The scandal of the state of private renting in the UK

[cruikshank]

Housing benefit going to private landlords costs the country £9.3 bn a year, yet 1 in 3 private rentals are substandard. Is this a natural consequence of turning over responsibility for the provision of shelter to a largely unregulated private market?

Article here: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/back-to-rising-damp-one-million-rented-homes-in-private-sector-are-substandard-9039201.html

My house (the rented one) was terrible when I moved in, GratefulHead. One of the previous tenants had a dog. There's wooden floors which are heavily scratched, the grass in the garden had been destroyed and it was filthy

A 10k cap is unworkable. The prices of food, gas, electricity and water are just so high.

This recent article on pent up demand PROVES that there is no solution to the homes shortage other than FIRM polices to build over 200,000 homes a year, recommended in that Barker Report.

“Two million first-time buyers frozen out of home ownership”

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/borrowing/mortgages/11063233/Two-million-first-time-buyers-frozen-out-of-home-ownership.html
“Almost two million first-time buyers have been blocked from owning their own home since the financial crisis struck, startling new figures show.”

“Research by Genworth, a mortgage insurer, found the lack of mortgages for borrowers with a small deposit, coupled with the high rates charged on such deals, has excluded 1.8 million from home ownership since 2007”.

“While the availability of small deposit loans has improved over the last year due to the Government’s Help to Buy scheme, the cost remains prohibitive.”

As you say itsmylibrarybook lots and lots of LHA is paid directly to LLs through council leasing it as temporary accommodation. Council need these properties and what people don't know is that the LHA paid is significantly higher than regular private renters are entitled to. Arguably council could still pay for these properties and call it something else, but if it comes under LHA then tenants are obliged to pay some/all of the rent themselves if they have means.

I am not saying no landlords take HB people but not most. I am 100% sure the two doctors who lease my daughter's flat are not in receipt of benefits and they are just the kind of tenants we would hope letting agents (paid those agents £3000 already and counting so you hope one of the things you pay for is all the checks) would find - the young professionals with two good salaries ( no children, no pets etc, out most of the time). I don't remember 15 years ago it being too different when we let our two flats out either.

I am sure the picture varies around the country and indeed there are certainly landlords in London who take HB.
People in this country did not starve before there as housing benefit. If you remove the distortion from the market which is HB then rents find their own level and people cope and it is actually better not worse for those less well off. No political party is proposing abolition of housing benefit so no one need worry about that. I checked my own benefits entitlement yesterday and it's a staggering £25k a year !!!! just if I sat down and decided never to work again. I think that is amazingly generous (and I do appreciate that those on £13k a year full time minimum wage supporting children on that may well be working and on housing benefit and tax credits.

I'm with Greengrow, as a landlord I avoid housing benefit tenants like the plague. Apart from multiple issues with the way a lot of them treat my property and furnishings, the local authority are never quick or even on time to pay the bloody thing and any changes take FOREVER to go through because of bureaucratic red tape and bollocks policies. Where we are the housing benefit is paid direct to landlord and not tenant but its paid when the local authority bloody well like it seems.

There may be a few good tenants out there in receipt of housing benefit but I have yet to come across one and I don't have the time to weed out the good from the bad so as a blanket rule I advertise as no DSS. I do however allow pets (within reason) and I don't care whether you smoke or not so long as you take it outside and I can be consulted before any decoration takes place but I wont veto it immediately.

Lovely comments Lally...I am currently on HB (partial) and funnily enough I don't trash the place I rent . Don't think I cannot appreciate that some tenants do this as I had a tenant who did exactly that.....funnily enough she was not a HB claimant.

And Greengrow, if you think that living on benefits is such a breeze.....given you have checked this out then I await your assessment of the reality when you decide to give it a go....after all if you will be so well off why bother working eh? Bloody benefits system....far far too generous isn't it?

BTW....much of that lovely £25k will be HB. So not cash in your pocket.

Having had to live on full benefits for a period of time I can assure you it isn't a breeze. To add to the difficulties the world is full of people like you sniffing and turning your nose up at us.

Thankfully apart from a small amount of housing benefit I no longer have to claim. I feel like an acceptable citizen once again....rather than the "scrounger" that you and others assume.

"I'm with Greengrow, as a landlord I avoid housing benefit tenants like the plague."

How utterly charming!

Once again Lally, you probably have had LHA claimants without knowing a thing about it.
I'm a model tenant, my LL loves me, but I still wouldn't tell him I get a LHA top up.
Although once I increase my work hours in sept I might not get any! Happy days. I aspire to being able to afford my rent without subsidy :)

It's just market forces, not us disliking HB tenants. If you could choose two young doctors with no children to let your place who are out most of the day or people in receipt of benefits probably with children and payment by a local authority (or under the new universal credit from the tenant if they have not over spent it ) why would anyone choose HB tenants?

I don't agree that a £10k benefits cap would not work. Where my family are from rents are about £500 a month (North East). If I had to move hundreds of miles to find work away from family to keep my family I don't see why benefits claimants cannot be required to move where rents are much lower.

We could all move, but then who would do the low paid work in London and the south east? Even working families in the south east can easily top £10k in benefits if they have several children. You wouldn't only be evicting the unemployed, but the low paid too.

www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/sep/01/enfield-experiment-housing-problem-radical-solution
Interesting reading. Seems plenty of landlords don't dislike housing benefit at all, especially when they can charge £85 per night to councils for emergency accommodation. The whole system is utterly rotten. Since councils have a duty to house certain homeless people under housing law, removing or capping LHA at an unrealistic level would be completely impossible.

The two properties he has bought are former council flats. To alleviate its housing crisis, the local authority is buying back, with public money, homes it was forced to sell at a steep discount under Thatcher’s right-to-buy scheme

This line encapsulates...well so much.

I agree that sometimes it's best go where the work is and where rents are lower. I did exactly that 15 years ago and it was good but then I had a child who turned out to be autistic. I moved back to the expensive south east so that 8 could be nearer family who give me much needed support.

I could (if not working) take a £10k benefits cap and move north where rents are cheaper.

It would though end up with the loss of my whole support network plus the issues of education support for my son.

I am just ONE reason that a £10k benefits cap cannot and will not work. I am far from alone.

I am able to work simply because I have a support network nearby to help me. They are called "family".

And do answer the questions about how the expensive areas would cope without low paid workers. I am interested to know what you think will happen.

The other thing is of course that the places where housing is cheap will become places where housing is expensive if enough people move there. If the govt wants the HB bill to go down (and I think it should) then the only thing to do that guarantees this is to cap rents. Other countries manage this perfectly well so I don't see why we shouldn't. Indeed, we ourselves managed it perfectly well until Thatcher came along.

Oh and I wouldn't be too sure about renting to doctors, either. The single ones tend to be heavy drinkers, have a 'party' lifestyle and don't really give a shit about damage they do because they don't view where they live as a home, unlike families. Still, your call, I guess, as to which people you are going to honour with the privilege of paying your investment vehicle for you.

What I'd like to know, is where did the income from the sale of the council housing stocks go? Did Maggie sell them off in a plan to increase council housing? If so, why hasn't anyone bothered to do some digging to work out where the money went?

They went back into the central govt revenue pot, afaik, although I'm happy to be corrected. Where it went from there is anyone's guess - just split up amongst regular spending including I would hazard a guess that massive PFI contracts with Thatcher/Major/Blair/Brown/Cameron's mates would see a fair whack of it taken care of, given that lots of govt revenue generally goes to these worthy causes.

And no, there was never any plan to increase council housing with the proceeds - LAs were specifically not allowed to do this, that much I do know.

Thank you. What a waste

Fucking criminal, isn't it? Both our heritage and our future, gone in one.

At the moment councils are only allowed to reinvest 30% of the money they gain from selling properties under the right to buy scheme, the rest iirc goes back to central government. The green party are currently proposing new legislation to allow councils to borrow against their current housing stock enabling them to build more houses. I'm not sure if that's just for Brighton and Hove where the greens run the council or if it will be introduced nationally but that will make a huge change imo. I'll post a link if I can find it.

Thanks for that Lally .....cheers. I do hope your h doesnt view poorer ppl in the same way. considering whats been in the news lately

My DH is six months away from his 65th birthday. Does this include pensions too. We are in receipt of HB due to him having emphysema ischemic heart disease,angina and arthritis.

And i would be interested to know what landlords on this thread would do about the situation described in this link.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2141496-GAS-SAFETY-CHECK-to-think-it-shouldnt-be-this-hard-for-them-to-provide-a-decent-service