Accepted onto the housing register but won't be able to bid

onwards&upwards

Cakeguts wrote: »

Who pays the LHA?

Different thing.

Chandler85

Housing Benefit (or it's current name), is taxpayers money inevitably in the end. But that's not really the issue here.


4 bed houses are really rare. People who have them will often prefer to pay extar for the spare room then give up their homes if they have lived there for a while, while makes them rarer as well.


The problem the OP has is that she isn't homeless, there is too many people homeless/ in temporary accomodation for the system already. So moving from private rented to Social Housing or Council Housing is nearly impossible unless there are cases of abuse, extreme overcrowding etc.

Tskay

Okay, it seems I was mistaken about the 4-bed but what about the LHA? There's also water coming down from the bathroom sometimes, the water is coming from upstairs. We asked the council to fix it before but they didn't and we asked again and we are still to get a response. I actually live in a flat not house.

Yalpsmol

Why did you contact the council? Whats the situation with the landlord?

Tskay

Yalpsmol wrote: »

Why did you contact the council? Whats the situation with the landlord?

Spoke to the landlord first and he emailed the council on the 15th of July about the situation but no response as of yet.

Yalpsmol

I'm assuming the council own the flat(s) above you in the block?

Dave_606

OK, so if the op is mistaken about requiring a 4 bedroom property due to the make up of her family then they cant use overcrowding as a reason. They only have a financial hardship justification\claim depending on how much more the rent is above the LHA. Added to that there does seem to be issues over repairs. If its just a plumbing issue then could be straight forwards, so odd how the landlord isn't to bothered over getting it sorted as it could cause more and expensive damage long term.

Worth noting if the rent is quite a bit above the LHA (how much above is it op?) then it should be classed as financial hardship in the same way as the Bedroom Tax is for social tenants. And those subject to the Bedroom Tax in my area was given a high priority (second highest I think) on the property pool.

GibbsRule_No3

Tskay wrote: »

Spoke to the landlord first and he emailed the council on the 15th of July about the situation but no response as of yet.

So is the flat you are in owned privately(RTB at some time?) but the block is still council owned/run, hence above property is council? Does your neighbour above know about the water problem and have they contacted the council? Water is usually responded to urgently by council repair departments. Having just read about Newham Council though, they may not operate the same way.

Tskay

Dave_606 wrote: »

OK, so if the op is mistaken about requiring a 4 bedroom property due to the make up of her family then they cant use overcrowding as a reason. They only have a financial hardship justification\claim depending on how much more the rent is above the LHA. Added to that there does seem to be issues over repairs. If its just a plumbing issue then could be straight forwards, so odd how the landlord isn't to bothered over getting it sorted as it could cause more and expensive damage long term.

Worth noting if the rent is quite a bit above the LHA (how much above is it op?) then it should be classed as financial hardship in the same way as the Bedroom Tax is for social tenants. And those subject to the Bedroom Tax in my area was given a high priority (second highest I think) on the property pool.

Rent is £300 above LHA but early this year we had to go on Universal Credit so it might have changed. Yesterday I checked the Local Housing Allowance rates website to calculate how much LHA is for a 3 bedroom property. Our Universal Credit claim began on January 2019 and based on that website, it says the LHA for a 3-bed is £295.59 a week which means that that rent is £317.64 above LHA.

Tskay

GibbsRule_No3 wrote: »

So is the flat you are in owned privately(RTB at some time?) but the block is still council owned/run, hence above property is council? Does your neighbour above know about the water problem and have they contacted the council? Water is usually responded to urgently by council repair departments. Having just read about Newham Council though, they may not operate the same way.

Yes, the neighbours know about it and they they've told us that they have contacted the council when it first happened but then after few weeks it happened again so we went up to the neighbours upstairs to tell them about the water problem again. Both times our landlord was made aware about the problem but this time our landlord contacted the council on the 15th of July and we are still waiting for a response.