Tory Government’s benefit cap is unlawful and causes 'real misery for no good purpose', High Court rules

[Skutterfly]

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/benefit-cap-judicial-review-welfare-payments-government-loses-lawsuit-court-case-judge-misery-a7802286.html

Finally

kikis I did the same calculation when puckeredahole questioned where the incentive to work was. And your right, the incentive comes from
A) having a job and supporting yourself, not being at the mercy of the government.
B) being potentially £21000 better off over your wages. So suddenly that's a huge jump up

I would get £18,000 housing benefit where I live if I were on state benefits plus presumably child benefit and other benefits - fairly high.

It is a difficult issue - this one of parents with a small baby. Plenty of us work with small babies and receive no benefits. Some women have a baby timed for least work but maximum benefits at about 4 - 6 years between each child. However there are a lot of myths out there .

The reality is most parents do not have large families and most benefits claimants who don't work are not up against the benefits cap.

kiki I've got a bit of a crush on you.
Proper social housing for all, so maisonettes with gardens, suitable for kids and older people.
No tax payers money should be going to private landlords it's a crazy situation. The money should be cyclical.

kickhim sorry I didn't rtft so didn't see I was just duplicating your calculations. Aw thanks maybe it's because we have similar starting usernames!

I totally agree, with some of the rents being charged privately, social housing would surely pay for itself in 10 years.

Info from gingerbread the single parents charity

mobile.gingerbread.org.uk/info/FactsheetSection.aspx?FactsheetId=26&SectionId=193&slide=1

Proper social housing for all, so maisonettes with gardens, suitable for kids and older people. No tax payers money should be going to private landlords it's a crazy situation. The money should be cyclical.

Do you really trust the government to provide good social housing, especially now? Where will they get the money from? how much would maisonettes and gardens for all cost? Do we all get that in central London, where the biggest crunch is?

I totally agree, with some of the rents being charged privately, social housing would surely pay for itself in 10 years.

how can that possibly be true in many parts of the country? What would have to happen given current prices, of course, is that the government would have to take a substantial portion of the risk and potential loss of buying up a huge number of places and land at high prices.

If we have all this money lying around, why have this debate at all?

But the money we have is going into private hands, the government could invest to build new houses, if we really are that broke they could do what businesses and private individuals do and mortgage to build. The housing benefit would pay off the 'mortgage', eventually once its paid off the money stays in the governments pocket. Or they remortgage and build more.
The house crisis isn't just in London, I'm not london and its bloody bonkers. So every town or village builds a street or two of social housing for local people .

As for the land the government own a lot of land, theres ministry of defence land being sold off left right and centre. Why let businesses profit when the country could?

I live in a city where there is a massive crisis of affordable housing but there are plenty of luxury developments going up and being bought by landlords. There is plenty of space but they're not building the type of accommodation desperately needed here.

If we introduced rent caps we would save a good chunk of the £10 billion a year every year that goes to private landlords in the form of top up housing benefit for working people. Just think. Ten billion pounds. Every year. We wouldn't need to borrow. We could literally just take the money that we're giving them and instead build houses with it. If we had done that for the past ten years that's £100 billion worth of houses we could have built.

The 1 in 8 contribution from private companies is bollocks. It's just not touching the side.
Instead there's massive developments people hate and object to. Landlords buying them up as they are too expensive for locals. They are privately rented some being paid for with housing benefit. It's bollocks

Exactly. I'm not the best at maths but I've just done a sum and if we took even one year of the £10 billion freed by a rent cap that's 50,000 homes at £200,000 a pop. That's just in one year. But instead we're literally giving it away to landlords.

wherever caps have been introduced, it hasn't ended well. that puts a further limit on supply, which is not what we want.

we want to lower demand. Shut out foreign investors, raise interest rates, and lower housing benefit.

It is interesting that rents have gone up a huge amount outside London and are virtually frozen here in London by the way.

"Rents in London have fallen sharply, with new tenants in the capital typically paying almost £100 a month less than their counterparts a year ago, according to a major lettings agency.

London has seen a “sharp fall” in rents over the last 12 months, with the average monthly amount paid dropping from £1,297 a year ago to £1,203 in March 2017, said Your Move, which publishes a regular buy-to-let index. In March alone, typical rents in the capital fell 6%, it added.

The company also reported a decline of 3.7% in rents in south-east England during the month of March, as well as smaller falls in several other regions across the UK."
...

"The figures broadly tally with data from Countrywide, the UK’s biggest estate and lettings agency, which said in March that rents in Britain recorded their first annual drop for six years."
Yet gone up 5% in Wales and 3% in the NE

www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/13/uk-average-annual-rents-fall-stamp-duty-hike-letting

It is interesting that rents have gone up a huge amount outside London and are virtually frozen here in London by the way.

London is just way overstretched. people are renting bad accommodation because there is nothing else they can afford.

Most Western countries including the USA have rent caps. Where exactly has it "not ended well". Cutting housing benefit doesn't bring about lower rents - in the year after housing benefit was cut to the third decile rents rose by 3% nationally and 7% in London. The only thing that happened was an increase in homelessness.

Most Western countries including the USA have rent caps.

no, it does not. The USA is far from one jurisdiction. Rents and LL/tenant laws vary greatly even from city to city within the same state. Some enact some sort kind of rent control, but that really depends on what you mean by "rent control". it usually doesn't mean a hard cap on rents. What it usually means is that rent rises for tenants in place are capped (usually at something at around inflation). So, it depends on what you are talking about. Incidentally, I don't at all oppose that kind of rent cap and much stronger tenants rights here.

Cutting housing benefit doesn't bring about lower rents - in the year after housing benefit was cut to the third decile rents rose by 3% nationally and 7% in London.

that says nothing about the affect of HB on rents, unless the study somehow controlled for what would have happened without the change. It's entirely possible rents would have risen faster without the cuts (I don't know what study you are quoting, but unless they dealt with that issue, you can't make the conclusion you made).

Ok then parts of the US have rent caps. Lots of Europe also. Most Western and many other countries have some form of rent control. It seems to work pretty well. We in the UK are unusual in having nothing.

As for rent rises, it was reported in the national press at the time. The article discussed above also says that rents have risen every month for six years. Those years cover the entire period since housing benefit was cut. Cutting housing benefit has clearly not brought down rent.

Ok then parts of the US have rent caps. Lots of Europe also.

as I said, it depends on what you mean by "rent caps". I don't think anywhere in the US has hard caps.

As for rent control, again it depends on what you mean.

I fully agree that tenants need better protection from rent rises on their current residence and more security. But absolutely none of that includes any housing benefit.

As for rent rises, it was reported in the national press at the time. The article discussed above also says that rents have risen every month for six years. Those years cover the entire period since housing benefit was cut. Cutting housing benefit has clearly not brought down rent.

again, there is not necessarily any causation there.

The few articles I have read, in fact, say the opposite, and what they did was compare rent rises in general to rent rises for people who had HB. People with HB had rent rising more quickly.

It makes complete sense. HB creates more demand for fixed supply.

e had rent acts. I remember when i first moved to London and I mean years ago - very early 80s and most people had to sleep on friends' floors as no one except criminal landlords let property out. Why did they not rent out because of rent caps - landlords ended up with sitting tenants (this was before the assured shorthold revolutionised things and meant you could remove a tenant) who could pass the tenancy even to their heirs and were paying ludicrously low rents of £10 a year. I even dated a man briefly about 5 years ago who was paying one - he lived near Bond St station and was paying a rent set about 50 years ago with security of tenure for life. Not surprisingly he does not give up his tenancy.

I just looked them up and they are still going strong - so I suppose we should NOT ever say we have no rent caps in the UK - they still exist and those with older tenancies are still paying them and their landlords are subject to the cap.

"What is a regulated tenancy?

A regulated tenancy is a long-term tenancy with a private landlord.

You probably have a regulated tenancy if you pay rent to a private landlord and your tenancy started before 15 January 1989.

You could be a regulated tenant if you later signed a new tenancy agreement after that date with the same landlord, even if it is at a different address.

You won't be a regulated tenant if you've lived in the same property as your landlord since your tenancy started.
Fair rents

Regulated tenants are entitled to a fair rent.

Fair rents are set by a rent officer at the Valuation Office Agency.

If a fair rent isn't already registered, you or your landlord can apply to the rent service to get one registered.

Your landlord can't charge you more than the fair rent once it's set.
Rent increases

Your landlord can apply to the Valuation Office Agency to increase a fair rent once every two years. In limited circumstances a landlord can apply for an increase before the two years expires.

You may be able to challenge a proposed rent increase using the tribunal for rent disputes."

I'm not sure that the fewer than 100,000 regulated tenancies in the UK - when there are close to 6 million households renting under ASTs - is evidence of any significant rent regulation, particularly when a fair few of them are housing association or corporate landlords. Also, depending on where you are the rent can be far from a steal because the tribunal that sets it has to do so with local rents in mind.

Chili I'm not saying that housing benefit cuts have caused rent to rise, just that they have failed to stop it from rising. The cut was expressly touted as being about spending less on hb but in fact rents have risen and we are now giving billions more to private landlords than we were before the cut. So I would suggest that a new approach is needed. And the most logical way to spend less is for the thing you pay for - in this case rent - to cost less. This will not happen on its own. It requires govt intervention.

This, there is definitely not significant regulated tenanies in the UK, just 100,000. My only point was to say it is not true we have no rent caps and no regulated tenancies in the UK. The people I know with them are as old as the hills and not moved for 50 years kind of thing and of course I suppose as they pay £10 a year or whatever it is the landlord is hoping they will die soon. I cannot remember if the 100,000 have a right to pass on the low rent tenancy to an heir as they could in the old days.

I was certainly very relieved when we sold two buy to let flats at 50% less than we paid for them in the 90s property crash. The day in day out stuff (I did all the painting inside, my other half put in the new bathroom appliances etc - lots of heavy labour) and accounting (I did all that side of it) was quite a burden for low return and then the very big losses but we provided housing for people for a bit. I don't think it was an utter disaster but it was a huge relief to sell the 2 flats (outer London) even at a loss. Just about everyone we ever had only wanted to stay a year probably because it was young 20 somethings in London with jobs that moved around and no children. It was always us hoping the tenants would stay not vice versa.