Housing Benefit help please.

Taffyscot

Hi all,
Rental benefits. We are presently in rental accomodation and get rental benefits as my partner gets DLA and DWP. He had to retire early from work with Parkinson's Disease and is now 64. His health is deteriorating and we would like to move closer to his hospital. We currently travel about 3 times a week 40 miles each time. Where the hospital is situated is not the best of areas and my sister would like to get her foot on the property ladder in Scotland for when she retires in some 7 years. She is concerned about where we would live if we move and has suggested buying a place in a better area and renting it out to us. She would have peace of mind about where we are living and we would be closer to the hospital. Would we still be able to get help with the rent and pay her? There are conflicting answers about the fact that she is a close relative and the landlord. Then others say that doesn't matter if she is not residing in the same residence. If there is a social worker out there that could give me a definitive answer it would sure help us with our decision. It is very distressful being in this situation after 35 years of hard work and never being out of work.
Also I wanted to start a new thread about this but could not seem to do it somehow. Can anyone help with this too? Thank you all Taffy

Valley's_girl

Hi Taffy I am sorry I don't have any advice regarding the housing benefit but I am sure that someone will be along shortly.
To start a new thread there is a link, new thread in the top left hand corner.
Ally xx

jacnorm

You can rent from relatives and still get housing benefit but, they do make it a little more difficult for you. The owner of the property has to totally convince them that you would be treated the same as any other tenant and you must have a proper tenancy agreement drawn up. They have to be convinced that the owner would be prepared to take action to remove you from the property as they would with some one else if you were behind with the rent or had broken the tenancy agreement in some other way.
As I said it is done and they can be a little annoying at how long they take to sort it out but, if you and the relative concerned know that it takes a while for the rent to come through it`s not so bad.
One other thing if they consider the property has more bedrooms than you need they will not pay for the empty ones. For a couple they say you are allowed one bedroom and one livingroom.
It took four months for my rent to get sorted out but, the landlord is a friend and was okay about this and it was a lot of money considering my rent is £125 per week. Jacqui

Taffyscot

Hi Jacqui, Thank you so much for this. It does have 3 bedrooms but my sister is prepared to let us have it for a little more than what we pay now for a one bedroom one. My partner has Parkinsons and moves around a tremendous amount all night. He also has restless legs and terrible cramps due to the parkeys and he is ok for a cuddle but not for sleeping with all night. Could you sleep with a rock and roller? lol. She sees it as an investment in her future and knows it will go up in value. She also doesn't want to see us going into the rough area around the hospital that we could afford. She doesn't want any roughies in her place either. Where we are now is a lovely area but miles away from hospitals either end. It is getting to be a worry as partner just had a pace maker and has parkeys problems, sees a speech therapist at the hospital once a week and sees a heart specialist and an eye surgeon for cataracts. He is finding it increasingly difficult to sit in a car for long periods of time. So if this place has 3 bedrooms would that be a problem? We need 2 as sleeping with him is impossible unfortunately. I sleep in a wee room now that was a little tiny dining room on a futon the landlord kindly took the wee dining table out. I know when we moved from Stevenston to Largs it took about 4 months too and our kids loaned us the money. My sister would be prepared to write up a tenancy agreement and lets face it she needs that money to pay expenses on that property too. Do you think they would make our life intolerable? I do not want any more stress than I have to on my poor husband. thanks again Jacqui. Regards Taffy

Morglin

SHELTER are excellent at giving information about renting from relatives and the effects on HB:

http://england.shelter.org.uk/advice/index.cfm

Lin

Taffyscot

Thank you so much for this.

jacnorm

Hi Taffy, we also sleep in seperate room`s as my husband has terrible nights. He also has restless legs amongst other things but, our housing benefit office say its law they will not pay for a seperate room for me as we are married we are expected to sleep in the same room regardless of any problems.
The rent service are used by the housing benefit all over the country and if you go on the website it will tell you how to calculate the number of rooms they will pay for. WWW.THERENTSERVICE.GOV.UK
They will let you know which office would deal with your calim for the area you would be moving to and if your property has too many rooms as does the one we live in they will say how many rooms they will not pay for. We have to pay £60 towards our rent per month but, have friends that pay £ 130 per month so, it all rests with the number of rooms. Hope this helps but, do look on the website and it explains it all on there and they have phone numbers listed for contact Jacqui

seven-day-weekend

I have bad restless legs too and am sometimes up most of the night, but we have twin beds in the same room. If ny having the light on to read disturbs my husband (it doesn't always) I go on the computer (MSE!) or read in another room.

At least I'm not keeping him awake kicking him!

(Sorry, this is nothing to do with Housing Benefit, but thought it might help anyway).

Taffyscot

thanks for all your help and yes it does have to do with what I am talking about thought about the twin bed thing but he wakes up screaming with pain from the cramps most nights. Well they should change the law then shouldn't they? That is ridiculous they do not look at individuals as just that individuals with individual needs. If I slept in the same room I would be like a zombie. Sometimes I do sleep there but get up after about 2 hours of his snoring and twitching. Poor fella at least I can get away from it for a while he cant. thank you all for your comments appreciated. Taffy

Morglin

We have to have two bedrooms, although there are only two of us - I start off in the double bed, but my husband is so restless (and shouts and thrashes about in his sleep), and I generally end up in the spare room for part of the night.:eek:

He also needs a lot of equipment for breathing exercises, so there is a space issue.

I got a letter from our GP stating that we needed two bedrooms for health reasons, and councils etc., have always accepted that.

Lin

Taffyscot

Once again thanks for your helpful comments. taffy