What effect (if any) will the changes to housing benefit have on the rental market?

Kohoutek

lemonjelly wrote: »

Thing is, it is unneccessary. What they should do instead, is re-enforce the role of the rents officers, who are allowed to class rents as excessive, overpriced, & can place restrictions on the amount of benefit to be paid.

What's the situation at the moment, is the problem that landlords are allowed to get away with demanding excessive rent?

nembot

Should be 1100 per month!

PrivatisetheNHSnow

nembot wrote: »

Should be 1100 per month!

should be a tent and some sleeping bags

ninky_2

lemonjelly wrote: »

I haven't read the article, but expect it is spun somewhere. The rules for housing benefit expressly state that you cannot rent from a relative.

If this impacts at all, it will only impact in London/the south.

Thing is, it is unneccessary. What they should do instead, is re-enforce the role of the rents officers, who are allowed to class rents as excessive, overpriced, & can place restrictions on the amount of benefit to be paid.

i disagree lj. this would be expensive to police and involve site visits etc. why not just pay benefits claimants a set amount (in the same way the employed get a set amount) and then it's up to them to find accommodation just as it is for the waged? how could anyone argue with that?

PrivatisetheNHSnow

ninky wrote: »

why not just pay benefits claimants a set amount (in the same way the employed get a set amount) and then it's up to them to find accommodation just as it is for the waged? how could anyone argue with that?

because they will spend it on booze and junk from argos and complain they can't find anywhere to live

that's why they're benefits claimants, not the waged

carolt

Surely you do it in voucher form - give voucher to landlord, landlord cashes it.

Easy.

ninky_2

PrivatisetheNHSnow wrote: »

because they will spend it on booze and junk from argos and complain they can't find anywhere to live

that's why they're benefits claimants, not the waged

well that would just be tough. no different to paying jsa - imagine if that got paid direct to supermarket incase people spent it and didn't have enough to eat.

they are unemployed not mentally deficient.

PrivatisetheNHSnow

pay them food stamps - then at least they wouldn't think of benefits as a form of income

lemonjelly

Kohoutek wrote: »

What's the situation at the moment, is the problem that landlords are allowed to get away with demanding excessive rent?

In my opinion, yes.
Current hb rules state that they won't pay rent they consider to be excessive, without defining excessive. But even where I am, I regularly see people easily getting in excess of £600+ pcm.

There are also many cases where people are underoccupying properties.

ninky wrote: »

i disagree lj. this would be expensive to police and involve site visits etc. why not just pay benefits claimants a set amount (in the same way the employed get a set amount) and then it's up to them to find accommodation just as it is for the waged? how could anyone argue with that?

Well, 2 things.

Firstly, the rents offices don't do site visits. They just compare like for like locally. If that is the going rate, they rubber stamp it. They aren't actually doing these site visits.

Plus, people are different, with different needs. Families are different sizes. & there are different prices in different areas too. So where do you draw the line? 1 amount for London, & 1 for everywhere else? How is that fair? Ok, so SE gets 1 rate, & the same for everywhere else? Still not fair.

See, a lot is made up of the higher cost of living in London/SE, so jobs there tend to be higher paid, so why do other parts of the country have to pay the same tax rates for example?

MrEnglish

carolt wrote: »

Wish I could thank that several times.

Would add that it's particularly galling for the employed who rent - not only are we - like all hard-working taxpayers - paying out of our taxes to pay for the unemployed to live in expensive homes we (who actually work) could never dream of affording; we then pay again, through higher rents, as this drives rental costs up across the board.

Bloody madness.

Very good point.

It shows how overvalued the rental markets are.