In hoping the benefits cap may prove to be A Good Thing?

[thepeoplesprincess]

In the long run. For private renters anyway.

As things currently stand, private landlords are getting away with charging extortionate rents that few can afford because the shortfall is made up by Housing Benefit. So if benefits are to be capped, landlords will (hopefully) be forced to lower their rents to affordable levels or sell up if they can't find tenants that can and will pay hundreds of pounds a month. Either will be great for the average Joe IMO.

Oh wrt to immigrants, many councils have contractors in the private sector who house people on the council waiting lists that are non nationals.

We certainly ahd that abck home and everyone referred to it as jumping lists (becuase everyone called the houses council houses, including the resident) but theyw eren't, they were a form of private group landlord.

We're onto immigrants now?! Jesus.

dreamingofsun is your paper of choice the Daily Mail by any chance?

There is a surpluss of council housng in my city, so lots of people could move here

Sadly there is a surplus because it is shit there is a very high unemployment rate and no one wants to live where there are so few jobs.

Yes Trickle...where are the jobs we are all supposed to snap up?,(but don't 'cos too lazy, feckless, workshy,etc...)

Mother- I merely answered someone's question regarding what the housing associations are doing and why so many people end up on the housing list for so long. These where two genuine examples of how it works depending on who you are. There are financial incentives for housing immigrants.

mother - for your information i was supporting the argument that the system of allocating council properties was chaotic and illogical. the reason i mentioned they were immigrants was that it was likely they had only been on the list for a couple of years (i imagine you can't go on it if you live in poland). If you read the thread, rather than making biased assumptions, then you could give a more balanced comment.

Our local paper used to advertise on it's front page how many jobs there were on 'job day' anywhere between 650 and 900. They were pretty well spread out between no skilled, low skilled, skilled and highly skilled jobs.

They stopped doing this in 2009 when it fell to anywhere between 50 and 250 jobs, most of these are zero hours contracts, comissions based, franchise and home buisness opportunities with a few very highly skilled posts and a few low/no skills thrown in for good measure.

Most of the 'jobs' arn't really jobs, and I'm not ashamed to say I think people shouldn't be forced into low paid insecure jobs. Yes people have to do it, OH did these for ages before getting a 'real' job with employment rights and regular hours. People shouldn't have to struggle so much just so that CEO's, Directors and shareholders can skim their bit off the top and make a profit for the company based on misery.

The immigration issue is completely relevant, I think. Given that some 3 miilion immigrants have settled in the Uk since 1997, they have to live somewhere - and they are necessarily adding to demand for housing.

Three quarters of migrants settled in four of the nine English regions ? London, which took over 40%, followed by Yorkshire and the Humber (14%), and the South East and East of England (both 10 %). The two regions most heavily impacted by immigration ? London, Yorkshire & the Humber also have the most serious housing shortages.

It's hard to discuss immigration on here without some idiot comingh on and descending into racism, so I know many of us try toa void that- interms of the population explosion that happened as a result of it, absolutely it is obvious that more jobs and houses and services would be needed, that's basic maths regardless of nationality of the end user but it can be so valoatile and I would hate anyone to come on and use it as a thread to vent nasty xenophobic bullshit (not that anyone is yet, but jheck I am from the days of daftpunk)

Trickle with you about the papers; Mum's used to have 7 pages not so long ago, I counted them (have back issues for souvenit stuff); now it's about 1/3 of a page of non jobs- train in IT from home / that sort of crap

I understand where you are coming from. It's a shame it is so difficult to discuss the subject sensibly - some people undoubtedly are racists, but others are only-too-keen (in my opinion) to shut down any discussion of the issue by denouncing any mention of immigartiion as being, of itself, racist.

My background is in economics so I look at many problems in terms of supply and demand. Housing costs are high because of high demand and low supply in very simple terms. High demand caused by many factors - change in composition of households (more people living alone, more families where the parents do not luie together), aging population, people viewing housing as an "investment" for the future or a way of funding a pension and, yes, high immigration. Low supply due to lack of suitable building land, NIMBYism (people in the most over-crowded areas also the ones who are least happy to see more housing being built), planning rules, no government policy to build more social homes and so on....

luie = live

Oh gawd nimbys yes

Village I live in (town but refers to itself as a village so it can ignore the big council estate over the hill- FFS) actually ahd a protest becuase of a rumour that someone might sell a field to a council for some affordable houses one day.

But most of them- pah, same old etc. I knew it was likely when they allowed the Sn provision to be cut yet took so much action over council not providing a festive tree that council had to back down. But... our VICAR, who is a socialist, was marching too. WTF? Not against placement or location- but becuase families like that would bring the town down.

they tried to elafelt for my support even though sucha ffordable housing would be a Godsend to us.

I haven't read the thread for the sake of my mental health. This is for your OP, pp. (heh, a rhyme )

YANBU to think that's what should happen. And it will - after a fashion. Downmarket landlords will compete for the reduced rents, but they'll do it by cramming families into ever smaller rooms with ever fewer facilities ... slums.

It's already happening: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14837291

Landlords in the mid-range won't have a problem. There's going to be another wave of repossessions as people lose their jobs and discover the caps apply instantly. Those people, labouring under the delusion there are still jobs to be had, will rent normal places until they're forced to face facts and downgrade to a slum.

Sure, eventually the weight of tenants needing a shed to live in will bring down the average market rent. That will take several years, though, by which time the criteria will have been further tightened to reduce the "burden" of benefits on multimillionaires and the remaining workers.

It's 150 years since Dickens was writing his novels of shocking poverty & oppression. I give it just 15 years until we're back there, if people keep on passively accepting these so-called reforms.

Garlic- very well put. And incredibly true.
When I moved into my current Private rent, Landlord promised it was longterm, so we spent our own money on doing it up décor wise, re-plastering walls ourselves in some rooms. He never gave us any rent reduction for doing so, or paid for materials. We currently pay close to a thousand pound a month (and he wants to raise this too).
We've been here near to two years. No issues with rent/bad behaviour not a thing. In November he tried to give us 28 days to move out (which was illegal and luckily unlike some others we knew he had not a leg to stand on). He has now said he wants to turn our house into 6 or more rooms for single people, charging between £400 and £500 a month per room, sharing a kitchen and bathroom between them. That's 6x £450 (get the midway as he's not sure yet), or £2700 per month. Its no wonder he's turfing us out as he knows he can do that and squash as many people in as possible. He then tried to barter with my partner that we should re-do the front of the house and windows- which are both crumbling- and pave the drive at our own cost again, and they he may let us stay. We've told him exactly where he can go, but I bet there are those who get taken advantage of in the same way and, out of desperation, do what they are forced into. Its blackmail- either do costly repairs or be homeless. And all the while they (the slumlords) can do this as there is not one piece of legislation in place to help people renting from unscrupulous landlords. By contrast, if I fail to pay my rent, or damage his house, I'm liable to be dragged through court and forced to pay costs, damages etc etc.

20 -sorry to hear about your situation.

the other side of the coin is that a tenant can live in your house for several months, not paying any rent and causing thousands of pounds worth of damage, whilst you take them to court. And when eventually the court finds in your favour you may have to employ someone to physically go round and evict them. You may (most probably) get no compensation for the damage or loss of rent other than the deposit - so you could easily be £10k plus out of pocket.

i agree there are some appalling landlords out there from the threads i read. But whatever extra legislation is put in place should not penalise the good ones - or people might find that these landlords all sell up. which is what we would do

Of course it shouldn't- it works both ways in anything. I would say that some tenants are forced to get the landlord to drag them through the court at the request of the council housing departments, or they are seen as intentionally homeless and wont be helped.

The entire system, including the intentional homelessness clause, bad tenants requiring courts orders/costs etc, and bad landlords needs over hauling, without doubt. It should be a criminal offence to wreck a property not belonging to you, but it should also be punishable to leave a family in sub standard conditions. The council departments around housing, eg housing departments, environmental health etc need to all work hand in hand rather than against each other as well.

I always though with tenancies the carrot and stick appraoch would be easiest.

A tax rebate for LLs prepared to offer their proerties to someone on HB.

A sensible LL would focus on references, and people on HB can still be asked for a deposit.

At least it would be entirely down to the LL- no penalising if you refused to take part BUT a move in the right direction.

We were landlords once, for a short time.

Dh said he had a 'feeling' drove to the house and there was the kitchen in the garden!

Luckily we managed to get the tenant to buy the house so did not need to follow through, but we had all the documents made up ready to start big time proceedings!

OTOH my next net stop now is carpetright so we can replace the one upstairs at no cost to the lovely LL.

So we know it from both sides.

I'm a LL and I refuse to take HB as our council is known to take months to process the claim and make the first payment (18 in my friend's case! She was the tenant, they kept losing her paperwork) and I simply can't afford to pay the mortgage in the meantime, especially as it's not guaranteed until they've processed it.

I have heard people say the same where I live - either landlords or people being turned down for tenancies being told this by landlords. You can understand landlords not wanting to wait six months or more to receive any rent.

I've even had to refuse a couple of friends who I'd love to rent the flat to. There's just no way I could afford to cover the mortgage all that time.

I can see that problem, motherofallhangovers, and it's one that should be addressed at admin level. My landlord is a company - it lets the properties pending renovation to tenants on benefits - but, crucially, the agents have made themselves experts on the system. I asked what would happen if my claim was slow to be processed and they said they'd deal with it

I like your points above, Peachy, though the deposit is a major barrier for most poor people. My mother paid my deposit and the agency accepted the month-in-hand in instalments; I paid it over 18 months!

Along with the tax rebate, the govt could make the upfront payments - and recoup unreturned deposits from tenants' previous landlords. If a tenant loses their deposit due to damage, govt could deduct instalments from the recipient's other benefits.

The people to get a better system enacted are the owners. As people have said, this government listens to them; not the tenants.

the other issue with HB tenants that needs to be addressed - which has been mentioned on here - is that the council encourages the tenant to go through the whole eviction process or they claim they are intentionally homeless and won't rehouse them. so to get a tenant evicted, who is either damaging the property or not paying rent, would take forever. And if they are on HB its likely it would take years to get the money back - assuming you got it at all which is unlikely.

I agree with all those points.

The cases that sadden me really are the ones I have seen where a tenant has been excellent for a long time, become redundant, and the LL has had to evict them for mortgage / insurance reasons. A good reliable tenant doesn't have a personality transplant with their P45, and will use their redundancy money to pay rent if they were bothering before; it's those cases that seem pointless IYSWIM.

And also no HB can prevent someone even claiming just a (say) £20 top up from applying, which is different 9and a working person then) to someone waiting 18 weeks for a whole rent claim IYSWIM.

Also, with the eviction thing- that's not just HB, any family wanting a LA property would have to do that, and whetehr you get HB is not factored into LA tenancy eligibility.