Who really gets £500+ weekly state benefits?

[vivizone]

I find this shit so hard to believe. Reading the media, you would think this was a common figure on life on benefits.

Yesterday and today's Metro newspaper - people writing in saying they agree with the cap of £500 and why should people be sat on their arse and be rewarded by £500 per week. . Why should they earn £200 per week working and people are getting £500 a week doing nothing.

Seriously, who gets this £500 per week that is being peddled out of the media? I spent 7 months out of work after redundancy and I could not live on the pittance I received for me and my children. I do not know how people do it. I really don't. I had a decent redundancy package and that was the only way I could make it.

How many people do you know (forget the newspaper stories) that are RECEIVING £500 or more every week? I thought so.

How come if life is/was that cushy on benefits, not enough people are/were packing in their jobs to join a life of riley?

We have been had. Life on benefits is HARD and DEMORALISING. I have tried it and I can tell you you get PEANUTS.

The reason why stories run on people living in million dollar homes/getting thousands a week in benefits is because it is RARE. It is SO rare, that it gets reported on.

I earn £9k and I don't get free school meals. Or housing benefit or council tax benefit. Just working and childcare tax credits. I don't think I'll be much better off when DD starts school as after school club and school dinners will wipe out most of my expenses.

But I am studying via the OU so I can hopefully earn more (even part-time) in a couple of years.

I'm sure they are hoping they will eventually profit from them, but they might not. That's how investments work. BTL landlords face losing money if house prices come down.

So what if they're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Why should they? Being a landlord is a lot of responsibility, it take time and it takes money. They deserve to be paid for the service they provide. It's not their fault that someone else can't afford market rate rent without HB.

HB/LHA is paid to the claimant. For their housing costs. It rarely gets paid directly to the LL, and it's not the landlords fault that their tenants have to house themselves on taxpayers money, or that the government hasn't provided enough social housing.

Outraged, that is not the point, the point is that that money isn't in the benefit claimants hands as is often implied.

One of the reasons London prices are so high is the subsidies given. End the subsidies and maybe housing will become more affordable for people wanting to live in the houses not people out to make a quick buck at the taxpayer's expense.

They can get their 'reward' when they sell their 'asset'.
Housing should not be a money earner. It should be a right to have a roof over your head. People profiteering grossly from that is just wrong.

"Being a LL takes time and money" .

Not if you were my ex LL it didn't, he never did any repairs and I moved out when the house basically became uninhabitable. I won't even begin to go n about the weeks n a freezing house with no heating which worked because he had not got round to sorting out repairs.

I have no doubt there are excellent LL out there but some are also right money grabbing bastards.

Neither is the money that I get in my salary after I have paid income tax, national insurance, housing costs and utilities, but it still comes in and goes out of my bank account. Exactly the same as housing benefit does for people that claim it.

Everyone has to pay to live, I don't really see what your point is. The vast majority of us are able to see that most benefit money ends up being spent on essentials like rent, just the same as people's salaries do.

All the good buy to let LLs are Mumsnetters!

My experience of private renting [admittedly a long time ago] was that my LL practically ignored his property/my home.

Broken boiler for three weeks anyone?

Oh and no my LL wasn't doing me any sort of favour in 'letting' me live in his property, I was paying to live there.

Jake, there are bad tenants and bad landlords. It works both ways. You can't assume everyone in either of the categories is bad just because of a few.

Glitter, what about paying the LL for being on call to sort out problems and arrange repairs? Do they not deserve to be paid for that work? And what about if their investment fails and they don't get the reward at the end? Is that just tough shit because they shouldn't have had the cheek to try and provide for their own futures?

Nora, my sister was here with me earlier and we were discussing this very subject and she's happy for me to post.

For what its worth she can see the system is barmy. Her DH wants to work but they cant afford the childcare. Dsis wants to find a more challenging job with more hours but sadly the financial insentive isnt just isnt there. As a result they feel stuck in a career rutt, whilst myself and DP feel totally disheartened.

outraged, often the implication is that benefit claimants have £500 notes to splash about town every week.

Ha ha at LLs being 'on call' to sort out problems!

I realise the conversation has moved along, but has anyone seen this today?

Why 2013 will be a boom year for bailiffs and slum landlords

"This month we just slipped back 46 years, to before Ken Loach's Cathy Come Home shocked the nation on the plight of homeless families. His film ? about a family falling into ever worse housing, from caravan to hostel, until their children are taken into care ? launched a change in the law that entered the national state of mind. From then on, the welfare state would house the vulnerable with nowhere else to go. Local authorities were given a legal obligation to take families in and find them social housing locally at an affordable rent. No longer.

"As of this month, the government has quietly changed the law. All a council need do is find a private landlord anywhere with a one-year lease, and wash their hands of them thereafter. Families can be housed anywhere with an "affordable" rent, hundreds of miles away in districts where rents are cheap because jobs are non-existent. Wrench children out of schools, parents from their jobs, take families away from where they lived for generations without the means to pay train fares for visits home ? all this breaks the social contract on housing. So do the deep cuts in housing benefit: this week, regulations were laid that will set off a catastrophic and chaotic exodus in April."

"The government likes to quote bizarre cases of families housed in £100,000 a year mansions: it emerges that there were just five of these temporary oddities."

I am horrified.

I am a tenant but i dont think LL are to blame TBH. they still have mortgages to pay and the rent they charge has to cover that aswell as the expense incurred in maintaining a property. it's the high cost of property that is the problem. alot of people who bought BTL properties ten years ago with the hope of making a profit would not be able to sell for a profit now. i know that ten years isn't very long in investment terms but now is when people need to release their money as things are so bad. and if property prices should be lower then these people (and all other families who are paying mortgages) will lose money. it's a really hard one to fix without alot of people suffering.

i'm happy to be corrected about any of the above as i know very little about the economy in general so maybe there is something about BTL LLs that i dont know about.

Just five?

That's still half a million - that would be a lot of money for a hospital, for example, would it not?

Why do people always say things like that about hospitals? as if that money would have gone towards hospitals!

You know they are shutting down hospital departments left right and center don't you? and not because of five fucking 'mansions'

outraged, often the implication is that benefit claimants have £500 notes to splash about town every week.

I disagree. It might be what a few numptys that comment on the Daily Mail website think, but I think people on MN have got it.

And I really don't see that it makes that much difference. People on a decent wage have to pay housing costs too, no one assumes that they don't. I think that by saying there is often this implication, you are not crediting people with enough intelligence. People know others have to pay housing costs out of the money they get, and still quite often think they get too much.

also, any sensible LL will find out what the LHA rate is for their size property in their area. if they have a 3 bed they will know how much their tenants will be entitled to receive (at most) and price the place accordingly. in my area rents are pretty reflective of the LHA rates just a bit higher.

I think it's a lot of money and I think it would be better spent elsewhere.

I wasn't rude in making my point so I'm not sure why you felt the need to swear at me!

Affordable rent doesn't mean an extortionate rent subsidised by the tax payer. I saw a programme once that said they can't build more council houses in places where people want to live because of green belt rules. So I think it's more complicated than just use the rent subsidies to build more houses. I think this country has more people than it can comfortably take care of TBH.

Porridge, I didn't swear at you, I used a swear word in my post.

If I said FUCK OFF porridge, that would be me swearing at you.

But I didn't.

So why did they hike my rent from 'social' to not very affordable then?

Fair enough Amber

you are not crediting people with enough intelligence

I know, I generally don't when it comes to matters such as this, experience has told me that people are wilfully ignorant.