Why doesn’t the cover just cut housing benefit

[Janeerr]

It goes to landlords and costs about £15bn a year. It’s nothing more than a prop for house prices and landlords. Plus it favours older people who purchased the homes years ago

You really don't want to collapse the housing market. You really don't. The economy is bad enough as it is. A housing market collapse would probably add another decade of stagnation and we've already had one decade after the 2008 crash, just getting over that then covid happens, so that's a another decade of stagnation which we're in the middle of, so a housing crash now would put us into stagnation into the the mid 2030's.

The billions saved by not paying some housing benefit would be swallowed up, and more, by higher unemployment benefits, reduction in tax revenues, societal costs of huge numbers of repossessions, etc.

Just no! The housing market is broken, no doubt about that, but deliberately causing it to crash is probably the worst course of action to "cure" it, and it wouldn't be cured anyway. Just ruin the lives of huge numbers of people for no reason.

You really want people to become homeless?

That's exactly what'll happen in the short term.

And how many people would become homeless overnight if you did that?

Where would the people live who had their HB cut? You try paying extortionate rents on minimum wage.

The landlords would simply evict and rent out privately. It’s the benefits receivers who would end up homeless

Expenditure this year is less than last year, although obviously still a very significant sum.
Whilst I admit to not knowing the exact breakdown a lot of HB is paid to LA and HA tenants so stopping it for them would have little affect on the general housing market.

Because people would end up homeless.

Most housing benefit goes to social housing providers like housing associations and the council anyway. People complain that private landlords won’t accept housing benefit.

You realise HB is limited? It doesn't cover the full amount of rent if you rent privately? It's definitely not the reason rental prices have gone bonkers. Just look up the Local housing allowance for your area , and compare it to rental prices.

I'm not sure what you mean about favouring older people.

That would be a terrible idea, even worse than the current one.

It’s not just people in social housing that get help with rent. There’s a social housing shortage. Lots of people have to rent privately, where rents are usually higher. If they didn’t get some help, they could not afford the rent, it’s as simple as that.