Do you feel bad for receiving a ‘high amount’ of UC?

[AnotherNameChange1233]

Last week I went to my local Children’s Centre and attended a Citizen’s Advice group that runs once a week.

As long as you’re registered to the Children Centre, you can turn up for any advice needed. Some people want privacy so they go into a side room with the advisor and some parents may help other parents if they’ve been in a similar situation/can offer the correct advice. It’s also like a social group for parents, hopefully you get the jist of it.

On the table I was sitting on, one parent was trying to get her head around UC as she didn’t quite understand LHA rates, how DLA impacts UC and what elements she would be entitled too. Anyway, I started speaking about my experience with DLA, UC and offered to log into my UC account if it was easier for her to look at the breakdown visually (instead of me talking and complicating things). I also got her postcode to explain how the LHA rates work and etc.

Another parent suddenly spoke up and said, ‘don’t you feel bad for claiming that much money?’ She wasn’t argumentative or anything and we had an interesting conversation but it made me think, are people like me supposed to feel bad when receiving a certain amount?

She also said something like (I’m paraphrasing here as I can’t remember it exactly word for word) if people can’t afford their rent then they should move to a more affordable area. I raised the point of Landlords purchasing properties as part of the Right to Buy scheme, charging extortionate rent which taxpayers then pay through UC. Surely, it’s more a problem that there isn’t affordable rental properties in many areas.

For full transparency, I’m going to mention all of my UC amounts and wonder if people that claim similar, feel bad?

• 292 single person allowance
• 1450 private rent
• 539 for 2 children
• 293 for 2 disabled children
• 589 childcare costs
• 189 carer

£216 is deducted from my entitlement due to my wages. That means my UC amount is £3133. My wages is £771. I receive two amounts of MRC through DLA which is £580 all together.

Now that I’ve written it down, it seems like a whole lot of money but the costs that come with raising one of my disabled children (the other still costs a lot, but not as much as the other) is through the roof due to their issues

It is a huge amount of money. Disabled children or not.
But not your fault as such, you are only claiming what the law allows you to claim.
And I work full time, get less than you do in UC and for what it's worth I have a child with additional needs.
We desperately need reform.
(I would be interested to know what your childrens' disabilities are and what extra monetry costs they incur)

Little tip for the future: Keep your finances to yourself. Your private business should not be broadcast to all and sundry. Trying to be a martyr nearly always ends in tears.

Do you think tax avoidance accounts feel gadabout making rich people richer and poor people poorer? In simple terms that is what happens

On page 1, I responded a question where someone asked me if my children were able to live independently. I said,

One child definitely won't be able to live independently. The other may possibly be able too however they'll still need a huge input from social care. I honestly don't have a plan for the future as I just about make it to the end of the day to be honest! It's something that I definitely need to think about.

So the poster you responded too most likely read my comment at the time

But just living in a super expensive area and putting in a high claim shouldn't be allowed in the system, in my opinion.

My area has been gentrified in the last 10 years and rental prices are through the roof. Do you advocate splitting families and communities?
Prices go up - the poorest will have to go elsewhere.

I luckily work and own my own home but if I didn't and was forced out of my home town I would lose my social network, my family, my community, my sense of belonging, my entire support network would crumble.

I guess I'm a bit hard-nosed in my answer to that, as I have had to move away from support, social network, 'sense of belonging' etc to live where I can afford. It's not the end of the world and you just crack on. I don't really agree with people having an entitlement to live in an expensive area just because they grew up there. Areas change - that's just how it is. It's not perfect but working people adapt so why shouldn't people on benefits?

Again- why are landlords benefiting from claimants getting uc for rent any more than anyone else? Landlords don’t care if tenants get uc or not (in fact they would usually prefer to have tenants not on uc as they consider they are more reliable). Rent is a cost like childcare or food or utilities. The fact that uc goes to pay it for some people isn’t a benefit to landlords, it’s a benefit to tenants who would otherwise be homeless.

My children are away for two days, every six months. I’ve been writing emails, gathering evidence, watching Baby Reindeer and wasting my time on MN. Is that okay with you mum? If I barely responded, I’d have loads of posters saying it’s a wind up because I haven’t come back to the thread. I can’t win!

It was two-fold.

1. Yes, on one hand it was to give (especially, long-term) social housing tenants the opportunity to own their own home they could do up to their liking and take individual pride in, rather than have no route out of 'life-time' rent.
   (Simultaneously, transferring the councils' costly responsibity to maintain these.)

2. IMPORTANTLY, the revenue from selling off older homes was supposed to be put straight back in towards replenishing a revolving supply of newly built council homes.

Thus, if the initiative was followed-through as promoted, the drop in supply shouldn't have ever occurred and been the harsh reality.
That's where it tragically failed.
Notion was honourable - execution was woeful.

And here we are still paying the consequences (and gov not learning) decades later.

and of course the reason the downstairs council flat costs less is complex but largely because it’s rented from the council who were given central government funds to build it many years ago and so don’t have the costs of a private landlord who may have bought their property on the open market last year.

No landlord will get very far telling the bank the mortgage is too much

That's the point!! 👏 the landlord can't afford it, get out of the game! Sell it to the council/social housing and cut their losses!! Council are charging 425 downstairs!

Landlords selling up due to anti landlord laws and policies is the main contributor to rising rents and scarcity of rental properties.

Boohoo - they've price gouged long enough to have created the problem in the first place.

And lol at the “brainless” comment.

Don't take it too personally, it was mostly aimed at the collective coven berating a single mum for apparently being an unscrupulous benefits claimant.

But defending private landlords doesn't really help.

Very convenient that you've started a thread on the topic of benefits when there' already been loads and it's been a highly emotive topic in the news all week, You are just winding people up.
With two child free days in six months I'd have thought you would have better things to do than start a thread asking if you are getting too much benefit money. Bizarre.

I'll never understand all the policies aimed at punishing landlords - the cost just goes straight onto the tenant. Landlords don't end up out of pocket for any of it! Also when some sell up, the council aren't filling the void by buying those properties or building affordable housing so what's the point of driving landlords out of being landlords altogether? So people who can afford to buy snap up the houses and renters have nothing?

Anyway - tangent really. Just more Tory idiocy.

It depends but open councils were not allowed to build more houses with the funds and they also had to sell them at a large discount so couldn’t always replace them.

it is absolutely wrong that we haven’t built enough homes for decades. That has led to the huge rise in house prices. Simple scarcity.

councils also don’t tend to be very good at building homes in a cost effective manner but private contractors can do it for them. We need to urgently build a lot more houses where they are needed and stop blocking building.

Some people aren't as resilient. They need familiarity, continuity, routine, friends and family nearby. Also, they would have less (if any) choice as to where to go, or when to go. What if their kids are in school? The children are uprooted too.

I think people should be able to stay in their communities if they wish to. People are stronger together. I know lots of people who have set up home elsewhere but it's not for me, and not for many people who like where they feel they belong.

I get where you’re coming from on this. Personally, I’m not against the idea of moving to a cheaper area with cheaper rental prices. I’m more worried about moving to a different Local Authority where everything is already set up with social care, ehcps and everything else. I’m not sure how moving to a different borough will impact everything but I can imagine it’s a long process (it may not be but I don’t exactly have good experiences with the Local Authority)

Its the landlord that dictates the rent though, not the tenant.

Flip your argument on its head...why should someone in OPs position face homelessness every time their landlord hikes the rent and displaces them to a cheaper area?

The landlord holds all the power here over potentially really quite vulnerable people. Its very clear we need more social housing and thats a failing of the government, but it's the landlords who are rinsing the government who should be displaced by any new measures, not the tenants.

I work full time in a senior role public sector-type job that requires a PhD and my take home is only slightly higher than yours, and I live in London. You shouldn’t feel bad, but as someone supporting a family of 4 on my single wage with no entitlement to even family allowance, tax credits or anything to help with COL it does seem the system is extremely unfair to those of us who are able and chose to work.

If market changes resulted in me being unable to pay my mortgage, I would fully expect to be the one held accountable for that and lose my home. Therefore so should landlords who took on too much of a risk.

This is the internet. If I wanted to start a thread saying, ‘what do you think about UC?’ then I would have done so. There’s no police here. I’m not going to face any consequences by starting a thread about UC on MN so why would I come here under false pretences makes no sense really.

As you said, I rarely have any free time caring for my children. Hence why I’m only coming onto MN now about something that happened last week. Not that I have to explain myself but one of my children is usually awake between 10pm - 4am. My body clock is set up so that I don’t sleep between this time. If I want to spend my time on MN (which I would have done anyway!) then I will. That’ll be my last post to you. I don’t know why you’d carry on posting, wasting your own time when you think I have ulterior motives. Strange

Yeah except people who suffer when landlords sell up are renters who will have to pay even more rent for an ever dwindling stock of rental properties. Landlords haven’t created high rents or housing costs but pushing landlords out of the market has made rents higher and property more scarce. Now many people (especially on uc) simply can’t get rental accommodation and end up homeless or placed outside London.

how much do you think it would cost the taxpayer to buy a property that likely has a market value of about £500k or so and rent it for £425 a month? And how do you expect councils and housing associations to afford that? Honestly, you haven’t thought this through have you.

It would be lovely if there were easy answers and we could all just name call anyone who doesn’t go along with our mad theories. But sadly that’s not real life

You can only do this if it doesn't bring you below the hourly rate of minimum wage I think so may not be possible.

Most LL's do not want to rent to the unemployed or people on low income. They are forced to rent to the unemployed / UC claimants by law.

I don’t think Landlords are the bad guys here. They were just smart to take advantage of a scheme like Right to Buy. Like UC claimants, it’s not us that designed the system and I’m not against the benefits system changing. The government however, will probably not do one thing about the housing situation. I don’t see how it’s feasible for Landlords to keep on increasing rental prices, UC to keep on covering it and there’s still hardly any social housing being built

have a look a Vienna as a city that works with social housing, due to there b being smooch social housing private rents are low. Public transport is Also good and its a rated place to live with many renting instead of buying

Tory idiocy.

That is indeed the crux of it. Its so clear (especially from all the propaganda this past 10 days or so in the news) that they are presenting the narrative they want the masses to lap up about people on benefits getting too much etc. All the while their monies are in off shore accounts and the like. They're just diverting peoples attention from the real problems and the real solutions and causing the kinds of arguments in this thread. It's really quite depressing.