arrears have increased by 340% following the housing benefit cuts

IveSeenTheLight

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Are there simply more single person, would be, households (relatively) than there would have been back then.

More people leaving home, going to university, with less returning home at the end of the course and moving straight into an accommodation need. With greater numbers at university many more properties have been taken out of the system for HMO use.

I would believe that there are significantly more households now than in the 70's when you consider the student numbers as you suggest but also a significant increase in divorce rates and the population also living longer.

CKhalvashi

N1AK wrote: »

Government spending isn't infinite and doesn't come from nowhere. The more spent on housing benefit the less spent on healthcare, transport, schools etc or the more tax required.

Housing benefit, and council housing generally, has been a joke for too long with many, though by no means all, claimants getting far more than they need. Yes the current changes are also affecting some people unfairly (in my opinion) but that's to be expected when making such large changes so quickly.

Graham highlighted a great example: The mum who was used as a 'victim' case who wasn't charging a working adult son any rent; but was struggling to cover the costs of her 3 bed house. Cry me a f'ing river.

What's that? With Cameron spending £700bn it doesn't have over this 5 years? I hardly think the £2bn saving is going to make a lot of difference!

Where is this money going, because for low-income families, it certainly isn't going in their pockets, and for higher rate taxpayers, I'm no better off under the new reforms.

What the government should be doing with this £700bn is building properties for their own rentals, renting these at a reasonable rate, and encouraging small businesses to startup/employ, hopefully by taking foreign contracts. 60% of our company income goes abroad, but at least the rest of it stays in the UK, has UK tax paid on it etc.

I'd be happy to pay 50% tax on everything over £10k, especially if it were to reduce the long-term government debt and be spat out at the low income families. This isn't about tax or high house prices, this is about reducing the government shortfall and running the government like a business, that needs to make a profit.

Or is the government too stupid to see this?

CK

Delara

The simple fact is benefits will keep getting cut back over the next few years. The next cut will be in October when universal credit comes in. This will put downward pressure on rents and house prices.

There will be more cuts in the years to come. There will be more people no longer able to afford their rent, even if they are on one meal a day and nearly all their benefits go towards rent. They will still fall behind.

ukcarper

Delara wrote: »

The simple fact is benefits will keep getting cut back over the next few years. The next cut will be in October when universal credit comes in. This will put downward pressure on rents and house prices.

There will be more cuts in the years to come. There will be more people no longer able to afford their rent, even if they are on one meal a day and nearly all their benefits go towards rent. They will still fall behind.

Give me the figures of how many people in BTLs get LHA and what percentage is that of the total people in BTL because without that you can't tell what effect the reduction in benefits will have.

People keep saying this or that will cause rents to fall and they aren't. Going back to where I am the vast majority of houses to let are more expensive than LHA and they are renting readily. If there is a housing shortage it only needs enough people who can afford the higher rent.

How many people will be effected by £26000 benefit cap that's over £2100 a month so a person entitled to 3 bed LHA in my area would still have over £1000 a month after paying rent and council tax.

N1AK

CKhalvashi wrote: »

What's that? With Cameron spending £700bn [STRIKE]it[/STRIKE] he doesn't have over this 5 years? I hardly think the £2bn saving is going to make a lot of difference!

And how do you suggest he cuts that £700,000,000,000 in spending so that it can direct it to house building etc? I suppose we could just stop all government funded pension payments for the next 4 years; that's almost enough

A single £2,000,000,000 saving may well only be a small proportion of our deficit spending, however lots of small savings is generally a pretty sound way of bringing costs down. Besides which £2,000,000 is still better than nothing; that alone would be enough for the government to get ~15,000 affordable homes built for them in the south east.

N1AK

bulccp05laer wrote: »

It has been a joke for too long. But it worked, high housing benefit payments successfully pushed up rents and with them the property market.

I think that would depend on your definition of 'worked'. Personally I don't ascribe to the belief that pushing house prices up is a good idea. The government could just as easily have had more restricted benefits policy and invested the saved money in buying property; that would have provided a market stimulus but with the government retaining the asset rather than paying more to private landlords.

CKhalvashi

N1AK wrote: »

And how do you suggest he cuts that £700,000,000,000 in spending so that it can direct it to house building etc? I suppose we could just stop all government funded pension payments for the next 4 years; that's almost enough

I'm merely suggesting that the tax is raised to flat level for all, with a suggestion of what this should be, and then part of the extra tax gained is spat out at those on low incomes, thereby reducing the debt as it is.

Should this be done, there should be IRO extra £50bn a year over last years spending, thus eliminating part of the debt. This would, of course, be in conjunction with increases in VAT and Corp Tax to 2008 levels.

If we're only taxing profit, and part of this is paid back out, then the deficit is largely reduced.

CK

IveSeenTheLight

Delara wrote: »

The next cut will be in October when universal credit comes in. This will put downward pressure on rents and house prices.

We still have not been able to quantify how much we think the downward pressure will equate to.

There have been reports that the cuts / restrictions will only affect the extremities and not affect the general benefit claimant.

Much of this is smoke and mirrors from the government.

OffGridLiving

grizzly1911 wrote: »

From your BBC link;-

"The spare room subsidy changes will bring fairness back to the system - when in England alone there are nearly two million households on the social housing waiting list and over a quarter of a million tenants are living in overcrowded homes."

If these figures are right something tells me charging £14 per surplus room, without providing anywhere for the impacted people to move to, isn't going to solve the problem.

It is merely an act of desperation and spite.

This is my issue with the spare room subsidy. It's supposed to encourage people to move from their family homes and into smaller accommodation once the kids have flown the nest. If the accommodation isn't available then it's just a tax.

The coalition government seem to come out with decent ideas (who can argue in a housing shortage that people with empty rooms should move to smaller houses), but then the implementation is all messed up.

It was the same with Child Benefit. A basically sound idea to take it away from those who didn't need it, but so badly implemented that some couples with an income of £90k get it and some couples with an income of £60k don't.

More speed, less haste with these necessary changes.

N1AK

CKhalvashi wrote: »

I'm merely suggesting that the tax is raised to flat level for all, with a suggestion of what this should be, and then part of the extra tax gained is spat out at those on low incomes, thereby reducing the debt as it is.

You wanted to solve a £700,000,000,000 deficit. Now suddenly after claiming £2 billion is nothing you're actually talking £50 billion a year in extra tax of which you intend to spend some undefined amount on increased benefits.

Do you have any idea just how nonsensical your suggested tax solution is? There are literally dozens of problems from how it would bankrupt many mortgage holders to how it would destroy private education and those employed theirs jobs.

It would result in a £12k increase in our household tax bill and we aren't even high rate tax payers; we'd leave (which to be fair we've considered regardless of tax). So instead of getting £16k a year in tax, plus whatever in VAT and tax on our work for our employers, from us you'd get nothing