How to get a council house -C4

[heyhulahoop]

Anyone watching? It's so depressing. So many zero hours contracts and racist rants.

Blondes - yes and then claimant gets new job/moves in new partner and doesn't bother telling council. Council find out later and claw back overpaid HB from landlord. Landlord unhappy. Unlikely to get money back from tenant ever.

That is why housing benefit is not paid directly to landlords except in special circumstances.

Oh. Didn't know they would try and reclaim from
LL botty

That's unfair and prob why LL don't want hb tenants

Social services wouldn't put a well liked after child in care all that would happen is they would pay for a B and B or hotel.

How does housing benefit work for people on 0 hour contracts? Do they adjust it weekly based on earnings? Sounds like a lot of paperwork.

They work it out on an average according to shelter. I presume like SE people you have to confirm at the end of the year.

I was on HB and a zero hour contract (luckily with a decent boss who would guarantee me an average of 16 hours per week as I was on tax credits) - I just told them an average and I only had to notify them if my wages went up or down by a certain amount.

I didn't have to confirm to HB at the end of the year, only for tax credits. It might have changed now.

DP isn't on a 0 hour contrct but his hours are different every week, so different wages every month.
We have to take his payslips to the council every month and they change the HB. It's a massive pain in the arese cause it's done on an average of 3 months, which means everytime we bring in a payslip it changes the 2 months previous hb that we've already have, so we're constantly either underpaid (good) or overpaid (bad, because we have to pay it back) every single month.

It costs the council far more to B&B rates for a family than paying HB for a house.I've always been puzzled why housing benefit started going direct to the tenant. Before they changed it there were no problems, not on the scale it is now anyway.

I watched the previous week and there was a single dad with three pre-school children staying in his Mum's living Room and they wouldn't help him either, I think there were about 8 people living in that 3 bed semi.
I felt so sorry for him in particular.

I wanted to add that I waa raised in a council property in a nice rural area, in the 70s / 80s they were much easier to get. My dad got one despite eaning a good wage. My parents bought it in mid 80's for £6000 and it is now worth about £170000. Good investement for them but not for society as a whole

Paying the rent direct to the tenant is not the only cause of people being in rent arrears.
There is the bedroom tax, housing benefit now only covers up to a certain amount and most people have to pay something to the rent , this was never the case.
Benefit sanctions can now sanction part of your housing benefit under universal credit.
All of these factors plus zero hour contracts all play a part.

I don't like how the media portray that rent arrears is purely down to housing benefit being paid directly to the tenant and they mishandle the money and imply they just keep the money (yes some may do) but it is a combination of other factors that people just have very little money

They changed it years ago. It's not fair to compare the situation then to the situation now. The economic situation is more precarious now with people in much less secure employment and many unemployed.

House prices are higher meaning more people are renting privately. This pushes the private renting prices up meaning more people are seeking social housing, which there is not enough of. Landlords generally have a choice of tenants meaning they can afford to state "No DSS" etc. It is extremely difficult as a housing benefit recipient to find a place to rent. Often there are literally no options. Again, forcing people to seek help through the council.

Disability benefits have been cut meaning those who are vulnerable or unable to work are more likely to be struggling. CAB has been cut making it less accessible meaning people with money problems have less access to support and advice. (I was shocked to hear that only 3 months of rent arrears are considered grounds for "intentional homelessness" as I think many people would try to hold on longer in the hope they could sort things out themselves.) Benefit sanctions are more common and more severe than in the past.

There are fewer HA properties available proportionally. Many have been sold at well below their market value through the right to buy scheme, and councils are no longer building. Private HAs are building but the proportions are way out compared to the amount of people who need housing. Look at the graph in this article: www.bbc.com/news/uk-14380936.

I'd like to compare the specific year that it changed but unfortunately the legislation.gov website is being very slow. I can find that the Housing Benefit Act of 2006 states that HB should usually be paid to the tenant and lays out the conditions for it to be allowed to be paid directly to a landlord. Which is a thing, so I'm not sure why people say it's not.

If anyone remembers claiming HB before 2006 and can let me know if it had changed then that would make it easier to find, but I'm going to play with DS now.

vickibee I saw that one

Wasn't sure why he had all 3 alone? Did their mum/mums abandon them or die?

3kids under 6 by the time he was 21 is a lot

I work in housing and do a job similar to the people you saw on the TV last night. Thankfully I work in a park of the county where housing isn't in quite a short supply, I couldn't be that person refusing to help all the time, it'd be absolutely
Bloody soul destroying. It has to be said though that 3 kids under 6 by 21 is a choice he made. Those kids didn't come of of thin air, they were created either willfully or neglectfully by their parents and it's their parents responsibility so sort out their needs, not mine, not yours and not the councils.

I see a LOT of people not taking responsibility for themselves so people who's circumstances have changed beyond their control have no chance.

Those kids didn't come of of thin air, they were created either willfully or neglectfully by their parents and it's their parents responsibility so sort out their needs, not mine, not yours and not the councils.

So why does the housing office exist? Why does council housing exist?

I thought the council had a duty to house people? Not just those who have made excellent life choice? The homeless guy on the street might be there of his own doing but the council still has to try and house him when he asks for help.

You have no idea what that guy's living and working situation was when those children were created. You have no idea how he came to be a homeless single parent of 3. People's circumstances change. It said in the show the children came to live with him 5 weeks ago.

' I think there were about 8 people living in that 3 bed semi.
I felt so sorry for him in particular.'

There were 6, the mother and her partner and him and all those kids. 3 kids by the age of 21?! For real?

I wondered that (just watched that one today) what happened to Mum. Perhaps the children had been removed from her care by social services.

Then I found it interesting that I was wondering when I had never wondered for any of the single mums on programmes like that. I just tend to assume that the fathers are MIA, useless or both.

I did feel a bit annoyed at the mum/gran when she was saying everybody lies so you have to lie to get them seen to - it's a shame that she believes that although I am certainly convinced people do lie, it's not everybody and of course they can see through it. She came across to me as not being entitled in a grabby way but just that she had an expectation of the basics of the system which just actually aren't there and don't exist. And she felt let down by that rather than wanting something for nothing. She was repeating the myth about landlords not wanting HB tenants because HB isn't paid directly to landlords any more (it's not the only reason - several points including: many buy to let mortgages specifically exclude HB tenants, it's because of poor stereotypes about people on benefits - not helped by these programmes - or a misconception that everyone on HB is unemployed leading to more wear and tear on a house, and it's because if the tenants stop paying rent it can be more difficult to evict them - due to council housing regulations - and difficult to recover funds from people who have no assets.)

Also perhaps it was the way it was edited but it felt like they were saying it's possible that he is with the mother of his children and she had "given" the children to him so that he could get a council house and she could then move in. And that is why I found it strange that they didn't film them asking him where she was and what was the situation there about why he'd only just taken charge of the children. But possibly she just didn't give her permission for her information to be on the programme or something?

What I didn't really understand is why the officers just had such a cold unfeeling tone rather than explaining the situation as it was. I know that they can't break somebody else's privacy but they could say, look, you seem like decent reasonable people, can you appreciate that while staying on your mum's couch isn't ideal, it's better than the situation of somebody whose house has burnt down, who is living in their car, who has no family or friends, no savings, no options basically.

Then again their position must be quite horrific. I mean even the description of the programme was something like "Swapna and her daughter face eviction from the converted shed they rent". It's 2016 and we have people living in converted sheds! It was tiny too and didn't look like it would meet buildings regulations.

How numb must you be to those kinds of stories or situations to react so coldly? I reckon they hear some horrendous stuff that would make you weep and yet they have to treat people as numbers, do they have enough points for this, can they get on that list, where should they be in comparison to others. Perhaps anybody with a shred of empathy just can't cope with the workload.

(Sorry bit of a yoyo post there!)

That's crazy that they take the HB off the landlord not the tenant (in the case of an overpayment)

It's not the landlords fault!

Also I was on full HB in 2007-2009 and it went direct to my landlord, I don't recall even being offered for it to come to me and I wouldn't have wanted it to

I claimed HB long before 2006, and it never went to my LL.

don't like how the media portray that rent arrears is purely down to housing benefit being paid directly to the tenant and they mishandle the money and imply they just keep the money (yes some may do) but it is a combination of other factors that people just have very little money

Agree with this, wholeheartedly. The thing with HB is that it's near impossible in some areas to find a place to live if the LL knows you get it.
Despite popular belief, the majority of HB claimants are working, and so HB is a proportion of their rent.
In fact, the majority of working renters in London claim HB because there is no way the average wage can meet the huge rents required.
On the one hand, if it was clear just how many HB claimants there are (most people really don't realise this) that might help to dispel the myth of the feckless tenants who are just going to piss the rent money up the wall. On the other hand, if people come clean about claiming it, they won't be able to find anywhere to live, and this will increase the pressure on council services.
The real reason that so many are being made homeless is the fact that rent is totally unregulated, and rents in the South East have skyrocketed way beyond reasonable amounts.
Where I live, (nowhere near London) I only waited 9 months for a council house (it was a shit hole, and has cost me ££££ to get it habitable but it's getting there) and that's probably because you can still find privately rented places here at quite a reasonable cost, so many people would rather move into a place with a decent bathroom etc than a council place.
London in particular needs low cost housing, lots of it, and pronto, and we as a country need rent capping, desperately.

Eatin, they take it off the person it was unlawfully paid to! That makes perfect sense. No it's not the landlord's fault - but they can't go around taking money off people that they haven't given money to in the first place. Sometimes it's not the tenant's fault either but they still claim it back off them (if they paid it to them).

Were you in private rent or council owned housing at the time? I think they sometimes paid it direct to the landlord with council properties. I'm not sure if they still do.

In principle is it such a bad thing to move you out of the borough (notwithstanding it was handled v badly in the show)? I know its far from ideal, but people in private rented and buying have to make that decision all the time - you can't afford to live where you want so you have to look at other, cheaper areas.

I'm thinking of people who don't have jobs in the local area in particular - where I used to live in SE London (zone 2) there were huge numbers of local people who didn't work - I didn't realise until I was on Maternity Leave that this was the case. I don't know why they needed to live so centrally when my midwives and nurses were having to travel for an hour plus to get to work.

I think it's different though, yes sometimes you have to make the decision to move somewhere cheaper but you have an element of choice and control over the process. You can look at all areas of the UK, perhaps concentrate on areas where the jobs seem to be available or areas where you know somebody or areas close to a train station or where the scenery is nice - you don't just get put somewhere that you know nobody, you don't know the local area (which, actually, can be an issue for some ethnic groups particularly, I remember in series 1 of this programme back in 2013, one family were being moved as they were suffering racial abuse where they lived). You don't even know if there is a bus stop or a supermarket. You have 15 minutes to decide and that is it.

It would be fine to offer it as an option, I think. Or if it genuinely was a last option, to at least give people a couple of weeks to decide, give them chance to go and visit. I think it's a horrendous thing to do to somebody. It's one thing to make a decision on your own that moving would be an economic decision, quite another to have somebody saying you (effectively) have to go and have no choice in the matter.

I've watched three episodes of this programme now and had to stop because these people's genuine distress at their situations is quite horrendous. Even those who appear entitled or aren't handling it quite correctly. I appreciate that it's an impossible job the housing officers have but a lot of these people just have the shittiest lives, they can't catch a break, ever.

It's comments like mrssparkle's that piss me off tbh, firstly how did you meet all these unemployed people? Or did you just presume that people you saw around were unemployed?

Secondly, just like bertiebotts says it's about choice. I doubt unemployed people in your zone 2 want to live there because of the lovely chi chi cafes undoubtably popping up, it's probably cos that's where they were brought up, where their family live, it's what they know. To say: "move to Birmingham or be homeless" is pretty grim, you might not see any worth to these people living where they do because they are unemployed but to expect someone to make a decision like that and be oh so grateful to move to a house they've never seen, in a town they've never visited? Fuck that.