To think that a 23k benefits cap will drive some families in the SE

[Minifingers9]

... Into destitution?

I live in a pretty unappealing and comparatively cheap part of greater London but you can't get a 3 bedroom rental for under £1400 a month.
If we lost our jobs we wouldn't be able to live on 23k a year as a family of 5. Not when 15k of it was going on rent.
Why don't they have regional benefit caps?

The teenage mother in a council flat envy still going strong? I thought we as a society had moved on from that!

oh yes the teen mum getting knocked up to get a council flat.....
yawn.
god my mum used to go on about that, and she has been dead for 20 years.

Candles will be paying around a tenner a week in tax so she's not exactly subsidising anyone.... unless of course she has given up all use of NHS, education, street lighting, emergency services etc etc.

40 hrs per week at min wage for an over 21 is just over £13.5k per year but what's a grand and a half between friends

Ive been made redundant twice. Both times I survived off my savings for almost a year and didn't have a penny in benefits. Sometimes I think I'm the only one that bothers to save and the people that spunk it all away get juicy benefits.

national insurance starts on wages of about £8k by the way - people forget that when they talk about at what rate tax cuts in (which is higher).

Petty witch what about people who don't have the money to save? My family and I need all our money to get through a month down to the last penny including some of my overdraft.

I'd really love to save but I don't have the means to - not everyone "spunks" it away.

Lotus I would assume in order to have that NI gripe, you have never used the services of the NHS?

"Look OP - I get it, you like where you live, you feel part of the community, you like that you have a relatively short commute and so get more time together as a family that's not 'wasted' on trains commuting in from further"

Average rental in the whole of the SE is £1500 for a three bedroom flat.

The area I live in is rough,in zone 5 and cheaper than most areas further out of London. That's why we're still here!

Money buys choice not happiness ... Savings meant you got to tread water for a year, I got made redundant on 13th feb, by mid march I was packing what I could carry to the airport and waving goodbye to everything I'd worked for for 3 years and dear friends that I'll probably never see again. That's why you save Petty

"You are in a position where you could move to a cheaper property outside of London and use the money you are saving in mortgage payments to commute in"

We'd have to move so far out of London to find somewhere significantly cheaper, that commuting wouldn't be feasible.

And if we moved DH couldn't continue to provide care for his elderly and disabled parents who live round the corner and who he can regularly pop round to help.

Of course if we moved, social services and the tax payer could always take up the slack with their care....

soontobesix

We are a working family who live on £10k wages, £10k tax credits, £2k child benefit so £22k total for 2 adults, 2dcs. No HB as have mortgage.

This whole thing is caused by wages being too low. That's the problem. But how to solve it without causing hardship?

People need to realise they've made the choices they did because they had the luxury of having a choice.

The factors impacting people's life choices are colossal. The answers aren't simple. It chills me to the bone to hear so many people incapable of thinking outside of their own bubble telling people stripped of choice what they should and shouldn't be doing.

Some food for thought

It still seems to me that housing costs are the problem. The benefit cap doesn't affect people who work - found that out today - so we are talking about a relatively small group of people.

To be honest, OP, you sound as if you are doing okay. There are people dealing with the benefit cap right now. There is something odd about the idea that your benefits could just go up and up. Landlord increases rent, HB picks up the difference. Was that what used to happen?

Yes, and that's the landlords that need reigning in for that. Private rentals covered by local authorities has fuelled a greed and over inflated the rental market.

It varies from authority to authority but typically a person will be allocated x amount depending on their circumstances, for HB. Unsurprisingly landlords would charge right up to that amount.

And inflating house prices. Buying places to rent out and pushing up prices. I hate 'em. I think they should be taxed till they squeak.

There is no reason to rein in landlords; they are running a business and will charge what the market will bear. I want to buy expensive food from Waitrose but I can't afford it; that doesn't mean that Waitrose should be forced to cut their prices does it?

And more often than not it's ex council houses that are bought and let out to people who the council should be housing and end up paying a private landlord for the privilege of housing someone in one of their old properties. Leaving the tenant without the security of a council tenancy, at the mercy of shit greedy landlords and the council pay over the odds in HB to the landlords. There's only one ducking winner in that

Athena, it's not that wages are low but £10k is part time hours at min wage. It's never going to cover two adults and two children even in the cheapest of areas.

A living wage that many would want still wouldn't work. People spend different amounts, have children or choose not to, live in different areas etc. Not to mention some jobs simply aren't worth a high salary as they require no skill or expertise.

That analogy doesn't work Sodium, because if you don't like the prices Waitrose charge then you have the choice to go to Lidl.

If you don't like the market rates LLs charge, then you have the "option" of a cardboard box.

Not quite the same.

The public sector doesn't fare well run on the same principles as the private. They are milking the system. It's like knowing schools have to use you for books and wacking the prices up. Shouldn't be allowed. I'd like to see a Valencia style land grab on all previously bought council properties.

Jack if I don't like the prices that landlords charge in a specific area then I have the choice to live somewhere where rents are less.

That is why I don't live in London. I can't afford the rents in London, therefore I don't live in London.

Your argument only holds water if a person can't afford the rent anywhere in the country.

Athena, surely instead you are choosing not to work full time like many of we female tax payers do and having the luxury of part time work with a massive subsidy from we full paying tax payer sisters.

You and your husband cannot both work full time and only earn £10k. If we changed the benefits system so you both had to work full time then full time working tax payers would have a much fairer deal. At the moment the state encourages idleness and lowers UK productivity through its silly benefits policies. I don't blame anyone who chooses not to work because they get paid not to and would not be better off they did work full time but there is huge support in the electorate to remove that incentive only to work part time or not at all.

Difference being though that waitrose don't rely on a floor on prices that will be provided by the government, plus your ignoring the tax reliefs and easy credit that has enabled the boom in BTL which has out priced the typical FTB.