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AIBU?

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Original poster

To be a bit shocked at the landlord who is evicting 200 families because they are on housing benefit

382 replies

wetaugust · 06/01/2014 19:25

Heard this and 'Wow' - I was shocked.

He's being interviewed on C4 News.

He'd rather rent them to Eatern Europeans who are working.

He said that if house prices go up then rents should go up.

He said he's not the only landlord doing this.

Wow!

So some local authority will have to find new housing for all these people.

Where will this end?

I am stunned. Shock

OP posts:
AgaPanthers · 09/01/2014 18:24

"most people who claim housing benefit are in work."

Absolute bollocks.

Only a small minority of housing benefit claimants are in work.

coco44 · 09/01/2014 18:28

I am a LL and my insurance won't allow HB tenants.

Vevvie · 09/01/2014 18:29

Bloody disgusting. Making themselves rich on the backs of others. Everyone should have the right to affordable housing. :(

NoseWiperExtraordinaire · 09/01/2014 18:30

93 per cent of new housing benefit claims made between January 2010 and December 2011 were made by households containing at least one employed adult.

www.insidehousing.co.uk/tenancies/majority-of-new-housing-benefit-claimants-in-work/6521183.article

AgaPanthers · 09/01/2014 18:34

What on earth has that particular cherry picked statistic got to do with the price of the fish?

People claim housing benefit for DECADES. The statistic about new claimants doesn't tell you much.

Actual figures:

working 685,000
not working 2,735,000 (of which 581,000 'unemployed', 1,096,000 'other inactive', and 1,059,000 retired)

ComposHat · 09/01/2014 18:35

No Aga, you are talking bollocks. 93% of new claims for housing benefit made between 2010 and 2011 benefit were made where at least one person wasare employed. (Source: newstateman)

AgaPanthers · 09/01/2014 18:38

No, the quote was

"most people who claim housing benefit are in work."

and this is total fucking bollocks.

Only 685,000 out of 3.42 million people in receipt of HB are working. That is 20%, and not remotely 'most people'.

The New Statesman and the like deliberately mislead people.

ComposHat · 09/01/2014 18:44

So Aga what your figures demonstrate is that the number of employed people claiming housing benefit outnumber the unemployed.

The only people raking the system in this situation are the greedy landlords who've been raking in public cash for years, only to chuck out their tenants on a whim, when they think of a better wheeze and greedy employers who use state benefits to top up shite wages.

A living wage and rent controls are what is needed, rather than demonising the poor.

DontGiveAwayTheHomeworld · 09/01/2014 18:47

Aga inactive and retired does not mean unemployed, even though they are not in employment. I'm a SAHM, which makes me inactive. Not unemployed.

Your figure show more people in work claim HB than unemployed.

AgaPanthers · 09/01/2014 18:55

I don't think you can draw easy conclusions.

Minimum wage in London won't pay for food + shelter for a family, but in say Gateshead it can.

It's not really about greedy employers as the completely fucked up state of the housing market and the failure to build sufficient new housing to accommodate the millions of extra people we have, primarily in SE England.

SlowlorisIncognito · 09/01/2014 19:03

I do find it surprising that one individual can own so much property in one area and therefore set rents and conditions, and perhaps this should be restricted or monitored more tightly, as he is essentially creating a monopoly.

However, I do think there is a demand for private rentals in this country, especially from more transient young people and students. However, the current system is not really fit for purpose, and I think the main people who benefit from it are unreggistered letting agents. In the city I live in, one firm in particular massively overcharge and exploit students, whilst using scare tactics to get them to sign up to houses.

Everything about renting needs to be more regulated. I feel this would benefit both landlords and tennants.

That is a seperate issue from housing benefit. I do think the housing benefit system is currently not perfect, and causes people to end up in arrears. However, it can be hard to evict people who are paying something but not enough, especially if they have children. Therefore housing benefit claimants do represent more of a risk to landlords. Also, most private landlords can't afford long periods with tennants unable to pay due to their benefits being stopped for whatever reason.

Really, housing benefit is the government subsidising big business. If businesses were forced to pay a living wage (or have employees with nowhere to live), then working people would be able to pay their own rent. This would probably benefit both tennants and landlords.

AgaPanthers · 09/01/2014 19:07

Actually the vast majority of HB claimants live in social housing.

NoseWiperExtraordinaire · 09/01/2014 19:15

The statistic about new claimants doesn't tell you much.

I'd have thought it was an essential and highly relevant piece of information about what the most current and significant factor for people entering the benefits system is.

Especially since the number of housing benefit claimant appears to have reached record proportions:

touchstoneblog.org.uk/2012/06/in-work-households-push-housing-benefit-claimants-past-5-million

In recent weeks the number of Housing Benefit claimants reached five million for the first time....

...Over previous economic cycles the number of Housing Benefit claimants has traditionally increased as unemployment has risen and then fallen as unemployment has decreased. The recent growth of in-work households claiming Housing Benefit appears to be a departure from this historic trend. It appears that there has been a considerable change in the financial situation of these households who are now claiming Housing Benefit and we need to better understand why this change has occurred...

...The growth of in-work claimants represents households who are in employment but cannot afford to pay their housing costs. The rapid increase in the number of households in this position highlights the vulnerability of their financial situation. If rental accommodation is no longer affordable for many low-income working households it would have serious implications for households, for housing policy and for the wider economy. This is not an issue we can afford to ignore any longer.

AgaPanthers · 09/01/2014 19:31

Hmm, apparently the statistic about new claimants is total bollocks too:

fullfact.org/factchecks/90_93_95_percent_housing_benefit_claimants_in_employed_work-27483

Basically, there were 4.746 million claimants the year before, and 5.000 million the next year, a change of 0.254 million. And the number in employment went from 0.634 to 0.878 million, a change of 0.244 million.

Ergo, 0.244/0.254 = 96%.

The problem being that more than one million people STOP claiming housing benefit each year.

So this is technically possible:

Date 1: 4.746 million people claim, of which 0.634m employed
Date 2:
1 million people stop claiming, of which none were employed
1.254 million people start claiming (so a net increase of 0.254 million), of which .244 million were employed, resulting in 0.878 million employed

On that basis, only 20% (0.244/1.254) of new housing benefit claimants are employed - a far cry from 93%.

Of course the 20% figure is wrong, because it's obvious that many of the 1 million+ people who stopped claiming were employed, but 20% is every bit as correct as 93%.

Basically we don't know what proportion of new claimants are employed, and whoever claimed that we did should be sent on an evening class in basic statistics.

NoseWiperExtraordinaire · 09/01/2014 19:51

From your link:

Update (29 June 2012)
The Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF) have confirmed that the Department for Work and Pensions, with whom they have been in contact, have not criticised their own analysis arriving at the 93 per cent figure.
They also pointed out that it is not unreasonable to infer from the available net increase information that a significant number of new claimants are likely to be in work. Full Fact does not dispute this and is happy to make this clear.

NoseWiperExtraordinaire · 09/01/2014 20:11

Though quite why our government can't co-ordinate with our local authorities to simply provide the number of new claims coming in with a record of the number in and out of work, alongside those in existing/continued claims is quite beyond me! There shouldn't be any inferring needed, just the figures!

Plateofcrumbs · 09/01/2014 20:23

You're tying yourself in knot with your attempts at statistical superiority, agapanther.

Yes it's technically wrong to say that it's the % of new claimants. But this is actually pretty irrelevant to the overall issue. Which is that the vast majority of the growth in HB claimants over these two years was a result of a net increase in the number of claimants in work.

The flow on and off is beside the point. We now have more people claiming HB primarily because there are more people in work who are claiming. That is what is important.

Darkesteyes · 09/01/2014 20:51

Anyone see Ch 4 news tonight. He is trying to evict a working single parent because she
a. gets some help from HB with her rent.
b. had the temerity to complain about a broken radiator.

So what they REALLY meant by "keep your head down if you are on benefits and we will leave you alone" is "dont report any repairs because we dont want to have to pay out to fix them"

AgaPanthers · 09/01/2014 20:51

No I'm not tying myself in any knots. The fact is that we don't know what % of new HB claimants are employed. The people tying themselves in knots are those making claims without evidence.

"Which is that the vast majority of the growth in HB claimants over these two years was a result of a net increase in the number of claimants in work."

No, the number of HB claimants grew (by around 6%), and the proportion in work increased from 13.3% to 17.5%.

It's not true that the growth was due to a net increase of claimants in work. That implies a causation that probably exists to some degree, but certainly not to the degree argued by these liars in the press.

They are trying to paint this picture of armies of down-trodden people being oppressed by The Man, the trouble is the data don't support this.

More people are working now, for example, a lot of people are no longer eligible for IB, tax credits make working more attractive, and so on, and it's very reasonable to suppose that many of the existing non-working HB claimants are now working HB claimants, which would naturally increase the numbers in employment.

These people are trying to sell a story about people being oppressed by employers, unable to afford a roof over their heads despite working fulltime, and while I have no problem with that theory, I really object to people putting out bollocks statistics.

AgaPanthers · 09/01/2014 20:52

The Wilsons are cunts.

Nuff said.

Darkesteyes · 09/01/2014 20:59

How do you explain the fact that working people are having to use food banks.

AgaPanthers · 09/01/2014 21:07

Working people couldn't use food banks before because they didnt exist.

Catkinsthecatinthehat · 09/01/2014 21:12

Anyone see Ch 4 news tonight. He is trying to evict a working single parent because she
a. gets some help from HB with her rent.
b. had the temerity to complain about a broken radiator.

Oh the Wilsons have form for this. Here's a report from 2010 which claims that tenants were unable to secure repairs. I think Watchdog did a feature on them around the same time.

They've also been in the press for snaffling deposits and attempting to extract thousands in damages for minor repairs. eg - trying to claim for an entire new bathroom suite when the problem was a cracked cistern lid.

Shockingly they attempted to sue a plumber who condemned one of their boilers - they took him to court for loss of rent as they were unable to let the property as he wouldn't pass the appliance as safe. They judge told them where to go but then Wilsons have so far ignored a court order to pay his costs, leaving him £3000 out of pocket.