Anyone else read The Sunday Times article about mum of 4 paid £90,000 per year housing benefit....

[findtheriver]

Yes, that's right, 90k of tax payers money in rent on a 5 bed house in Kensington. I was reading Sunday Times online - maybe someone else is clever enough to do the link?

Have to say it seems a fecking joke to me... can some explain how it's good use of taxpayers money to fund this?? A house which would be waaaaaaaaay beyond the reach of those very same taxpayers who have no choice but to fund it?

And apparently the tenant is whinging about possible harrassment from the media ... well tough shit, thank god it's out in the open and we can see what a scam the system is!

It's not a good use of taxpayers money because as others have said, council housing has been sold off and councils are now dependent on contracts with private landlords - who are guaranteed long lets (as far as I understand). Any privately let accomodation in Kensington is going to cost a bomb. But councils still have to house vulnerable people and it is right that they do so.

I agree its a ridiculous amount. Rents in London are generally ridiculously high IMO.

Not sure the answer is for councils to refuse to pay HB at the going rate though - where would people live then?

They really need to build some more social housing, but there is no way that will ever happen in areas of London where real estate is so expensive. I wonder if they should be able to house people in other boroughs. If children aren't settled in school I can't really see why not.

I think that's the key to this tatty, but of course the danger with that is that council tentants then get housed in the cheapest parts of London (or wherever they are) and by cheapest read crappiest, with poor quality housing and crime everywhere. There's a risk of creating ghettos.

They should move them out to the outer zones where I have to slum it where it's much much cheaper to rent.

I see what you mean. You wouldn't have to pay £90000 pa to rent a house in Wandsworth just across the river, but I suppose the temptation would be to stick everyone in Elephant and Castle, or Newham (nothing against those areas btw, just that they are relatively cheap for London).

Oh Xenia I can't imagine you slumming it!!

Agree re. ghettos.

Its just not gonna work to dump all the poor people in estates on the outskirts.

Exactly. It's really hard to not think exactly the same as Xenia, but really councils can't be seen to have a policy where they actively dump tenants in shit hole housing in the crappiest parts of London because it's cheap. There would (rightly) be uproar. The first child to die in some Godawful flat in Bermondsey, when they could have lived in Kensington and the Daily Mail would start a witch hunt.

There's a little terraced house in a road where we bought our first place just before we had our older daughter in 1984 where the 3 bed houses (london outer zone 5) not that far from me cost £250,000 (or did before the property crash). They cost 3 x our joint salaries which were about £7500 each in 1983 - about £40k. Now they cost about 3 x 2 lots of the salary my daughter will earn in Sept £35k except interest rates are much lower. So no difference there but she may not want to live in zone 5. But that's her fault of course but it does mean there is affordable housing on residential streets in reasonably nice parts of London. It may well take you an hour to commute to work but that doesn't kill anyone.

So why not move those people from Kensington out a few zones to here. If they don't like that then they should get a job and ensure they can afford to rent in Kensington. If they don't like it then that's just tough if they want our taxes to pay for them. And it is not the worst bit of London in outer suburbs by any means. I suspect there's much less crime out here too because there isn't so much conspicuous wealth.

Dh & I used to live in Pimlico (in central London) in a quite nice 2 bed flat, top (4th)floor.
We both worked and had to work to pay the mortgage.
Dh has sensibly invested in shares & things from a young age so he was able to afford the deposit (was before we were married, was his flat officially).

Opposite us a family with 3 kids lived in a 1st floor flat - the most desirable floor to live on as it has balconies in that area.
Neither parent worked.
I was a teacher and had summer holidays and would be sitting in our flat (no outdoor space) in the summer and could see them sitting on their balcony drinking beer all day.
Their kids would hang out on the balconies and drop things or spit on passers-by.
They also had a dog that would get left outside for hours on end and bark itself silly & drive us all mad.

I can't see how it is fair for a non-working family to be given a flat that most working people could not afford in a nice area.

At the same time, if we aren't careful we could end up 'ghetto-ising' (not a word i'm sure!) the non-workers in our society by housing them all in one area which inevitably would be cheaper/crappier, and become even more so.

no easy answer.

250K isn't affordable!

£90k a year in rent is completely unaffordable. Even if she did take a job its likely a significant part of the rent would be met by housing benefit anyway.

If she were to start a job at minimum wage today, she would still get nearly all the rent paid by HB. She would need to earn an enormous wage, far above average, to be able to pay the rent on that house herself.

They should be moved to areas the rest of us find tolerable to live in. Also I have rarely not had children sharing bed rooms. I share a room until I was 14. My twins share a room. We're a big family so you just have to accept that. It doesn't kill anyone and makes you more tolerant of others.

So- OK

Look at it from this angle.

Say there's a family of 6, and dad dies. Suddenly. Mum isn't in work and can't find any, so she needs HB and a house as their (as amny will find) existing landlord won't take HB.

What- do we say bugger off then, move to another area and take the kids wh have recently been bereaved rfrom their schools, support network, possible extended family?

Because that is what it's effectively saying to say they should be in specific areas isn't it?

There's a vast range of reasons to claim.

Non working just means that- there are exceptionally valid reasons in many cases.

I'm not on HB but if something happened to Dh would MN really want me to shift my 4 kids, 2 special needs, into another area where I know nobody, the boys would have to change schools (one a spcial unit and that would traumatise the autistic boys dreadfully) and literally exist alone through not having any adult to talk to or see? Taht's what it would mean, this village where we rent is (for the area, certainly not the country) expensive.

Another example- wage earner becomes disabled and needs to give up work. So LA says move then. And family leave not only home, but entire support and care system they ahve. Costing the Government far more in caring costs / etc etc.

Thing is, local councils will only take resonsibility for housing you in an area if you can prove a local connection to that area.

You can't just go, ooooh Kensington's nice and posh, I'll get the council to house us there please (the article does state they were placed in the property rather than chose it).

They must have local connections, for example children at school, many years living there, or possibly other very pressing reasons, ie escaping domestic abuse,
for the council to have placed them there. Its really not as simple as saying they should be moved out of the borough.

I'm sure we could all cite examples of really deserving cases, where tragedy strikes a family, or there are really exceptional reasons why a family need to be housed in a very specific locality- eg a child with special needs which require a specialist school.

However, this is not the case with the majority of claimants. Xenia and JustKeepSinging sum it up - why should the tax payer be expected to pay for other people to live to a standard that the majority cannot afford?

I can see that councils have a responsibility, but surely things have swung too far? It's ludicrous when councils have to give far greater consideration to claimants than your average, non-claiming working family would get. As xenia says, what the hell is wrong with sharing a bedroom? My kids did, for many years. As a child I lived in a very small 3 bed house where my siblings shared a small bedroom and I slept in a cupboard boxroom. And as for being housed in a specific borough, for most people that's not actually necessary. It would be more cost effective to house a family in a cheaper area and bus the kids into school for free every day if continuity of schooling is the issue.

At the end of the day, many people have to live quite a distance from work/schools and fund the commute themselves,simply because many areas in this country are unaffordable to your average working family.I think that fact in itself is another issue: it's not a good situation for the country to be in. But propping people up through the taxpayer to this extent is not the answer.

You could probably rent our entire street for £90k a year .
Our annual rent is less than 1 month's worth of that place

It's because of how much money Kensington council have thats all. My friend lives there and has a council flat and gets alot of money from housing benefit etc.

That may well be why but it doesn't make it ok does it?!

I can't see how it's cost effective, or good for the general morale of the people contributing economically in the UK to have this kind of situation.

but not everyone not contributing is a baddioe ftr

its good for my moral as a contributor to know that if things go tits up then we don't have to lose everyting right down to our very community. because the vworst- death, disability, in my Dad's case lost pension fund- can happen to almost anyone

Oh I agree with that Peachy - I haven't said that everyone who isn't contributing is 'bad'. And I can see that there are some very specific cases where a family may need to be in a specific locality. But these are the exceptions. It simply can't be right that public funds are squandered in this way - and it is squandering. There are solutions - not quick fix ones, but in the longer term, social housing needs to be vastly increased. And it's not one solution - there needs to be a broad approach. People should be housed in cheaper areas and provided with subsidised public transport if they need to work/go to school slightly further away. Children should be expected to share bedrooms rather than people being able to continuously produce children and just be given bigger housing at the expense of the taxpayer.

It cannot be right that the tax payer is having to fork out for a lifestyle that they cannot afford themselves - I challenge anyone to justify that. I'm sure we all know of people who have limited their families to what they can afford to support - I know of a few friends who would have loved one more child but couldnt afford the housing or childcare. So how can it be right that they are in effect paying for other people to have this choice?

children are expected to share rooms

i have no idea why this woman isn't, but I know for a fact as I looked into it that my 4 would get 2 beds to share (same as now), and thats despite 2 being sn as our la dropped the extra points for sn thing.

i've also worked with famillies of 5 kids in 3 bed houses: actually I supported one as they were upgraded fron teir 2 bed, they were ecstatic

what happens to the cheaper places then? they get labelled as crap and the homes owned in that area see prices bottom out; landlords will remove houses from mmarket or declare no dss; schools wil become geographically poor or rich to a greater extent

it will creat a ghetto cultur that will cause far mor social problems than it solves, and no dobt cost morein the enfd

because this woman is not typical, she wouldn't be reported on otherwise would she?