Panorama: Britain's Hidden Homeless Crisis

[expatinscotland]

NOW!

So basically from April every one in receipt of HB will need to reapply?

Can I correct you on one thing. The rule is that it is under 35s will only get 1 room rate not under 25s

Nananina the figure of £350 on a 3 bed is massively untrue. Please don't post things like this that could scare people unintentionally. LHA is already in force, and yes it caps housing benefit. But to nowhere near that level. I do however think that the government has been massively shortsighted in their housing policy as far as this goes, and it's all going to go massively tits up, and for an awful lot of ordinary people. Watching this programme a few nights ago made me so sad. I'm in private rented accomodation, and there are landlords out there who rent to people in reciept of housing benefit. But I can't help but think that they are already few and far between and these caps being so well publicised does go some way to further demonising those in reciept of housing benefit. I do wonder how many landlords, rather than reduce rent like the government seems to think they will (can?) do, will just not rent to anyone who they see as too big a risk. And so it gets worse. How many landlords aren't the greedy so and sos being made out, and are actually just covering their own mortgage?

The under 35s rule also applies to people with children who aren't resident parents. Quite how the govt expects them to accommodate their children on the days they stay with them is unclear (to put it mildly).

And cowardlylion landlords aren't covering their own mortgage with the rent they collect, but the mortgage on their investment, paid for by tenants and often by the state in the form of HB/LHA so I have zero sympathy for them.

I was going to say £350 on a three bed?? I paid £320 on a two bed 20 years ago - the same houses are now £800 in our city, so that can't be right! We live in a pretty ordinary 3 bed and there are a few private rentals along the road - they are never less than £1000 a month. It's insane!

The LHA caps are different for every council, but most are quite low, even in large cities.

Nana nina - the caps vary per authority however, might you have confused monthly and weekly caps? Haringey is capped at £340 a week for a 3 bed for example.

Central Manchester is 126.92 per week so about £550 per calendar month for a 3 bed.

Apologies - yes I was confusing weekly amounts and monthly amounts and I meant that I thought £350 was the benefit cap per month and should have specified that I was talking about London Boroughs in the main. I had a long talk with an employee at Shelter who was really helpful.

I think however that the changes coming in are related to "under occupancy" so that your HB will be reduced, dependent upon how many spare bedrooms you have (OAPs are exempt) so you will either have to pay the "top up" and stay put or move to somewhere cheaper but with no spare bedroom.

The other big change is the cap on benefits as a whole. For a family this is £500 per week and for a single person £350 a week. This sounds a lot but when you consider it takes in all benefits, including HB, JSA, CTCs, CB and any other benefit you may get, so if your rent is £350 per week, it is not difficult to see that people are going to struggle to be able to manage on £150 per week, for everything else. The number of children people have is not to be taken into account, and so if you are receiving relatively high HB payments and have a large family, you are going to struggle with the £500 per week cap. Any benefits that take you over the £500 limit will be deducted. Of course this cap won't affect everyone and I think the DWP have already written to people who could be affected but not sure on that.

This of course means that thousands of people will not be able to afford their current home and will have to move to somewhere cheaper and grottier probably. Yes I agree CL with what you say that this change will demonise people who are in receipt of benefits. However I don't believe that the govt ever thought that landlords would bring rents down - these people are making big profits and even if they are using the rent to pay their own mortgage they are still making a big profit, and then of course if they can't pay the mortgage, they go to court to get an eviction notice on the tenants.

It's quite late so I won't say any more as I don't want to post anything else that isn't absolutely correct. If anyone wants more info the SHELTER website has everything you need to know really. Oh yes the 1 bedroom rate for a single person under 35 that someone mentioned, I agree that is in the new guidelines but since they seem to have pulled back from not allowing any HB to under 25's I assume they too will only get HB for 1 bedroom. I can see that some property owners could make a big profit by renting out rooms to under 35s in a large house.

Also of course there will be more trouble on the way in the autumn next year when the Universal Credit system comes into place.........but can't go there just now!

Oh god sorry I've just re-read my post and I've got it wrong again by saying I thought £350 was the cap for a 3 bedroomed house was for a month not a week - I was confusing weekly and monthly caps and I meant to say that I thought the cap was £350 per week for a house in London or thereabouts.

Far too late - brain closing down!

I am struggling to understand the agenda of this documentary other than try to upset and scare people. Of course it is heartbreaking to see people in this situation, most of all children, but why did they not lay out the full facts of why these people were really in these situation? Over borrowing was surely the case in two of the scenarios, mass exploitation of people's naivety in borrowing money during the subprime era. To me, the documentary would have had some use if it tried to answer some questions. 1) How to help people in this situation now 2) How to identify those at risk and help them plan to have the best possible outcome in the circumstances 3) How to work to prevent this happening in the future

The family of 4, they have essentially been renting from the bank with their 500k interest only mortgage. They created a life of total insecurity for themselves. This of course brings up the point about the dreadful results of removing regulated "protected" tenancies in 1989 which means people who want stability without the risk of being evicted within the private rented sector will seek to buy rather than rent. It also brings up the disgusting failures of the financial regulators to stop out of control subprime lending. Those willing to take on unsustainable borrowing, played their part, although, being brought up in a culture that makes you think institutions won't rob you doesn't help people make rational decisions. The fact is that the profligate behaviour of mortgage lenders and the people who took on subprime debt pushed prices up and up so that we come to the stalemate of today with subprime lending mostly stopped, people stuck in property unless they are repossessed, not able to sell for a price that would be affordable to buyers who can now only access at mortgages at income multiples that were historically considered sensible. Thus many people stuck with insecure rentals. They also openly admitted that the business turnover was based almost entirely on one client. No one should expect a business with one major client to be sustainable and you should be saving money to tide you over for long enough if you do lose that client, not spending it on non-essentials elsewhere.

The lady Patricia, I heard her say that signing on the dotted line for the temp accommodation before she saw it was the sort of mistake that got her where she is today. One can only presume that money was borrowed on that house while it tripled in theoretical price. Not her borrowing necessarily of course, could have been the ex, and as others have said, maybe she needed to buy him out. Was this pie in the sky financial planning though? Was it sadly unrealistic to stay in the family home as a single person after a divorce? Were there other debts secured on the property other than original borrowing and divorce settlement? If there were not, the programme makers should have highlighted this. They seemed to be saying she was 9k in arrears, how had it built up? Was it only Barclays involved or where there other creditors with charges on the house pushing for sale?

The family of 6 in temp accommodation. This certainly highlighted the irrational situation of the public purse being used to pay unbelievable high rates for temp accommodation, this has been going on for years and years, I once met a very objectionable man who, together with his group of cronies were making a fortune out of this, with all sorts of backhanders going around (no suggesting here of course that Croydon council are involved in this). The council stated that they could not keep families housed who did not pay the rent or there would be complete social breakdown. What does one do with families who don't pay? If they break windows, who wants to live next to them? It's easy to pull heartstrings, it was just awful to see those malnourished children crying and bitten by bed bugs, what is the solution though?

Kevin - who knows what really happened there, ironically, he may of course have been involved in the type of banking that contributed to problems of housing costs spiralling through having an unsustainable financial business.

Fact is, you could take this documentary, show people who missed the housing boom due to age, unable to afford their own place, being evicted on the whim of landlord, unable to borrow for their business since the banking crisis and show each of the cameos in this documentary as being the other side of the coin as to why others today are suffering.

Great post, Euro.

Trouble is, all the policies brought in and being brought in by this government are going to make things worse. Much, much worse. And the private sector will not take up the slack. They are not being forced to provide secure tenancies, take people even on partial housing benefit, people with bad credit (the family who were repossessed would definitely have fallen into this category) or even people with children.

Even that family of 4 who were repossessed were having trouble renting.

So what will happen? I hope it isn't massive homelessness, but I have a feeling it soon might be. And large groups of homeless aren't happy.

I already know people who are stealing food, families with two working partners who are skipping meals and living off the goodwill of parents and taking Wonga loans to keep the power on. There are still no foodbanks in some cities.

Yet we have all manner of demonising such people on here and in the press.

I hope we don't see riots in the coming years, but it wouldn't surprise me.

'I am struggling to understand the agenda of this documentary other than try to upset and scare people.'

FWIW, I think people should be upset and scared!

This is a very real and growing problem which will get worse as LHA caps will come into force everywhere, universal credit will be rolled in, sanctions will be handed out left and right, etc.

Just move? As some people pointed out, how? Some banks won't let you sell if you're in negative equity, and then you carry the debt with you when you do. What private landlord is going to take on a family that's been repossessed or has huge debts? And no money for the first months' rent and deposit and they don't qualify for the council's bond scheme because those who have been repossessed are not necessarily classed as unintentionally homeless.

And that's the families. The single people fare far, far worse.

But it's easier to just say they were all feckless and deserve their lot.

Heartbreaking.Absolutely heartbreaking.
If rural planning laws were relaxed every person in this country could have could have a decent affordable home. The fallout I suppose would be that as supply came into line with demand prices would fall and millions would be plunged into negative equity and the banks would be destabilised.Fucking banks!

That's a very interesting post Eurostar and I absolutely agree with you about the sub prime lending which in my view is a very big contributory factor to this economic crisis. Bankers were greedy for bigger and bigger profits and both Labour and Tory govts stood by and did nothing in the way of regulating banks. And yes some people took advantage in the sub-prime era but as you say they can't really be blamed, as people have had trust in the banks, not to rip them off.

To be honest I don't think there is much point in speculating about the back stories of the people who were featured in the film. I think they were trying to show a cross-section of people who become homeless.

Expat I absolutely agree with all you say, and yes the situation under this govt is going to get worse and worse. What we are seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg. And yes people should be upset and scared by these kind of programmes, and a lot of posters have been trying to unravel the situation in the people featured and some very judgemental comments made about the big family. I have spent many years of my working life as a social worker being involved with people like the big family, and those a lot lot worse....these families are not bad or stupid or whatever, they are people who have grown up in poverty and many abused and neglected as children, and they go on to repeat the pattern with their own children (I am not making any allegations about the parents in the programme) they live a life on the margins of society - well it's existing rather than living. There is no hope of a "better tomorrow" for these people, and they are defeated and accept their situation as this is all they have known. How sad is that?

Cameron and Osborne et al have absolutely no idea about how these people have to exist, and choose whether to eat or heat, and I'm going back a few years (am now retired) and things have got a lot worse since then. Thing is they don't care.

You mention wonga and other companies like them expat and yes this is horrendous with interest rates of over 3000% on loans. There was a programme on recently on Despatches I think, showing how these companies operate and someone with a secret camera got a job with one of these firms and went on some round with a female employee, who was unbelievably callous and she told him "never let them pay off the loan" as of course then they just give them another loan and the interest is piling up and up. Again the govt could put a stop to this and put a ceiling on the amount of inerest these firms can charge. That's what happens in the rest of Europe. Cameron says that they allow the high interest rates, otherwise these people would be at the hands of loansharks!! Wonga, Shopacheck and Providence are legalised loan sharks, and NO they don't beat people up but they make certain that they take loan upon loan with HUGE profits to them, and misery for the people needing to loan money.

You are right Expat things will get worse next year when the LHA caps come in and the universal credit - my god a lot of the tories think this will cause chaos, and I think I'm right in saying people will need access to a computer, and the payments will be monthly.......bet Wonga ae rubbing their hands with glee. This will be a repeat of the failing IT system of CSA and WTCs.

Yes it is easy for people to say the people featured were feckless and deserve their lot. Some of these judgemental people might be shocked as no job is safe in this triple dip recession......no job........can't pay mortgage........house repossessed......and then what?? If you have no friends or family to put you up, then you are at the mercy of your LHA and will be deemed intentionally homeless but if you've got children you will be in priority need and if you're lucky you might get a 1 or 2bedroomed flat or worse still B & B. or will be told to find a private rent. It could be YOU!!

Of course housing is only one of the issues - there is this charade of Work Capabiltity Tests and disabled and sick people told they are fit for work. In the past 12 months 1000 people who have been found "fit for work" have died! And there are NO jobs for these people to get - it's a shocking state of affairs. I'd better stop or I'll never stop!!

Talking of Wonga-esque loans, has anyone seen the new horrendous tv adverts for 'Money Shops'. They have 'ordinary' people talking about how their car broke down or whatever and how 'brilliant' the moneyshop was when they couldn't get a loan from their bank. It is terrifying - clearly aimed to pretend this is a normal loan...just unbelievable

It is horrendous , but people need their car to get to work or their children to school and have no choice.Gone are the days when people could put aside money for a rainy day in many cases

It's just the way it's done really.

Haven't seen the ads for "Money Shops" but can imagine how they present themselves as "ordinary" lenders as you say. This could be stopped altogether if the govt put a ceiling on the amount of interest these awful companies can charge. BUT they won't do it, because what do they care if the "shirkers" have to borrow money at ridiculous interest rates - and do they realise that a lot of so called "strivers" are in dire need of extra money and they will also turn to these companies. Disgusting.

I wish Credit Unions could advertise on TV but they don't have the funds of course because they don't rake in huge profits. People have to save so much before they can get a loan, and it's at a relatively low interest rate. Trouble is so many people won't know about them, and these enticing ads about "money in your account in 15 mins" does just what its supposed to do - lure people in to making that call, and the first step to more poverty and misery.

I am leading a project to raise the awareness of Creidt Unions at work over the next three months which is going to be hard work but I'm really excited about it. They have to be promoted and shown to people as a viable alternative. Sadly, as you say some people just can't wait for money :(

I found this programme very sad / to get to such an extent where you will lose your house :(

But as others have said - why didn't Patricia and family with 2 girls try and get a lodger or sell their house? Surely both would have lots of equity in their property?

And yes the dad driving off in a Lexus and spending the money from the 2nd at on Xmas is silly

Can't beleive you pay a mortgage for 10+ yrs and then have nothing to show for it :(

Family of 6 - eldest daughter smoking and family having take out coffees at £2/3 each is wasting money

Felt very sorry for the dad trying his best to keep his family afloat working nights - but yes surely hb would pay for a council property so why did they lose their home?

Kevin - who knows - hope he's ok

Hope all are ok / just makes you think that one day you have it all and a few months later nothing

Butthisismyname can you say if you were involved in starting a Credit Union, and how you are promoting it. Do you know what has to be done to establish one, as i am very interested and would love to be involved in one or even starting one, though I have zero experience, so any info would be appreciated. Thanks

I'm not invovled in starting it, no - we have been asked to help promote them as the city council are keen to raise the profile. Check thier umbrella org - I think it's ABCUL - or look at the Rainbow Credit Unions website.

The previously mentioned figure of 350 pounds per month housing benefit cap is not far of the mark, the highest benefit cap available here in N.I peaked at 390 pounds per month a few years ago, it is closer to 350 per month now regardless of how many rooms the home has.

It's the people who are receiving relatively high amounts of HB that are going to be clobbered next April by the cap of £500 per week. I know that sounds a lot, but it includes all other benefits including child benefit, and if you are receiving say £400 a week HB you will have to move, unless of course you can still manage which is highly unlikely. I think these kinds of amounts of HB are only likely to be paid in Londong and the South East. Of course the "social cleansing" of London has already started, with people being moved to the North of the country and the south coast where properties are cheaper (and no doubt grottier) and moving miles from their relatives and friends and children being taken away from their schools.

Is N.I Northern Ireland bureni - that sounds incredibly low for a months rent.

The other thing that comes in in April is the "extra room" issue. This means that if you have a spare room, your HB will be decreased (so for a 3 bed house where 1 room is spare) you will only get HB for 2 rooms. If you cannot afford the top up, you will have to move to a smaller house/flat/whatever. OAPs are exempt from this.

It's just awful............