Housing Benefit under occupancy Help

lighting_up_the_chalice

mazza111 wrote: »

Rents are pretty low here anyway in all honesty. How much the LHA rate is, I have no idea. I can only see what I see with my eyes, and I've covered most of the town as a postie. There are few social housing one bed properties and fewer private let one bed properties. We have no bidding system. You get what you're given. Apart from in the case of my dd, when she seen the flat down the road had been empty for about a year, she went chasing it.



There isn't a lot of one bedroom properties up here. Most single people here who come of the homeless list are given a 2 bedroom property for the simple reason they council do not have many one bedroom places. This is where common sense should be applied imo. If a property is available then yes, as I've said repeatedly, by all means make the charges.

Just found the list to give you an idea:

1bed + bedsits in local area (SH) 600 (which admittedly is more than I thought, but still not a lot)

2bed 3000

3bed 1900

4bed 175

5bed 5

So u can see where the shortages lie. 30% of the 1 bedroom are sheltered housing or adapted for disabled. And 7 are available for private rent. If you add the HA that are there it takes it about a thousand, but this includes housing associations like Margaret Blackwood and Bield which are predominantly providing housing for disabled people.

Single person accommodation tends to have the highest "churn" rates, so the lower number of units may not reflect a lower availability.

mazza111

lighting_up_the_chalice wrote: »

Single person accommodation tends to have the highest "churn" rates, so the lower number of units may not reflect a lower availability.

Well as we don't have a bidding system I can't tell you that, I can see there are 7 in the entire town for private rent. I can see there are no one bedroom properties available in the immediate area (dd's street, where there are a lot of one bedroom flats) but are two 2 bedroom properties available in my street. But given the high percentage of those one bed properties that are for disabled people, it doesn't leave a lot for singletons or couples.

seven-day-weekend

Could two single people share a two-bedroom flat? I'm talking social housing here. Is it possible, or might it be in the future?

mazza111

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

Could two single people share a two-bedroom flat? I'm talking social housing here. Is it possible, or might it be in the future?

They do that on a temp basis here at the moment. Shared flats for homeless people. Causes all sorts of problems that the support workers have to interfere with, like people paying their share of the electricity n stuff. Stuff going from people's rooms. Can's see them doing that in normal circumstances. Although there is nothing stopping single people from taking someone in as a flat share.

lighting_up_the_chalice

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

Could two single people share a two-bedroom flat? I'm talking social housing here. Is it possible, or might it be in the future?

It's very possible, and one viable solution. After all, many people start out house-sharing, so why not?

mazza111

lighting_up_the_chalice wrote: »

It's very possible, and one viable solution. After all, many people start out house-sharing, so why not?

Does make me wonder about how quick the council would step in if/when things went wrong though. They weren't very forthcoming in sorting things out when a friend of a friend found herself in the shared homeless flat. No where safe to store her property securely. Laptop went missing, which was about the only thing worth anything that she left her marriage with. How would the house insurance work?

lighting_up_the_chalice

mazza111 wrote: »

Does make me wonder about how quick the council would step in if/when things went wrong though. They weren't very forthcoming in sorting things out when a friend of a friend found herself in the shared homeless flat. No where safe to store her property securely. Laptop went missing, which was about the only thing worth anything that she left her marriage with. How would the house insurance work?

Perhaps she would have been better off in the private sector?

princessdon

Mazza I know you have your views and they are based on your family and immediate family and area you live in, but ...

the wider picture is that SH is as rare as they come.

My neice pays £200 pm for a flat share with 3 others (2 double bedrooms, 2 partners), this is over a well known fast food outlet in the town centre.

£800 pm for a 2 bed in that area.

She bids on every home going, won't ever get there unless she has children to make her a priority.

Anyone who has access to SH really needs to consider this beneficial and worth holding on to, if they don't please believe me there are many who can and will be willing to swap.

Do SH claimants not realise it is really what a blessing it is?


If it's not and available to all, can I have a 4 bed in Islington please as the rental is less than my OH (now his company as is now employee not contractor) pays for a 1 bed shared ammenity rate in the private sector.

Dunroamin

mazza111 wrote: »

Does make me wonder about how quick the council would step in if/when things went wrong though. They weren't very forthcoming in sorting things out when a friend of a friend found herself in the shared homeless flat. No where safe to store her property securely. Laptop went missing, which was about the only thing worth anything that she left her marriage with. How would the house insurance work?

Why would the council have to sort things out when house and flat sharers in the private sector manage this sort of thing perfectly well for themselves?

Is this perhaps an example of the way in which public sector tenants are feather bedded and discouraged from taking responsibility for their own lives?

lighting_up_the_chalice

mazza111 wrote: »

Does make me wonder about how quick the council would step in if/when things went wrong though. They weren't very forthcoming in sorting things out when a friend of a friend found herself in the shared homeless flat. No where safe to store her property securely. Laptop went missing, which was about the only thing worth anything that she left her marriage with. How would the house insurance work?

Maybe, just maybe, if these rules were in place then, your friend may have been able to access Social Housing?