to think that that state should pay people's mortgage payments if their circumstances change and they lose their income?

[FlouncingMintyy]

Am I right in thinking that this doesn't happen at the moment and that housing benefit only covers rent?

You can get help to pay the interest. But not to make capital repayments.

no. You can get the interest paid on your mortgage.

They won't pay the capital though, which is fair enough.

info here

I think you can get housing benefit to cover your mortgage interest only. It only last a year or two though, I can't remember.

I'm not sure that the state should cover the whole mortage payment, but I do think it should pay more than the interest. It would be fairer if it were paid at the same amount that anyone renting could get, so based on average rent and the number of people being housed in that home.

I agree with the current system. In this respect, the interest can be treated as rent, IYSWIM.

YABU & wrong

Is paying the interest enough to not get your house repossessed?

Why do so many people get repossessed then? I am just thinking about the housing shortage and the lack of affordable social housing and what can be done about it.

No.

Possibly their lenders haven't been willing to switch the to an interest only mortgage, or the time period in which SMI can be paid ha come to an end?

People get repossed because what is available doesn't cover the mortgage, as with rent, there is often a shortfall to make up. If the owners of the property can't meet a reasonable percentage of the shortfall, then the bank will repossess.

It does seem unfair that you can get help with rent but not mortgage, but then I can also see why the capital repayments shouldn't be met - otherwise you would end up owning a house that the state had paid for! Nice work if you can get it....

At the same time though, our mortgage is a lot less than we would be paying if we rented, even a smaller property, so it does seem a bit odd that if we were broke and couldn't afford to pay the mortgage, we would need to sell the house and rent a place that cost more and then get help with that, instead of staying put and getting help mortgage repayments that would cost the state less.

Still, hopefully it won't happen!

You can take an insurance policy out that covers sickness and redundancy.

The state isnt there to pay everything.

I think the government should pay on a loan basis, they pay the mortgage (to a maximum amount etc) but you owe them that money back IYSWIM, effectively they buy a share in your house.

Yes, Kirsty, that is really my point. An awful lot of mortgages are a great deal cheaper than the rent would be on a home large enough to house them all. So if you get repossessed and then go into rented accommodation the state pays more to house you and 9 times out of 10 that rent is being paid to a private landlord who is indeed paying off his mortgage (or one of his many mortgages) with state money.

Seems very wrong and skewed to a simpleton like me.

Why should someone with a mortgage have to take out insurance against loss of earnings when someone paying rent doesn't have to because they will get housing benefit? It makes no sense, if houses get repossessed because people can't pay their mortgages then it just puts more pressure on rented/council owned housing, so it would make more sense to try and help people remain in the homes they have

I like Random's idea - kind of like they did with the banks?! We (as taxpayers) would all become shareholders in each others' houses!

Could we have some sort of veto on decoration then - like a zero-tolerance policy on twigs and pebbly shit?

Do you not thing#k, if the y state picked up the bill for a mortgage, and the occupier then owned the hosue - that there would be an awful lot of people who managed to make themselves unemployed one way or another, knowing the state was goign to pay off their asset?

This is why we have redundancy/sickness mortgage protection policies.

It was bad enough selling off the council houses for a song to people on peppercorn rents withou producing another wave of them.

Can you really get pebbly shit? Doesn't it like, smell bad?

It does seem unfair that some people are entitled to a lot of help from the state and some are entitled to next to nothing, even when they have paid in and they genuinely need it.

Personally, I think that YANBU.

It might seem unfair to pay off captial but, as a previous poster mentioned, no more unfair than HB paying off a landlord's mortgage. I'm sure that in most cases it would be more cost effective in the long run: removes an extra demand on public housing, cheaper than B&Bs, in many cases cheaper than private rental, fixed address and no uncertainty so better for applying for new jobs, no need for children to move schools, etc, etc. So long as the payment was at the same rate as HB for an equivalent rented house then it wouldn't really matter to the government if any capital was paid off if the mortgage was less than rent on an equivalent house. If you get my drift.

I don't think the government should pay off people's mortgages by any means, but I do think that people should get more help so they don't lose their homes, like people who rent do

As someone who has been through this...and almost lost my house, due to not understanding how the system works, I can confirm the following. Your interest payments on your mortgage will be paid, but not until you have been out of work for three months... so if you manage to get a temp role, you go back the beginning again.

It is very scary, especially when you have worked all your life and there is only you to deal with it.

Actually, just another thought. Since people who own their homes may have to sell them to pay for care in their old age - which I know is another thread - it may be even more cost effective for the government to allow HB to pay mortgages as in plenty of cases they'd be getting the money back eventually anyway!

Housing benefit is just one benefit. If all that is happening is that you are getting a stay of execution on being repossessed but are having to live on benefits otherwise, I think the vast majority of people with mortgages would be motivated to find a job that pays a lot more than benefits.

I think they should pay whatever is sufficient to prevent repossession. If that's the interest, so be it. If more is required they should pay more. It is in nobody's interests to have more homeless families, especially if all they need is some breathing space for a few months until they manage to start earning again.