It’s not fair those renting get more universal credit?

[Bigbenbube]

I’m a lone parent on £31k-ish. I’ve worked out if I earn a few more K I Get no more universal credit, but a couple with two kids on £60k combined get £240 a week.

Thank you, having some help with my mortgage for a few years ensured I wasn’t a drain on the state forever. It didn’t mean I was living the high life, far from it.

I'm amazed that this needs to be pointed out, tbh.

Mind you, years ago Supplementary Benefit (forerunner of Income Support) would cover the interest element of a mortgage for up to (iirc) 6 months, to prevent families from ending up homeless.

It did, thank you. I’m certainly not rolling in it but that’s ok.

I would love to know how much of UC goes to private LL's.

Housing costs is the biggest single element of almost every UC claim I come across, even when there are children or significant health problems/disabilities. I'm in the SE, and realise that things may well be different in areas where rents are so ludicrously high.

One of these days, I'll draft an FOI request and see if I can find out.

Why is it always a race to the bottom?

why ‘they should get what you do’ instead of ‘I should get housing help like they do?’ Eg MIRAS5 mortgage tax relief that was taken away?

Maybe sell the house and put yourself in the same position as them? Or would liquidating your asset mean you have more money than them?

For the record, I don’t even believe that govt should be contributing to mort payments BUT I find the ‘take it away from them so I feel better’ stance so infuriating.

And I have a mort on a house that we’d prob get housing benefit for if we rented it. I just recognise I’m paying towards an asset that I cannot be turfed out of with 2 months notice.

It'd be costing us all a lot more if you'd lost your home, and you'd have been much worse off long term.

Many of the benefit cuts are so short-sighted, they have just increased costs to the taxpayer.

Helping people up is cheaper than dragging them down.

I'm glad you got enough support!

I'm amazed that this needs to be pointed out, tbh.
I'm more amazed that for all the "I can't believe people think they should have help with their mortgage when it's something they will own" lines, people seem to miss that money IS being used to pay mortgages.

It's just not mortgages of average families on low to middle incomes.

It's the mortgages of landlords and property companies.

If there wasn't any money to be made with privileged people renting out properties to poorer people, wealthy people, MPs, political donors etc wouldn't be doing it. It must be really nice for them to know the welfare system will give them steady income and that parts of the general public will continue to support it. It must be even nicer knowing that they can have average people fighting for crumbs over who gets what support instead of looking at who is making the most money.

I can assure you that a couple earning £60k wouldn't get UC. When my ex and I had a combined income of £55k and renting, we did not receive a penny.

If you get housing element of UC, the work allowance is lower than those who don't.

This means you can earn more before there is a reduction in your universal credit for earnings.

If you want to, you can add more info your pension, and this is disregarded as income when they work out your UC payment. So you can top up your pension and still be eligible for UC

But sell their house and do what? Owners still need a roof over their heads. Use the capital to rent until it runs out and then claim housing benefit?

Because the family renting would end up homeless if they couldn't pay their rent, costing the state a fortune in temporary accommodation costs.

Ultimately, the family with the mortgage could end up having their home repossessed, but lenders tend to take a lot longer trying to work with them to prevent that. Landlords are often pretty quick to take possession proceedings once arrears hit the 2 month mark.

The family with a mortgage could sell their home and use the equity to buy somewhere outright, or with a more affordable mortgage, or to pay rent on a rental. And as @Babyroobs and others have said, the family with a mortgage get to keep more of their earnings under UC.

Every local authority sets the rates for 1,2,3 bed etc properties and UC pays that rate according to the bedrooms needed. Those rates are often much less than the rent actually charged so renters have to make up the difference.

Actually, it's the Valuation Office Agency that sets the LHA rates, not councils. That's why one council can have several different sets of rates in one area (three where I live, but 4 in one a few miles away).

The LHA rates are based on the average rent of the bottom 30% of properties, so is designed to only cover the full rent on the cheapest properties. And it was frozen for a few years, so didn't even do that. Thankfully, it's been "unfrozen" for 24/25, and will go up a fair bit from May onwards for UC claimants.

My DIL hasn't bothered notifying them of rent increases, because she knew it wouldn't make a difference, so she's uploaded her latest rental agreement and will get quite a chunk more.

I think the Government should be more pragmatic about it. If a mortgage payer were entitled to support because they fell into difficulty the government could pay the difference to ensure the family stayed in their home, the cost of the support could then be paid back to the government as a percentage of the final value of the house when it was sold or by the benefit claimant if their circumstances improved. Since the final value is likely to have risen in the long term, the money paid back could support more new builds and nobody would be disadvantaged.

The housing situation is in a huge mess and we need to be more creative and open minded about solutions.

But that "rent" is what enables a landlord to hold on to an appreciating asset, which over the last few decades will have massively increased in value.

Someone I know bought a house for £97k, lived in it for a few years then rented it out. They sold it for just shy of a mill a year or two ago. The rental income more than covered the mortgage, and when the last tenants moved out, they "moved" back in again for the last year and a bit, so they didn't have to pay CGT or something on the equity.

Agree. But then I think the whole benefits system needs a huge overhaul.

It's all part of making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Same as the fact that if I claim uc as a renter I am effectively prevented from buying by the limit on savings.

The government doesn't want to dip into the public purse to help you buy an asset. The argument being that the only responsibility is to help keep a roof over your head, which is a rented house of a basic standard to meet your needs, rather than helping you pay for your property of choice through your mortgage. It is ironic though that the same government is quite happy to use public money 'laundered' through the medium of rent to help landlords buy multiple properties. The answer isn't to begrudge the help given to renters though as the OP seems to, they're not the problem. The problem is private landlords and the government that facilitates them using public money

This

Does UC automatically give a set amount to renters?

Taking the additional £200pm, isn’t there a maximum that can be given if the rent is over a certain amount?

eg

Person 1 rent is £800pm, no UC rent contribution.

Person 2 rent is £1500pm so maximum £200 rent contribution provided.

Each council has max amount they put for 2/3/4 bedroom etc

Lol omfg so the government will pay for a btl mortgage though. (Using the same thinking).

Your post doesn't seem to have anything to do with renters ...? Although it does seem unfair that a couple bringing in £60k to a household would receive extra financial support from the government, I wouldn't have thought they'd need it 🤔

The "need" would depend on how much their rent is and how many children they have. If they rent in the SE and have a couple of kids, especially if there are childcare costs, I can quite see how they need it.

Take home pay on £30k would be around the £2k mark, I think, after pension and student loan payments, less if they have a season ticket loan as well. The average rent for a 3-bed place where I live is over £1,800 a month, so almost a whole salary. (We also have the 4th highest council tax in England, just to add to the joy.)

Already has done with uC 😝

I wouldn’t be happy with my taxes paying someone’s mortgage… rent yes because if you’re renting you don’t have a house an an asset.

Thing is most areas the rent is set so low that unless you've got a council house you are paying considerably more than £200 on top of that, so instead of helping those on a low income what it actually does is take money from the tax payer and give it to the private landlord. Which makes sense as a lot of landlords vote or donate to the Tory party. On the other hand council housing the money goes from the tax payer back into the housing owned publicly, and is there for the next person who needs it (disregarding right to buy of course). IMO the government should not be supporting anyone in paying for private assets be that by paying individual mortgages or the landlords expanding property portfolios. But the current system does seem unfair which any exploitative system will, and the current system is exploiting the housing shortage for the benefit of the landlords, and nobody else is gaining anything from it. And yes I know it's not all landlords, actually a lot of small time landlords do worse under this system also because of the inflated prices due to those who can increasingly afford to monopolise the market (an pay their way politically to maintain a system fixed to their benefit).