housing benefit

[roundthebend4]

think this is going to be something that hits people hard

In future, the maximum payout will be capped at £20,000 a year. Payouts will also be pegged to the lowest 30 per cent of local rents instead of the local average

so the $400 a week max will probably only apply to central London .

I am already capped here and pay £125 a month , struggled to find some one that would con sider Hb and even more that is suitable for Ds3 due to his disablites.I did see cheaper place which would have saved me the £125 a month but the though of having to carry ds3 up and down 2 flights of stairs or up a flight every time he wanted a wee was enough to put me of

So just moving to cheaper property would not work

the situation had got out of control though with reports of taxpayers funding £90K-£150K a year for individual families

oh yes that i agree to it has got out of controll .But im talking about the more everyday rents oh and not capped as its more than £400 a week but by the local council rent capping

I know someone who found it very hard to find housing for the same or less than the local council rate. She ended up being homeless for months with two children and becomming very ill. In the end, she could only get a place that was riddled with damp and mould, too small etc from the private sector but paid for with housing bens.

yes, they have made it worse, they may have had to cut it somehow, but they have offered no solution or alternative for housing. They have not addressed issues of affordable housing or the fact that the private sector rents are so high.

in the long run, I would imagine it will mean more areas that are very run down with very poor social housing, more homelessness, more over crowding, and more areas with a high concentration of these problems, more ill health, more poverty etc etc.

The charity Shelter [see the website] had this to say:

Shelter has been calling for housing benefit reform for years, but this debate must not be muddied by the use of an extreme example from one area in the country.

?The vast majority of housing benefit claimants are either pensioners, those with disabilities, people caring for a relative or hardworking people on low incomes, and only 1 in 8 people who receive housing benefit is unemployed'.

I think some people on here may find the last 10 words quite a suprise.

Yep because were close to London and close to Stansted landlords don't often even need to consider people on HB as property goes fast

We are on list for council housing but because would need adaptions they in own words have nothing

what area r u in round

East herts near enough to airport that the planes have their wheels down and we can identify which company

Instead of capping housing benefit they should be building more social housing - surely that would be much, much cheaper for the tax payer in the long run?

Would be ideal but here there is no building at all and adapted housing is put in the general melting pot of housing list so people can bid on adapted property even when no need for often very expensive adaptions but that's whole other thread

"only 1 in 8 people who receive housing benefit is unemployed"

unemployed = claiming JSA?
it doesn't mean 7 in 8 are in paid employment

i think i live near you then as i live in nicole richies daughters name!!

No eldon but many may well ahve been- carers, elderly.

If we get ours knocked by mroe than £50 we're homeless. Seems likely to happen. Fuck.

Sancti - scrap my last post on the other thread - found it.

I guess if this is the case I'm glad that I have actually found somewhere that's £15 a month cheaper than the HB allowance - although could have afforded to top up like I did last year.

no it doesn't mean that 7/8 are in employment - but it does mean that 7/8 basically have no option but to be there.

EldonAve, thanks for that, not really sure of your point?

Anyway, it seems you forgot to write the rest of the paragraph in your post, so I shall do it for you again .

"The vast majority of housing benefit claimants are either pensioners, those with disabilities, people caring for a relative or hardworking people on low incomes..."

I think this blog post does a really good job of illustrating just how close to the breadline many people are and what a huge affect the cap (and lots of other cuts) are going to have on very vulnerable people.

It was posted on Dave Hill's blog site on the Guardian.

I'm not sure I had a point

Housing here is really dear, we were looking to private rent a 3 bed house for our (soon to be) 4 dc's, rather than the 2.5bed we have at present. I am actually tied to my estate of my town by a court order from my oldest 2's dad. I happen to live in the most expensive area in my TOWN. Other areas in my town, private 3 bed costs £500-£600pcm. My estate...£900-£1000pcm. My DP earns £16K pa. We are screwed. I either stay in a house that was too small before I fell pg, or I rent a house we just cannot afford the top-up of, or I move estates and get done for breach of court order. Chufty really. Bolloxed any which way. ATM they pay over 90% of our rent.

Can anyone tell me where this 30% figure has come from, please? I am confused because I thought there were figures for the absolute maximum (ie the £400 for 4-bed house etc) and they are saying after a year on JSA people will only be able to claim 90% of the initial award (so that's 90% of your rent) - where does the 30% figure come into it?

Oh wait I think I understand it means they will sample all the rents charged in an area and use the lowest 30% as a benchmark, yes? Sorry for confusion!

yes I think that's what it means Bertie - thought to be honest round hear I'd say easily 70% of the houses are over the current LHA levels

It's to do with the average rent price - so mean mode and median.

At the moment rent amounts paid out are on taking all the rental prices in an area (by number of bedrooms) divided by the amount of rentals to give you an average.

In future they will only use the cheapest 30% of rentals to work out the rental allowance.

So all the ultra expensive 3 bed deluxes that are double the price of joe bloggs 3 bed rental squew the rental allowance price by increasing it. Hope that makes sense.

hmm I'm guessing that will be across the current "areas".........my area covers several small towns and lots of big villages.

If they did it on a more local level then

There are 60 3 bedroom properties on Rightmove (including those let subject ref)

Only 10 of those are less/equal to the current LHA allowance for a 3 bedroom house

on a 10 mile radius of this town (which actually encroaches onto the more expensive LHA area around Northampton)

There are 544 3 bedroom properties, and 55 that are LHA rate or under.........so 10%

so based on that 30% thing they'll have to put the LHA rate up