Housing benefit

rachel19_2

Just looking for a bit of advise
I have been renting my house privately through a letting agency for 10 years now, in November I had a letter to say my rent was increasing from 575 to 595 a month. I am a single mother n benefits at the moment, jobseekers allowance housing benefit etc.
I gave my letter to the council in nov and not heard back so contacted them and they said they are not paying the extra towards my rent. Im not sure what to do, my house is still extremely cheap rent wise for the area I live in, most houses are way over 600 so cant move, I feel stuck.

Fieldsofgold

rachel19 wrote: »

Just looking for a bit of advise
I have been renting my house privately through a letting agency for 10 years now, in November I had a letter to say my rent was increasing from 575 to 595 a month. I am a single mother n benefits at the moment, jobseekers allowance housing benefit etc.
I gave my letter to the council in nov and not heard back so contacted them and they said they are not paying the extra towards my rent. Im not sure what to do, my house is still extremely cheap rent wise for the area I live in, most houses are way over 600 so cant move, I feel stuck.

If your rent is over the applicable LHA amount you'll need to either move somewhere cheaper, negotiate with your landlord or find the difference yourself.

BigAunty

Local Housing Allowance is allegedly calculated on the 30th percentile which means that the third cheapest local rents are affordable to those on benefits. It used to be a more generous 50th percentile, the median market rent, so that half was affordable to those claiming HB. Therefore, there are lots of properties out there that are within your budget, but perhaps not so nice a property in so nice an area. However, many people dispute the way the local council calculate the LHA rates and say a lot less than a third of properties are affordable to them.

The previous poster is correct.

You have two other options as well as moving.

You also could ask the local council for Discretionary Housing Payment but you might not get it and might only be temporary. Could give you breathing space to find a cheaper tenancy.

Employment. Lone parents only have to work 16 hours a week to qualify for Working Tax Credits and the employment income and WTC will help top up your rent. Use the Turn2us online benefit calculator to see how much better off you might be with a part time job - it may reduce your HB/council tax discount but you could be better off overall. Check the calculator.

EDIT- download the MSE budget planner and work through the site to identify how to slash living expenses - cheapest energy/telecoms/tv/broadband/insurance tariffs, cheap recipes, cheapest groceries, etc. The Old Style money saving board has ultra thrifty advice. That way you may be able to raise the extra fiver or so per week to top up your rent.

pmlindyloo

How many bedrooms has the house? Who lives there? Age and sex of children?

Your eligible local housing allowance is based on the number of bedrooms required for the adults and (age and sex of) children. This the maximum they will pay.

rachel19_2

myself and my 12 year old child live here. I rent a 2 bedroom house

This is the first time in 10 years my landlord has put the rent up, so I am quite lucky there,
The rent allowance is only 520 where I live and there is nothing for that amount to rent even the 2 bed flats above the takeaway shops are 550, and that's not somewhere to bring a child up,
even my neighbours pay 640,

BigAunty

Does the non-resident parent pay any child support? If not, now might be the time to get it. It is expected that an NRP (by the CSA formula) pays 15% of their net income to the parent with care. Even those on benefits are expected to pay a fiver a week.

BigAunty

Wow - you have to find £70 per month to top up your rent (£520 HB versus £590 rent).

That's about £17 a week. Quite tough to find from your income of what, around £160 a week (at a guess, not sure)?

Have you considered finding a roomy 1 bedroom property and putting a bed (sofa bed?) in the living room for yourself? To be honest, it doesn't sound ideal but might be better off than getting into debt.

Looks like getting a job, performing a budgeting exercise, requesting child support (if possible) and DHP are the ways to go if you don't feel like moving.

cattermole

Sounds a big shortfall for you.

If rents are very high in the area and yours is less expensive, it doesn't sound as though even if you moved to a one bedroomed it would necessarily make that much difference.

Have you approached your Local Authority to put your name on the Social Housing list?

I can also imagine moving privately would be difficult if you have no money for a deposit, rent's in advance etc. even if you did downsize to a smaller property.

Finding work would obviously help the situation a great deal, although if you are finding that difficult that doesn't help pay the rent in the sort term. There may be options for additional training through the Job Centre or Work Experiences? Have you not been offered any of these?

fluffymovie

Just a quick note to say that the LHA rates are due to increase in April so you may get a bit extra at that time. Worth checking your local council's website as I have had my LA's old and new LHA rates on there since start of Jan.

Morglin

BigAunty wrote: »

Wow - you have to find £70 per month to top up your rent (£520 HB versus £590 rent).

That's about £17 a week. Quite tough to find from your income of what, around £160 a week (at a guess, not sure)?

Have you considered finding a roomy 1 bedroom property and putting a bed (sofa bed?) in the living room for yourself? To be honest, it doesn't sound ideal but might be better off than getting into debt.

Looks like getting a job, performing a budgeting exercise, requesting child support (if possible) and DHP are the ways to go if you don't feel like moving.

As far as I am aware, if she drops to renting a one bedroom, then her LHA would drop accordingly, so she would be no better off?

I would look at the work and CSA route to be honest.

Lin

BigAunty

Morglin wrote: »

As far as I am aware, if she drops to renting a one bedroom, then her LHA would drop accordingly, so she would be no better off?

I would look at the work and CSA route to be honest.

Lin

You could be right but I thought the point of LHA was to promote choice (not sure how given most landlords avoid benefit claimants) and a person in receipt of HB can choose any cost/any size property that they like and just get the LHA they are entitled to. She's entitled to a 2 bedroom rate, AFAIK, so will get this regardless of moving into a 1 bed property which could be cheaper. Happy to be challenged on this point.