennants ears it isn't. No one who had to fork out their own money would pay that for hat property, they would simply take their business elsewhere

I'm not sure oreo or if the £100 (as an example) would be the highest they could pay in London but Manchester, for example, would still be capped at £85 (again an example).

As I understood it, the £100 would be the cap everywhere, but all that would do is force rents up in cheaper areas.

I hope I have misunderstood

We all know that housing benefit is a complete mess.

The highest rents are obviously in the South East but to be honest £900 a month for a house which is suitable for 7 people doesn't sound that bad. Even in my area which has extremely low house prices, that wouldn't be overly high.

The other thing to remember is that Landlords do not make that £900 every month. It never ceases to amaze me how many people think that landlords are just evil sharks who feed off the misery of others.

If you've ever tried to be a landlord then you'll realise it's far from easy and very risky. If you have to pay a buy to let mortgage then it's even harder and I suspect most will make nothing on the actual rent and be at the mercy of house prices to realise a long term investment.

Most landlords don't even like renting to social tenants. The risk is simply too great that they'll trash the place or the rent won't get paid.

So to start somehow 'banning' landlords charging 'exhobitant' rates will simply mean even LESS choice for tenants.

Housing benefit is capped and paid generally below market rent. This is why a lot of private tenants on housing benefit struggle to get landlords to make repairs as LL isn't necessarily making any money out of the property.

Most private landlords who rent to local authority tenants have been forced to sign up to a deal which means their property can be purchased either by the tenant under right to buy or by the local authority at either a set value or one calculated to be 75% below market value. Another reason local authority tenants renting from private landlords end up in slum conditions as private landlord couldn't afford or justify making repairs.

For a private landlord to rent under this scheme run by every council in the country is essentially only done if they have a semi derelict property or desperation if they cannot get a private tenant.

Many councils in London actively target landlords by watching how long properties are advertised with estate agents and if they are empty and if more than 3 months pass, they contact the owner and apply pressure on them to enter their very unfair scheme (unfair to everyone) by saying they will take over the property and forcibly move tenants in.

This whole situation is essentially an exceptionally poor deal for everyone. The landlord doesn't get market rent (or potentially price!) for property, the tenant ends up living in substandard conditions and the tax payer pays for a shit deal nobody is happy with.

It's not down to lack of local authority or other housing stock or local authority funding but down to sheer incompetent mismanagement of local authority housing stock on a nationwide scale done because of "job for life" jobsworths employed by councils who appear to be accountable to no one.

Erm you've obviously not seen the state of rental properties low earners have to live in, and get stuck in because they can't afford a month's rent and 6 weeks deposit to move. All renting is expensive, the landlords are in it for profit. It's lack of decent affordable housing that needs to be addressed, not people trying to cover a mortgage and have a bit left over.