Most private rentals "unaffordable"

[TheVampireEmpusa]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15284892

Not surprised by this, wondered what others thought. Especially in relation to those struggling for cash and reliant on local housing allowance.

According to the BBC article, the cheapest rent is in Burnley, at £394 pm, but according to the LHA calculator the max anyone could get is £340, so still need to find £54 a month. Quite a lot if you are struggling already.

In many ways the Local Housing Allowance will help to break the cycle of Landlords EXPECTING the state to line their pockets - which is what they were doing before. The house price crash has made some landlords realise that if they become too choosy they won't have any tenants at all.

But what the LHA does do is prioritise working people over the unemployed - that may not be a morally bad thing, but the disruption it causes to children and families in need, should not be underestimated and will cost the taxpayer dearly in the long run.

But that's what Tories do - bring down the moral gavel on the poor and then wonder why there are so many dysfunctional families. Suddenly public services are leaching resources to fix it and the Tories blame 'excessive spending'. And so it goes on.

What do you mean by the councils 'claw back' housing benefit?

Well nowadays the trend is to pay the rent directly to the tenant whom then should pay the landlord. The other way is for the council to pay the landlord directly.

The advantage of being paid directly is that the landlord gets the money each month and doesn't run the risk of the tenant spending it. However, if it later comes out that for whatever reason the tenant should not have got housing benefit (or as much), then the council can claw back the difference from the landlord, even if he accepted the rent on good faith in the first place, had no reason to doubt he shouldn't and no input into the reason why the tenant shouldn't have been entitled. This can amount to a lot of money if it comes out months/a year later.

Understandably landlords don't want to take the risk. So they now often won't take people on housing benefit.

And as for house prices increasing. Yes over the long term this may have always been the case. And yes quite a few landlords will accept breaking even in the expectation that in the long run they will be quids in from the capital. However, house prices are not guaranteed to rise. Also that capital is tied up in the bricks & mortar. Without selling the house/remortgaging they cannot release the equity so you cannot expect them to run at a loss on a long term basis.

And as for the Tories bashing the poor again, oh please! Change the record! We had 13 years of Labour throwing money into the system and all that happened was we had more dysfunctional families.

'Landlords seem to have forgotten that while they are letting out their property to cover the mortgage' - but many like me, don't cover their mortgage. The rent we get is ploughed back into the property when repairs/new windows etc are needed, so the tenant doesn't have to wait. The mortgage is still paid out of earned income.

My tenants aren't HB, the mortgage doesn't allow it, and I don't expect the state to line my pockets at all.

The last government had 13 years to build more social and LA housing - I didn't see them make it a priority to do so. Why blame the Tories?

It is totally fair to blame the Tories for the affect that cuts to LHA will have as it is well known that it will make tens of thousands of people homeless. It is a completely irresponsible decision.

If they wanted to stop rental inflation freezing the rates at current levels would be a far more responsible option and unlikely to cause mass homelessness.

I'll say it again scaryteacher, you have NO IDEA if your tenants are on HB or not. They are not oblidged to tell you, and as long as your rent is still coming in how would you know?

Well now we're getting into the whole Tory vs Labour thing again.

Yes, the Tories (and LD's) have cut housing benefit. They are ultimately responsible for that decision. But when you put it in the context of the budget deficit I am guessing that Labour probably would have made a similar decision had they been in power.

Remember, the difference in the size of cuts between the coalition and Labour is only 5%. In other words, if we had a Labour government we'd have simply seen 5% less cuts overall.

I suspect the only major difference is we'd be moaning about slightly different cuts and still some people would be blaming the Tories.!

I'm blaming the current government because it's their decision not past government's.

My opinion on economic poilcy isn't really relevant, but there is a huge long list of things I would cut before I willingly made vulnerable people homeless. Lots of people in receipt in HB (particularly those receiving it long term) are either working in low wage jobs, elderly or disabled, so it is very difficult if not impossible for them to change their situation.

i currently private rent and top up my Hb but the LHa rates are dropping and i can not afford to carry on topping up .Let alone my LL has failed to maintain or do repairs but accept not all LL are like that .

I am fortunate due to an accident(9 irony there ) the council have steeped in and will get HA adapted house .
Otherwise I would have had to leave the area pull kids out of school and disrupt their education .Even the HB people here admit that the new cap for here is a joke and that they are expected to be overwhelmed with applications and homeless problems from next year

Who set up the right to buy scheme in the first place?

If it wasn't for right to buy there would be plenty of social housing.

Come on we all know that, you can't delete history and pretend it didn't happen.

What's happening now is that the Tories are right miffed that the Councils are forcing people into b&b and private housing and the government has to foot the bill. So in their absurdly short-termist manner they think that to cap the housing rent the taxpayer won't have to foot that bill any more.

And it's hurting private landlords, the ones they created so many of, the most, with a double whammy being left for the children whose home lives are cramped and disruptive.

The recession is a joint responsibility of both governments, but particularly Thatcher's (who opened up the financial markets and then pulled out checks and balances).

I actually don't think it's wrong to cap HB, but there has to be a safety net - and there just isn't with this ruling. All people can do is to move out to a slum area. Some will deal with it in other ways - stop buying food, or start stealing, or get cash jobs on the black, or move in with grandma/auntie if they are lucky. You will end up with some areas full of unemployed needy people. This will create a whole new raft of problems.

Who took the right to buy money and trousered the cash rather than spend it on new social housing? That was the point of the original scheme. Sell off the old stock that was costing more and more to maintain, freeing up councils and housing associations to invest in new property.

? Explain?

You're laying the blame on 'right to buy'. Right to buy generated millions in income for councils & saved them millions more in maintenance but they opted, for whatever reason, not to replace the housing stock.

Plus how far back do you go with the blame game? If you can go back to the Thatcher days then it's just as easy to go back a bit further and blame the Labour govt in the late 1970's for allowing unions to brink the country to its knees financially and set in motion the death of our manufacturing industry.

To me its bizarre to skip over the action or rather inaction of the last thirteen years of government and blame the one you'd rather blame. Right now the Tories have been in power for a year only. Time will tell if they get it right or not. But that blame game only lasts for so long.

I think the blame game is totally pointless. Each government comes in with the economy/country in a particular state and deal with it the way they choose to. It's meaningless to blame 20yo decisions for the current government's actions.

This is the wrong way to deal with it. It won't help tenants, it won't help landlords, it won't help mortgage lenders, it won't help the economy, it probably won't help the deficit as there are a lot of hidden costs in homelessness (ie, B&B costs at nightly rates, increased unemployment, even less spending to help promote growth in the economy)

So it's a pretty pointless answer all in.

'I'll say it again scaryteacher, you have NO IDEA if your tenants are on HB or not. They are not oblidged to tell you, and as long as your rent is still coming in how would you know?'

I do know as they have been thoroughly credit checked by my Letting Agent; and as the tenants keep their money off shore in the Isle of Man (as he is an ex Lloyds Name who skipped to the US when the Names/Syndicates lost a lot), and they have a business, I don't think they would be getting HB. My Letting Agent is very careful.

They are obliged to tell me as otherwise the property they live in isn't insured if they are in receipt of HB and I would sue them for any damage to the property. Simples.

They are not oblidged to tell you, no matter what your contract says and if you sued them you would lose.

You are taking a massive risk.

All of this is decided by politicians, who we vote in - the different governments have a big effect on all of this - but we need to be realistic about the history or we shouldn't be voting in the first place. How many millions did the councils make on selling off council homes Cogito? How many millions are needed to build new ones? Selling council homes only benefited the few people lucky enough to get their bargain. The profit went straight into their pockets - not back to the councils.

The clawing back of rents mentioned above is obviously a preventive measure so that unscrupulous (love that word) tenants aren't able to claim more to benefit the Landlord. The landlord should know exactly what their tenants are entitled to in terms of the LHA. It's a preventive measure and I can understand that. It's no pressure on Landlords because they should know what their tenants are entitled to (it's on the councils websites).

I think landlords should be ENCOURAGED to rent their properties out at relatively low rates that would qualify for housing benefit, by being offerred tax breaks.

In other words, tax the rental income from properties that are let out at, or above, current market rates, and let landlords keep the income below a certain threshold, in line with HB caps.

Why should landlords get a handout from the taxpayer exactly?

There is a huge shortage of affordable rental properties. Landlords are never going to start charging lower rents without some sort of carrot. It's not right of course, not right at all, but I cannot see how anything will change otherwise. Market forces mean landlords can continue to charge ludicrous rents because demand outstrips supply.

Firstly it's not a handout. It's not collecting tax to promote a desired activity which is a perfectly reasonable to go about things. The government tax LPG fuel less and there's no tax on hybrid cars. Are you suggesting these are handouts to the oil/car companies?

Secondly if the aim is to encourage landlords to take on more housing benefit tenants then you could argue they are in effect already getting a handout. So making it harder for landlords to operate surely is self defeating?

Government tax oil higher than gas because it damages the environment, not because they want to hand money to the car companies.

If landlords don't take people on HB it is their loss, nobody else's - why should the taxpayer collect less tax in order to keep landlords in the comfort zone?

La Weasel - why am I taking a risk? If the tenants are lying to me (and given what I know of them, I doubt it), then they lose their home as they will be given notice. If anything happens to my property, and my insurance is void because they have lied, then I would happily attempt to recover any damages to my property from them. I don't see that I would lose at all.

This is precisely why people will not rent to those who may be on HB, as the risk to the landlord is too high. I don't see why not taking people on HB is a landlord's 'loss', as there are plenty of private tenants who will rent.

"If the tenants are lying to me (and given what I know of them, I doubt it)"

But you've also said...

"he is an ex Lloyds Name who skipped to the US when the Names/Syndicates lost a lot"

To me that reads that when the time came to live up to the responsibilities that he signed up for, paying out when times go bad, he ran off to America. So he's fine with things are working his way, but when it goes bad his word counts for absolutely nothing and he'll run away rather than be honest.

Of course I might have misread that, but if I'm right why on earth do you think you can trust him? Lloyds are much bigger and more powerful than all of us put together and he thought nothing of stabbing them in the back...