To think that making the benefits system instant would help alleviate poverty?

[AndHarry]

Hands up, I have no experience of how the system works but as I've been reading the news and various threads on here, the same thing crops up again and again: JSA, housing and other benefit claims take so long to process that people are left destitute and once they are approved it takes so long to make changes that it's often not worth taking casual jobs.

So with the universal credit why can't job centres process claims electronically during appointments with claimants, with money paid using the 3 day payment system?

Is that totally naive?

[lagoonhaze]

YANBU. Worked for decades in the benefits system.

If decent IT and trained skilled assessors were the ones taking the claims it would work.

[WooWooOwl]

Wallison, I can understand you wanting people to have better access to social housing and secure tenancies. Thats something I would welcome too as long as it was available to everyone. but I honesty don't understand why you come across as having such a problem with landlords and why you think they should lose the right to protect themselves and their families in favour of someone else.

[Wallison]

I am not saying that landlords should lose their right to protect themselves - I am just saying that tenants should be protected, because they have more to lose. I think it is a disgrace that social housing has been made unavailable to the vast majority of renters while at the same time tenants' rights have been taken away from them in the way that the 1989 Housing Act did, because it's a double whammy that penalises those already without other options.

Still, you think that no-one should have children unless they own their own home and have enough bedrooms for them, so I don't expect you to have the compassion necessary to comprehend the points I am making, so I don't quite know why I'm continuing this conversation. Enjoy your rent money. After all, you deserve it. No, really, you do.

[WooWooOwl]

You are saying that tenants should be protected at the expense of someone else, ad that's just not right.

Can't you see that your version of 'protecting' tenants will directly affect someone else in a negative way that they don't deserve either?

Whether I think people should have children before they have stability is irrelevant. Compassion has nothing to do with it. The point is that if people make choices, they have to live with the consequences, and if that means they have less space at home than is comfortable, then so be it. If it means that they have to find new rental properties within their children's school's catchment, or they have to find new schools, then so be it. Those are direct consequences of individual choices, and no one else is responsible for those except the individuals involved.

A landlord should not have to feel guilty for wanting to live in or sell their property at the end of a tenancy agreement just because their tenant has children.

And thanks for your last comment, I will enjoy my rent moment thanks. Just the same way as im sure we both hope plenty of other people enjoy their tax credits and their housing benefit. After all, it pays for the same stuff in life!

[Spickle]

I have had the same tenants for four years. Hopefully they will enjoy the house for many more years, however I may need to sell the house one day though I do not need to at the moment. My tenants have two children (different sexes) in a small two bedroom house and I know they are on the council house waiting list so they will leave when a council house comes up or they need a three bed when the children can no longer share. I and they are aware that one of us may end the tenancy agreement at some point in the future. I have to give them two months notice, they have to give me one month's notice.

I do have sympathy for their situation (on benefits, can't afford the rent etc), but they chose to move in together and have children together while having virtually no savings and not in a position to buy a property. They are barely in their mid twenties so may not have been fully aware of the costs of running a home but it was their choice and quite honestly, it smacks of immature young couples wanting everything now but no means to provide it. I have provided a home for them which they pay rent for (rent has not increased in the four years they have been living there), but I can not be responsible for the life choices they have made. I hope one day, they will be able to buy their own house, but maybe if they had worked at their careers, saved a deposit, got their own house before having children, they would be in a better position than at present. For most people that means being patient, responsible and carefully saving before taking on something realistically unaffordable. Obviously it is doubly difficult when a job is lost. My own DP was made redundant in July so I'm not immune to some of the difficulties faced today.

As for raking in lots of money, actually I have to pay tax on the income as well as paying for any work that needs doing in the property. I have to insure the house and get a gas safety certificate every year. So, while I do earn an income from the rental, it isn't as much as you might think. Coupled with the fact that my tenants pay their rent in dribs and drabs often a month in arrears and could wreck the house or fail to pay rent leading to costly court cases, I question whether the hassle is worth it sometimes.

[amothersplaceisinthewrong]

Universal Credit will not work as the IT systems being used are just not up to scratch. Universal Credit could prove lethal to the very poor as one computer glitsch and they have no access to their benefits. 38 million wasted on IT that is not fit for purpose. Scandalous.

[Wallison]

Sell up then. It's obviously too much for you to cope with .

[Strumpetron]

It's not obviously too much for her to cope with, see just saying its difficult at times.

[Wallison]

Give it up then; no-one is forcing anyone to be a landlord. Plenty of people are forced into being tenants though.

[WooWooOwl]

Seems like it's you that doesn't have much compassion there Wallison! At least not for people that have a different life story to yourself.

And oddly enough, some people stick at things even when they are difficult if there is a good enough reason to. Like, maybe, wanting to provide for your own children.

[Spickle]

Plenty of people are forced into being tenants though.

Forced by whom?

[Strumpetron]

Forced into being tenants dear god. The same way people are forced into mortgages? It's all about putting a roof over ones head, you're acting like they're victims

[Strumpetron]

Actually that should be 'you're acting like we are victims'

[Wallison]

I am not 'acting like' anything - you have no clue as to how my life circumstances and therefore my actions stand on this discussion. I agree with you though that it is definitely all about putting a roof over one's head, which is why tenants' rights, which are all about putting roofs over people's heads, should be brought back to the situation they were before ASTs were introduced.

[Strumpetron]

Your life circumstances have nothing all to do with our discussion though, I can read your opinions and statements and can make a reply to them - the whole point of a forum.

I think you're ignoring the rights of home owners. It would most definitely put me off becoming a land lord if people think like you.

If the contract ends for our apartment and we need to leave obviously I'd be gutted because I've made it my home, but I respect the fact it isn't mine. It's the landlords property and as long as he follows the rules I'm not of the entitled opinion that he owes me more than that. He owes me nothing.

[Strumpetron]

Your life circumstances have nothing all to do with our discussion though needed to add unless you bring them up and offer them up in the discussion, which you haven't.

[feelingood]

but err can goats be delivered instantly?

[Wallison]

Thank you. That is my point entirely. My life circumstances have been called into question several times on this thread and although others have been keen to spew their own on here I have not. You yourself said that I was 'acting like' something, which is inaccurate.

As for landlords not being keen to rent to tenants who have security of tenure, surely those are the kind of landlords that need to be weeded out? The material state of many private sector rentals in this country is woeful, which should not be the case in the sixth richest country in the world. Imo one of the main reasons why they are so bad is because of the lack of security of tenure which means that repairing obligations don't get enforced because landlords can always evict rather than repair - and with 35% of households being tenants, with very few of them likely to get social housing, there will always be new tenants to fill the (shitty) private sector vacancy.

I'm not really that bothered about how you feel about your own circumstances - this issue is wider than your personal experience and it is a pressing one which is only going to get more pressing as more households become renters due to our housing crisis.

[Strumpetron]

'Acting like' is a figure of speech for gods sake, and in my opinion you were acting like - or would you prefer putting the point across - that tenants are victims.

I'm not saying all landlords are angels. I'm not saying some aren't nobs. But what you're trying to suggest here is taking away the right to their own property and putting that right in the hands of a board at tribunal. That's a very slippery slope. The things you have mentioned can be prevented of fixed in different ways. Whether it be landlords by law having to fix things in a certain timescale or prove they're taking steps to do so, or tenants having back up plans in place if they know there is a chance their tenancy won't be renewed.

Last comment is rude by the way.

[pumpkinsweetie]

Me & my dh were left in financial ruin last christmas when he got a seasonal job. It wasn't stated before the interview that job was only to last 10 days!! We were made to sign off more or less straight away (he had to accept job) and we had to wait a month for dh to get paid the money from the job. When he finished working, the jobcentre made us wait 3 week with next to no money.
The same happened when he got another job, was made to sign off and then had to wait a month for his salary to come through. He is now in his 3rd job this year and even this one may not be permanent, so we panick at the thought of financial problems all the time. They even stop your housing benefit right away

[Spickle]

the lack of security of tenure which means that repairing obligations don't get enforced because landlords can always evict rather than repair

Yeah right. Every time the boiler doesn't work or the overflow overflows, I'll give the tenant two months notice to quit and then get another tenant. Oh, but the new tenant will expect a working boiler and a flushing toilet so I guess it'll have to be fixed then. But no matter, I didn't have to fix it two months ago and I have only lost two months rent so that means I'm quids in, not.

[Wallison]

Well, I'm not that much bothered at being called rude.

And I am not talking about taking away landlords' rights but giving tenants rights. If you rent, you have a subsidiary interest in that property. What I am saying is that that subsidiary interest be properly recognised and not removed without due process, just as used to be the case before Thatcher. It's not a particularly revolutionary idea, nor a particularly unusual one - as I say, it was the case prior to Thatcher's brainwave and is still the case in lots of other countries today. I appreciate that people who think the current status quo is acceptable are not going to agree with it, but neither am I ever going to think that the current status quo is acceptable. So tenants who think it's fine can carry on with the Uncle Tom shtick, landlords can carry on doing what they want, and people with progressive ideas - you know, advice and advocacy agencies, legal aid solicitors, housing pressure groups etc - can go on disagreeing with people like you and trying to change things. I know which side I'd rather be on, and it sounds like you do too.

[Wallison]

Spickle, this may be hard to comprehend, but it's really not all about you.

[Spickle]

Nor you

[Strumpetron]

Well since you've been rude to me a couple of times now: your ideas aren't progressive they're questionable and a bit crap.

And in future I suggest when trying to put across your ideas and be taken seriously, you drop the rudeness and tone.