Universal Credit - would my landlord know?

[bostonfernandafigleaf]

Hi,

Please dont judge but I am self-employed with 3 children and due to my business taking a hit in the Covid-19 crisis it seems I am able to apply for Universal Credit to help cover my rent in the interim.

My question is - will my landlord know?

If I am correct, I understand there are two ways to get rent covered on Universal Credit:

1. it is paid directly from the authority to the landlord
2. it comes to me first and I pay the landlord.

If I opt for No.2, will my landlord be checked out before I receive the payment?

I ask because I have always paid my landlord cash. I mean literally cash on the doorstep. She has always been good to be and is a great landlord and I expect she takes cash because she is not declaring the income to avoid tax. Or it could be a stipulation on her household insurance or mortgage - I really don’t know.

I have not asked questions about this before now - mostly because I love the house we live in and the rent is low for the area. When I split from my partner, this house was and still is a godsend. We are happy here. All is well.

I'm sorry if this offends anyone. I live in a very small village and I don't want to rock the boat in any way. She is also a friend of my ex-partner and although I don't think she would talk, I want to avoid it. Times are stressful enough right now.

So, if I applied for UC to cover my rent, would she be made aware? Would the local authorities be alerted to the fact she may not be declaring her income? It could be pretty horrible if the authorities sent her a message and then this effects her - for whatever reason she wants rent as cash.

My ll doesn't know I get HB.
Wasn't on any of the forms /application.. Been here 5 years.
I hope you have the security of a proper tenancy though op. Cash in hand is a bit..

I really don’t think she would know x

No, I claimed housing benefit for years, even though I earned enough to rent the house, because I live in the south east where rent prices are high, I always claimed some HB. Landlord didn’t have a clue, came to me and I paid it

have you got a tenancy agreement? you will on claiming the housing element for UC have to provide the tenancy agreement for rent proof. if you've been paying your ll cash, you don't have a paper trail

universal credit don't inform your land led, they can't due to gdpr and data protection.

its actually quite hard to get u.c. to give rent to ll direct

cheap for a reason. EPC? gas safe? smoke alarms? how to rent? etc etc...

nothing wrong with taking cash as payments per se, but as you rightly suspect no not dodgy landlord does this in 2020. Who would want the extra work?

you can't be evicted for any reason at the moment, and the backlog of cases will be around a year when that is lifted. In short, do what you like.

Does your LL give you a receipt for your payments OP? How do you track or prove payment?

I don't know, but one thing that strikes me is how would you prove how much rent you are paying if it's in cash? Do you have a tenancy agreement you could show to UC? If not they might want the landlord to confirm what she changes.

Yes, you'd need to have a Tenancy Agreement as proof of rent. If you haven't, put a note on your Journal and take further advice from your Job Coach.

You can ask for the rent to be paid to your LL, but it's not a given.

UC will need to see a tenancy agreement.
It is better to have the rent paid to you,as it gets delayed if UC pay the rent.
It is likely however quite rightly that this will flag up that she is receiving income and not declaring it.

I am betting you don't have a proper tenancy agreement- in which case you can forget about making that claim.
We rented from a 'friend'. Couldn't claim anything. Friend also decided she wanted to move back into the property and gave us a week notice!

You're in a difficult situation. I think you need to have this conversation with your landlady.

You tell her you can only pay rent if you claim UC and pay her out of that. She will have to provide a tenancy agreement.
If she can't do that, then she will have to waive the rent until you have money coming in.

What you don't want to do is drop her in it because that will severely affect you and your family. She might move you out and sell up and you have no rights as a tenant because of your casual agreement.

I think there may be an option to say you are living in a "friends" house and you are paying a contribution to her. That will be classed as your Housing costs. You will not be able to say your are a tenant on the form. I do know you can't claim for any rent you might pay a partner or relative.

Your only other option is to claim UC and not put down any housing costs. You would be given a basic amount to live on, around £95 a week.

Just to add, if you're self employed and have filed your tax return this year, you should get help from HMRC in June. I think you'll have to tell your landlady you'll pay any arrears for "rent" out of that.
Without any paperwork or official tenancy you will not be able to claim the rent from UC.

No judgement here but anyone with casual cash agreements for work or housing is basically fucked with regards to getting government help. You have saved money by paying low rent in cash which has benefited you until now.

If your income is now zero and you don't have savings, you will qualify for some UC. On the part of the form asking for housing costs, you will have to put zero.

When I used to claim HB I had to get my landlord to fill out a form confirming how much my rent was, whether my rent included any extras like council tax etc and whether I was in arrears or not. I couldn't give them a tenancy agreement because the only one I had was dated 10 years ago and the council wanted something dated in the past so many months. The Government will want official confirmation of your rent, they won't just take your word for how much it is. So yes your Landlord will know about your benefit claim but other than filling out the form my landlord had to do nothing else and the money was paid to me. It takes five weeks for a UC claim to go through so if you may need to contact your landlord anyway if you won't be able to meet your next rent payment because of the delay.

if this is England, paying rent creates an assured shorthold tenancy and the OP has ALL the rights of any similar tenant, regardless of lack of any written agreement.

may not be able to get UC but can't be evicted.

Agree with PPs. You can claim UC. Landlord doesn't get notified but you will need proof of tenancy such as rental agreement. You may get asked for proof of monthly rent payments too (bank statements or receipts) but not always.

I wouldn’t tell her and go with option 2. The fact the you normally pay your landlord in cash maybe a problem for you as you would need to give her details too.

My tenant told me as a matter of courtesy. She just needed to show a copy of the contract to UC. No way I would have known otherwise.