How can the government get away with doing this to renters?

[winterwonder1]

So housing benefit if being frozen next year - yet rents are rocketing (because of the increased pressures on BTL taxation and mortgages, among other issues). Surely vulnerable people will become homeless because of this?

Housing benefit payments to be frozen again in 2025 | Kidderminster Shuttle

I don't know of a painless solution, but I do think housing benefit has allowed private rent prices to spiral, and prevented any downward adjustment (during COVID). I remember before the current system of housing benefit and that wasn't perfect either - private rental properties were frequently much crappier than they are now, but I can see that there needs to be a limit.

Of course there needs to be much more social housing. Housing benefit (and UC) exists to shift provision of social housing from government to private landlords. If the government chooses to reduce the premium being paid for taking on that role, they need to be prepared to take provision back into their own hands.

Will the landlords not just have to lower their rent as if the benefit doesn't rise the money isn't there?

I have to rent, yet my mortgage on a 100% mortgage (I have no deposit) would be less than what I'm paying in rent.

@motherofdragons79 mortgage might be less than the rent but as a tenant you have no property maintenance costs. The landlord has all the repairs and maintenance as well as paying the government income tax of up to 69.5% on the rent received. It’s not all cash in the landlord’s pocket.

Around here, renting is more than a mortgage, plus much less secure.

Being a landlord is a business. What else would you call it?

Stop private landlords and you create millions of homeless.

No, there'll just be even more homelessness.

The private sector is suitable for some but not for everyone.

The problem is that the money has to come from somewhere and no one can afford to pay it

I don't know the answer but this is a symptom of a fundamentally dysfunctional system

We should not need long term benefits for healthy people- the minimum wage shoudl be enough to survive

There needs to be more landlords like me and those in my close family who charge a reasonable rent to just cover the expenses they need to cover and as a result keep tenants for decades in some cases

My investment is the property itself. I don't want to earn unnecessary money and have to pay more tax on it. It's a long-term thing for me and I wish more landlords were the same.

We need to build a huge amount of one and two bedroom properties and decant social housing blockers into them. I know so many single people/couples hogging 3 bedroom social/council houses for decades as their kids grew up and left home 20 years ago.

This. My parents were the sole occupants of a 3-bed council house for 25 years until they died, and my 85 year old MIL is still living alone in the spacious 2-bed council house she moved into in 1961 when her first 2 children were tiny. She hasn't had any of her children living there for around 25-30years.

While I realise that it would awful for her to have to move at her age, it wouldn't be as awful as it is for a family stuck in shitty temporary accommodation, possible a B&B, because they can't get social housing.

The issue with building more social housing is the ridiculous planning regulations. There are so many weird and wonderful clauses to meet. I work with a small social housing provider and we have been trying for nearly 5 years to build a small scheme. The council keep changing the goal posts.

To speed things up grants should be given to social housing providers to purchase empty properties, bring them up to standard and rent them out. There are so many empty properties doing nothing. Pushing private landlords out by increased taxes and legislation is actually making the situation much worse. Huge numbers have sold up and nothing has replaced these properties.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect older people in houses to move into small flats. Moving costs a fortune and they may not have a support system in a different area.

I don't agree with housing benefit. So freezing it is a good idea. It has contributed to property proce inflation.

Freezing it does not mean the landlords charge less. It just means that someone on an already low income has to pay more towards their rent.

If you don't agree with housing benefits, how do you think people who are ill/disabled/out of work should pay their rent?

This is the idea, yes

But surely they will just to rent to people who can pay the higher rents, and people on housing benefits will be made homeless?

But that will never happen. Almost 9 million people rent their home in the UK, and 2.5 million receive housing benefit. 2 million of that 2.5 million are in social (local authority or housing association) properties. So there are only half a million in receipt of housing benefit renting privately, out 7 million or so privately rented properties.

It’s just political posturing and nonsense to say that the taxpayer is ‘subsidising’ landlords, as over 90% of them don’t receive any income from housing benefit anyway, or to say it’s caused house price inflation, as it’s a small proportion of the total. So all that will happen is those on benefit will find it much harder to find anywhere to live.

Our housing infrastructure is dysfunctional and unbalanced. I've discussed it so many times over the dinner table and these are some of the ideas we've had. Ban airbnb in residential areas/suburbs. Empty homes owned by investors as assets, should have a yearly charge slapped on them equivalent to ten times the council tax of the area they are in, this charge is easily avoided if the home is rented out. Stop right to buy on all council properties. Replace the leasehold system with commonhold. I imagine the reality is that there is no easy solution and probably every 'fix' has unintentional consequences.

Exactly it will simply increase homelessness

The answer is not tinkering with the private sector too much, its to ensure there is enough social housing, we need to build build build, it really is that simple

But as others have already said on this thread, there are barriers in terms of requirements so schemes never get off the ground, people dont want social housing near them so they object, and 'we cant afford it'.

Except we're wasting billions on temporary accommodation, causing social and health and criminal costings to go through the roof because people cant live safe, consistent lives where they can access education, community, health care and live in one place.

Totally backward, totally short sighted, costing society and the treasury way way more that it should.

Imagine how big the benefit bill will be when generation rent retire (or can’t work anymore). It will be massive. Add to that the hole in the care bill as they won’t have assets to sell to pay for it.

I don't think that figure for Housing Benefit (HB) is representative of what's actually happening.

HB has been closed to new applications from working age people since 2019. Help with rent for the working age cohort is delivered through Universal Credit. Tax Credits end this year and most working age claimants, other than those on long term sick, have been migrated to UC. The group on HB will be pensioners plus those on legacy HB and who have not been migrated; the non pensioners will be on Employment Support Allowance and are the most difficult cohort to migrate. They're supposed to be moved over by April 2026.

Does anyone think that those in social rented should be kind of means tested, having to earn below a certain amount to stay in the social property?

I find the whole rented state so frustrating, having rented for 25 years, I could have paid a mortgage off (maybe). But as a single earner couldn't save a deposit get a mortgage.

@Sunshineandrainbow so if you're in social housing and earn enough to 'fail' a means test, perhaps as low as that for benefits, you should lose the family home?

Good luck selling that to voters.