Anyone else shocked by Mark Easton's report on BBC1 news about the plight of working families forced through no fault of their own to live in hostels/b & b's in Redbridge?

[Sandycarrots]

I was utterly shocked and horrified by this report. Families of four with at least one partner working, with small dc, forced to live in one-bedroom rooms in miserable council hostels or b&b's in Redbridge, with shared bathroom and kitchen facilitates. Fellow residents are often convicted felons and drug dealers.

These families are working but in the majority of cases have been forced to move out of private rented accommodation because landlords wanted to sell or re-develop. They then cannot afford or find equivalent accommodation close to their jobs and schools (presumably because of the housing shortage/rent rises).

One family of four (including a baby) was sharing one bed. One (understandably depressed) mother talked about the lengthy commute her daughter faced going to school every morning sinced they'd been forced to move.

How can this be happening in the UK in 2017? Why is more not being done?

I know many people were happy for the opportunity to purchase their council houses back in the 80s/90s but surely, combined with a rise in population, this was a crisis waiting to happen when that housing was not replaced by anything else?

Off to browse Shelter website

Why on earth did the gov’t start paying the benefit directly to people? If they had kept it like it was 1000s of families would be able to rent instead of being in a situation like this

Akire I missed your earlier point about insurance; perhaps that could be the focus of legislation?

Universal credit is why local landlords don’t touch tenants in receipt of it

Can’t see the point of trying to get mortgage companies to change legislation.....you’d still be faced with the issue of s landlord choosing only working tenants

money issues are pretty straightforward. it's the other part of life that sometimes is not depicted well on camera.
some people are willing to make some pretty drastic changes to improve their situation some aren't quite willing to change the status quo.

I don’t understand why there is this perceived problem with paying the housing benefit straight to the recipient as opposed to the landlord. It’s not rocket science....you receive it then you pay it the landlord. How hard is that?

Not shocked... but thoroughly depressed by it nonetheless.

inabizzle when you are on a low income if anything goes wrong it could be tempting to use rent money on the emergency expense. Even if that isn’t the case that is the perception. With rent paid directly to the the landlord they know the council isn’t going to use it for something else.

Of course a lot of tenants are very responsible and would prioritise rent.

I didn't se the report and it does sound sad

But in Redbridge there are a lot of homeslrss people on the streets

This pub is in an ok location and the rooms are big. Thy are warm

Other hostels in the area eg Courtney hotel are similar

I'm glad the council bought the pub it was at auction about 2yr ago

Much better than on the streets

Councils should encourage people to try to get a job offer outside of london / maybe pay for travel to interviews & outfits. Then arrange housing with sympathetic councils.

There's lots of spare council accommodation in the north and Wales and there are airports there / similar jobs.

You cannot invent homes
Or land in a tightly packed inner london borough

I think some sort of "moving fund" would be a good idea for those that want to take advantage of it, but whichever way you work it, the fundamental problem is that there isn't sufficient housing located in job hot spots.

Didn't see the report but I live in Dublin and the exact same issues are happening here. It is the plight of the working poor. The cost of living and rents has just got too high and for those on lower incomes it is completely unaffordable, couple this with a complete lack of social housing and affordable rental schemes many many families are being made homeless and ending up in hotel emergency accommodations. A lot of the issues here is that the rent supplement people are entitled to is no where near the rental price and people just simply can't afford to make up the difference. There are parts of Dublin where the average rent for a 3-bed house 7 to 8 km from the city centre is €2k plus yet the rent supplement may only be €900.

As was mentioned I do think the right to buy's are a major cause of this because social housing stock was being lost and not being replaced. Most new social housing being built now is through the private market. It is completely unsustainable and yet due to a lack of rental properties the prices are going to keep on rising

Agree Dulra When I lived in London in the late 80s, early 90s, there were people of all levels of income living on my street. London is becoming a ghetto for the wealthy and I feel that is not only morally wrong, but just a very wrong way to go about things. Every city needs plumbers, electricians, essential workers?

Also, have always thought that there should breserved" accommodation for nurses, firefighters, police, and other "reserved" professions such as hospital cleaners, rubbish collection staff, teachers, sewage and tube and transport staff and other essential staff so that they can live where they work in London and in other large cities.

Should have included airport workers in that list too!

Landlords used to like benefit claimants as the money was paid directly from the government each month and it was a secured tenancy. However when then housing benefit was capped the government decided to start paying directly to the claimant and the claimant either had to find rent for that amount (I assume this was supposed to force private landlords to cap their rents) or the claimant had to accept the cap and top up themselves to afford the rent.

Of course what then happened was many tenants started falling behind on their rents or stopped paying and pocketed the benefit money and of course private landlords started seeing them as a bloody liability avdcfidbt want to take the risk. Conveniently around the same time mortgages became much more difficult to come by so swathes of people that would have been buying their own homes, became renters and so the private landlords found themselves with a glut of tenants to choose from, the rents could stay high and benefit claimants were even less likely to find a house to rent.

The perfect storm basically.

What a shambles

www.scottishhousingnews.com/13377/universal-credit-recipients-to-be-given-direct-landlord-payment-option/#

well done Scotland, some people in government still have a conscience

also people claiming universal credit are given the option of it being paid fortnightly instead of monthly

Isn’t the idea that paying the money to the recipient not the landlord is intended to enable people to be responsible for their own finances?
Paying direct to the landlord seems almost parental, treating adults like children.

No the idea of paying rent directly to the renters and the not the landlord was a way for the government to side step the massive problem of extortionate private rents and the lack of social housing.

I think selling off council housing was the worst thing ever and I say that as someone whose parents and parents in law both bought theirs.

Lack of council/social housing coupled with ridiculously high rents is a disaster and is, obviously, going to get worse.

Also the fact that private landlords can really charge what they like doesn't help. Local housing allowance rates are often nowhere near actual rents so people have to find the extra money.

In my area the allowance for a 3 bed is £800 a month. You cannot get a 3 bed for that amount of rent. I have had a quick look and the cheapest 3 bed is £890 a month but then the next cheapest is £950. they then go up to over £1,000. The average in my area is around £1,100 to £1,200

Is mn in danger of getting to the root of the problem?

Any tenant can lose income, employed or not. Landlords can insure against non payment, and legal costs for eviction if needed. But that insurance has conditions, and often insists on a working tenant. General insurance and mortgages also often ( not always) insist on workers.

Eviction can also take up to a year. A tenant has an absolute right to stay in the property until the bailiffs come. That right is unaffected by whether they pay or not. ( or deal, or destroy).

These things could be changed. But not by landlords.

As an aside,Charge what you like is of course London only, elsewhere there are market forces.

When advising at Cab I got many people grumbling about the government/Council even when they came in about their broken hoover. I never had anyone complain about the housing benefit being paid direct to their landlord. That is anecdotal so some of these people existed but just weren’t coming to see us. I didn’t see a lot on the media of it as an issue.

Now vulnerable clients (sometimes with direct help from their landlord) try to get the government to pay rent direct to the landlord. However that needs organisation.

I think second home owners are on morally shaky ground.
I wish the govt would do more than pay lip service to preventing people making double profits (rent plus increasing house prices) from rental properties.
House prices are pushed way out of reach of young buyers, the rental market is desperately insecure and the gap between Alright Jack and Hand to Mouth gets ever wider.

There's not an awful lot an individual can do in the face of the perfect storm sleepfree eloquently laid out, but if all those who benefitted from the housing boom (as I did) refused to buy a second property, it would make a huge difference.
I would like to see investing in a rental property viewed with the same distaste as tax avoidance.

I don’t see the correlation between people who invest in second properties to fund their pensions ( due to extremely low interest rates) and people who cannot budget properly.
Surely paying rent/ mortgage is priority?

OK,let's implement weetybumps morality and force all private landlords to sell up. Not housing associations of course, they are perfect.

Where do all those people live? A mass sale would depress prices but not to those levels, and I suspect all the head up arse landlord haters wouldn't be too happy as their property also devalued.

Answer - stop right to buy, refurbish the thousands of empty homes.

SleightOfMind
I think second home owners are on morally shaky ground.

I've seen this or similar on every LL thread. If every BTL landlord sold their property - this country would be in deep shit. There would be no rental properties and the majority of people who rent cannot afford to buy. So tenants would be turfed out and the houses sat waiting for sale. Who's going to buy it? Where are all the homeless tenants going to live?

It's a nonsensical argument.