Lib Dem councillor speaks out on benefit cap 'disaster' for families

It is refreshing to hear that one of our Liberal Democrat councillors spoke from the heart recently, rather than from the party script, when asked about the impact of the housing and other benefit caps and benefit cuts.

In response to a question from a member of a visiting delegation of Swedish councillors and council official  last week, Cllr Barry Cheese (Lib Dem Brondesbury Park) said.

The benefit caps and cuts will be a disaster for families and in particular children who will be forced to leave their schools. This will cause anxiety to the child who will feel insecure and it will have  a serious impact on their learning ability.   The Government created the Pupil Premium to help these very children and now the children it was meant for won't be there.

Multi-occupancy may increase as result of housing benefits cap

When it became clear that the housing benefit cap would lead to many families being unable to afford their current accommodation it appeared that many would have to seek housing outside of Brent where rents are cheaper. Many families were upset at having to leave job, family and friends and disrupt their children's education. In Brent the Counihan family have exemplified this attachment to home and school as they fight to get rehoused in the borough.

However I have been told that rather than move far away and lose these connections, some families are moving into multi-occupied housing.

Clearly this creates a whole new set of problems regarding over-crowding and possible exploitation by profiteering landlords. It also means that the school population may, if this becomes a common solution, may increase more than expected as places in 'unaffordable' lets are taken uo by families moving out of inner London,  This is a real headache for officers in charge of school expansion as it is hard to predict future trends.

Brent has already encountered the phenomenon of 'beds in sheds' but there are also likely to be unofficial and substandard conversions of houses that may well increase fire and sanitary risks. The possible closure of Willesden and Harlesden fire stations and the Central Middlesex A&E adds to the danger.

Brent Housing will be on the frontline in dealing with these issues and particularly  enforcing licensing and standards. Its website makes clear the difficulties posed by HMOs (Houses in Multiple Occupancy:

In order to be an HMO the property must be used as the tenants' only or main residence and it should be used solely or mainly to house tenants. Properties let to students and migrant workers will be treated as their only or main residence and the same will apply to properties which are used as domestic refuges.

It is widely recognised that many HMO residents are among the poorest and most vulnerable in society.

The HMOs that they live in can be particularly difficult to manage and can present a greater risk to occupants than houses occupied by single households. Because of the risks associated with HMOs, licensing for this sector has been introduced.

We are committed to improving housing conditions for people living in HMOs and ensuring that all tenants enjoy the standards of accommodation to which they are entitled to under the law.

Measures available to us range from awarding discretionary grants to carrying out works in default of non-compliant owners and ultimately prosecution.

The housing emergency that will soon devastate Brent families

The entrance to a Chalkhill block of flats

 "They are making the poor, poorer," was the reaction of one parent when Chalkhill Primary School held a briefing about the Coalition's welfare reforms.

The school, recognising that many of its families would be hit in the near future had arranged for Reed in Partnership and Brent Housing to explain what was happening and 50 or so parents attended the meeting on Friday morning.

As the parents realised,that their lives were about to be turned upside down, the anxiety in the room deepened.

Brent Housing admitted there was little good news but emphasised the need for planning ahead of the main impact of the changes which will hit in April 2013.  They offered advice on how to bid for properties and transfers for council and housing association tenants (Call 020 8937 5211) and help for those renting in the private sector (020 8937 5211/4441/2369).

They suggested that the reforms might mean moving to Barnet or Harrow or further afield for some tenants. They were able to offer to help negotiate new rents with private landlords when the London Housing Allowance (LHA) no longer covered the full rent, perhaps with a 9 month protection if the rent was increased pending finding new accommodation.

For many, the combination of the reduced Housing Benefit,. the overall income cap, changes in the hours needing to be worked for Working Tax credit, and the likely charging of at least 20% council tax to all but the most vulnerable,  will bring about a drastic reduction in income The red columns add up to the £500 weekly limit):
 

Household size	Total Income (IS/JSA, CTC, CB –approx)	Max HB from April 2013	LHA rate South Brent	LHA rate North Brent
2  adults, 2 children	£260.70	£239.30	£290 (2 bed rate)	£219.23 (2 bed rate)
2 adults, 3 children	£332.10	£167.90	£340 (3 bed rate)	£288.46 (3 bed rate)
2 adults, 4 children	£403.50	£96.50	£400 (4 bed rate)	£346.15 (4 bed rate)
2 adults, 5 children	£474.90	£25.10	£400	£400
2 adults,  6 children	£546.30	£0	£400	£400

It is clear that many families will not have enough to spend on food, heating and necessities after rent has been paid and thus will have no option but to move out of London unless they can find work.

This was where Reed In Partnership came in with its offer to help 'progression into work' , emphasising that it was not 'forcing people into work'. They offered:

• Individual appointments to make 'better off' calculations comparing income from work with income from benefits. 
• Opportunities to go on courses, develop English language skills, and help looking for long-term sustainable jobs.
• Step by step help with housing, childcare, budgeting, connection with appropriate programme
• Help into volunteer activities that would contribute to a CV
• Help with interview skills and appropriate clothing
• Help with public transport , providing travel cards while waiting for first pay packet

A mother who had received help from the programme spontaneously stood and said how much it had helped her. She said that they had helped her buy clothes for her job interview and that now she was employed she was better off than when she was on benefit and less socially isolated at home.

Reed In Partnership contacts: Marilyn Grundy 07534 189 557
Wembley Works, Forum House, Lakeside Way, HA9 0BU
Sessions: May 3, 17, 31 9am-noon

I am sceptical that with the numbers of people involved and with current high levels of unemployment in Brent how many people will be able to benefit but it clearly offered some a glimmer of hope. However for some mothers with very young children at home it does not seem to be an option. For many moving to 'cheaper' areas, probably with even fewer job opportunities (that's one reason why property is cheap after all) will be the only alternative to penury.  While Reed claims it isn't doing the forcing it is clear that the policy is doing just that and agencies such as Reed deliver that policy on behalf of the government.

Overall, the impact of all this must be to increase the number of children living in poverty with inevitable consequences for health and educational progress. If families are forced to move out of London children's schooling will be disrupted and nuclear families will be separated from support from their extended families and communities, finding themselves isolated and possibly facing racism and prejudice from the receiving communities.

According to Saturday's Guardian, back in 1994, Housing Minister Grant Shapps stood in what they call the London ward that represented Chalkhill, then a notorious concrete block estate.  Shapps boasts, "My brilliant slogan was 'Vote for me on Thursday and we'll start knocking your house down on Friday', and I came within 103 votes of taking a safe Labour ward".

I would like Shapps to come back to the Chalkhill Estate and  talk to people whose lives he and his Coalition colleagues are about to wreck.
 
It appears to me that this government is like the military, making war and killing people in a far away country. by clicking on a computer screen. They are as remote from the lives of ordinary people in places like Chalkhill and the impact these 'reforms' will have on their lives, as those military personnel were from the lives of ordinary people in Iraq. I suppose the question is are they oblivious to the consequences, or is that what they want?

For more on these issues go to this article LINK

The Chalkhill meeting showed the importance of outreach work by the Council at a venue where they can meet families affected by the welfare 'reforms' and rise awareness of the issues. I hope other schools will hold similar meetings.

From Shelter

Brent homelessness on the rise and worse to come

The extent of Brent's housing crisis is set out in stark terms in a report going before the Council Executive on April 23rd. LINK

Brent Council is expecting to receive 440 homeless applications in the final quarter of this year, the highest since 2007-8.  The rise in demand follows government changes in the Local Housing Allowance which caps the maximum payable for different sizes of accommodation.

While some landlords have accepted a decrease in rental income as a result, others have not and are have evicted tenants; withdrawing from the market or letting to other types of households.

Total current demand on the Housing Register, including homeless households in temporary accommodation and the Transfer list is just over 18.500 households.  In contrast the Council expects only 871 lettings into permanent housing tenancies (Council and Housing Association) by the end of 2011-12. At the end of February 2012 there was a total of 3,136 households in temporary accommodation and this is expected to rise. At the same time the amount of subsidy  the Council receives from central government for self-contained temporary accommodation has been capped and the Council has to meet any shortfall.  The Council has hitherto sought to provide such accommodation within the borough but to minimise costs there has been an increase in out of borough placements, particularly for larger households. Between February 2012 and March 2012 out of borough placements rose from 104 to 120 and the figure is forecast to rise significantly in the future.

As a result of these pressures Executive members are being asked to approve letting projections based on different demand groups. (Appendix D) of the document.

The report assesses the likely impact of the Overall Benefit Cap. The Department of Work and Pensions forecast that in Brent around 3,500 households would be affected. Brent initially though that larger households in the private sector would affected but having worked through some examples they think it wlil be smaller households. For example a couple with three children living in the south of Brent in a 3 bedroomed property could have a £100 weekly shortfall in their housing benefit.

The Council's revised 2011-12 budget for expenditure on temporary accommodation is £2,306,000 which includes a housing benefit subsidy budget loss of £500,000.  As a result of the pressures outlined officers are now forecasting an overspend in the current financial year of £354,000. The temporary accommodation budget for 2012-13 is £3,440,000 in order to mange cost pressures and increased demand. Although the Council expects to break even they state: 'there continue to be significant risks attached to the Council's ability to control demand led pressures..while ensuring statutory duties are met'.

Brent Housing Partnership Talkback meeting and surgery tonight

Brent Housing Partnership, Brent Council's 'arm's length' social housing provider, is holding its first  ever Residents' Talkback Forum tonight at Brent Town Hall. The BHP's Chief Executive Gerry Doherty, will be there as well as senior managers and other staff. The 7-9pm Talkback session will be preceded by a 'Surgery' between 5.30 and 7pm where residents can ask about repairs, anti-social behaviour, rent, leasehold or estate services. The meetings will be held upstairs at the Town Hall in Committee Rooms 1,2 and 3.

The BHP faces an uncertain future with the possibility that Brent Council will bring social housing back in-house in the future.

Stark impact of government 'social cleansing' housing policy in Brent

Post eviction scene?

Brent Council expects 512 families to lose their homes through being unable to afford their rent in private accommodation as a result of  the Housing Benefit cap in January 2012, a further 714 in February and 799 in March. 

The weekly loss of benefit will be:
1 bedroomed accommodation £7.69
2 bedroomed £34.40
3 bedroomed £98.74
4 bedroomed £200
5 bedroomed £282.24

Clearly the cuts will affect people with large families disproportionally.

Jacky Peacock, Executive Director of Brent Private Tenants Group, in quietly setting out the figures at today's meeting organised by Barry Gardiner at Brent Town Hall. did more to bring home the seriousness of the situation than any passionate politician's speech could have done.

She reported that in 2009 there were 22,281 privately rented homes in Brent, representing about 84,000 people. There were more children in privately rented housing than in social housing.  Tenants were young and not so young professionals often having to stay in rented accommodation into their 40s or 50s, half of all  renters were on housing benefit. There were students, migrant workers and older tenants with regulated tenancies.

She said that in 2010/11 Brent Council had to find private lettings for 548 families and between April and October another 173. Anyone moving into 'temporary accommodation' as a result of losing their home could expect to be in it for 10-11 years. Many rents in the cheapest third of rental accommodation were already above the capped amounts.

Rents had already increased by 5.7% this year and landlords were expecting another 6% over the next 12 months. One third of privately rented homes fall below Decent Homes Standards and 15% have serious damp problems compared with 8% owner occupied and 10% social housing. Private tenants were four times more likely to live in a cold home with resultant health problems. May were forced to go to bed to keep room rather than  try to keep warm sitting in their room.

Jacky said we had never seen a situation like this before: families would be forced to move out of London to find affordable accommodation with the resultant dislocation of support from friends and families and disruption of children's education.

Cllr Janice Long, Brent lead member for housing, told the full hall that she had nothing but doom to convey.  She said she could see no light at the end of the tunnel. She told tenants that the worse thing they could do was to not pay the rent and get into debt - it would  be better to move, She said that if they got accepted as homeless by the Council that was not the end of the problem as there was no spare bed and breakfast accommodation - it would be provided outside of Brent. She said that making the argument that children's education would be disrupted if the family moved far away wouldn't wash - they would have to find a school elsewhere.

Looking forward to the future Janice said that 'affordable' housing wasn't the answer as the Coalition government had changed the definition of 'affordable' to 80% of the market rent - making it not affordable to Brent residents on the average Brent wage. In addition the government would cut housing benefit to those without a job whom they deemed able to work.

She said, 'The Council is not to blame. It's the government that has decided on the social cleansing of London."

Contributing from the floor Shahrar Ali admired Cllr Long's honesty but wondered if rather than merely manage the consequences of the cuts ('You sometimes sounded like a member of the Coalition') the Council should be doing more to engage in the fight against them.  We heard about landlords harassing 80 year olds to get them out of property, landlords giving tenants notice to quiet who tried to get the landlord to improve insulation through the Green deal, a 25 year teacher who could not afford to move out of her mother's home, people who had the income:price ratios to get a mortgage but not the hefty deposits now required, a woman who been forced to move six times in rapid succession losing deposits and fees with each move.

The social cost in terms of health problems, disrupted education and temporary accommodation costs would outweigh the 'savings' made by the government through their benefit cap, according to several contributors. However, as I murmured to my neighbour, most of those costs would be shifted to already hard-pressed local authorities and away from central government budgets.

In my contribution I told the meeting that my experience at Chalkhill School was that families were already being evicted as tenancies came to an end and there were already increased numbers in temporary accommodation. Families were being offered accommodation as far away as Birmingham and Milton Keynes. Sometime ago I met a Nepalese family who had moved to Milton Keynes who had to move again because of racial harassment from local youth there.Brent families, used to living in a multiracial environment, might face similar problems.

I noted that the recent consultation on the Wembley Plan stated that developers were not currently willing to build affordable housing because of low profits. Plans had been put on the back burner and they were instead investing in private student accommodation. The Council needed to negotiate with Quintain, the main developer, to ensure the housing was built. Cllr Janice Long confirmed that the Wembley Plan's definition of affordable was the old one, rather than the new 80% of affordable rent definition.

When  I asked that more be done about locating and taking over empty housing, Janice Long at first said that often such housing had a story attached to it, but later said that the present Compulsory Purchase of Empty Properties policy inherited from the last Brent administration was gummy (lacked teeth) and could do with strengthening. Jacky Peacock said that despite problems her experience was that if the local authority had a robust CPO policy on empty properties and implemented it, for every one property compulsorily purchased owners would put anothet100 on the market.  Jacky also agreed that with Sarah Cox that other empty property in Brent could be purchased and converted to housing where appropriate.

Chris Williamson, Labour MP a member of the shadow housing team, said that the previous Labour government hadn't got everything right on housing but would learn from its mistakes. The Labour Party wanted to bring the private rented sector up to standard but accepted its role in society. He stressed that the Labour Party was in 'listening mode'. He said that the supply of affordable housing needed government intervention and investment in it would provide a stimulus to the economy.

The meeting ended with a call for a big campaign on the issue and requests for people to join the Brent Private Tenants' Rights Group. LINK Navin Shah, Labour AM for Brent and Harrow, reminded the audience that they would have a chance to express their views electorally in next year's Mayoral and London Assembly election.

Find out more from  Brent Private Tenants' Rights Group 36-38 Willesden Lane, Kilburn, London NW6 7ST Tel: 020 7624 4327 info@bptrg.org   Website: www.bptrg.org

Private Tenants Need Protection - Jenny Jones

Responding to the National Housing Federation report projecting a decline in home ownership in the UK, Jenny Jones, Green Party Assembly Member and London Mayoral candidate said:

Home ownership in London has been in decline for a decade, dropping from 60% to 52% of households. This means that more and more Londoners rely on one of the most insecure rental sectors in Europe, where tenants are unable to resist rent hikes and are scared to challenge slum landlords.
 
Ireland is more enlightened - after six months you get an automatic right to stay for another three and a half years and landlords need a good reason to evict you. In the UK you can be kicked out with two months' notice and the landlord doesn’t need to give you a reason. We urgently need to protect London's private tenants, whether they live there by choice or because they're priced out of home ownership. 

Housing Benefit Cap - the stark reality

Guest blog from Andre Rostant:

Cameron’s Big Solution

Myself, my wife and our eight young children have been told that, before January 2012, we must move to "the fringes" of London or further afield,... as a letter from Westminster Council benefits puts it: "to make sure that people on benefit are not living in accommodation that would be unaffordable to most people in work".

Our rent is £2000 a week for an ex 3 bedroom council house.Mr Cameron and Westminster Councillor Philippa Roe say we need to be “realistic”. To any reader who already has their pen out, let’s make something clear: under the new housing benefit rules,a “normal" married couple with two children, earning £48K a year between them and paying the median £530 a week for a privately rented 2 bed Westminster home will receive as little as £1.7K a year in housing benefit - leaving them to pay over £25K a year rent - that is 80% of their take home wage each week. That is: "the average rent for a two bed home in Westminster is now more than 80% of the combined ne tincome of two normal working people on typical wages" which, apparently, is realistic. 

Rent levels have nothing to do with housing benefit: I have asked landlords, including our own, and been consistently told that the market is “buoyant" and rents will not go down when benefits are cut.Official research also mainly suggestsit is “unlikely rents in inner London will drop significantly”. So, what is going on here? Many campaign groups have alluded to it, Karen Buck hinted at it but was constrained by political sensitivities and even Boris took his mind off avoiding Bob Crow long enough to comment. 

What’s going on is Cameron’s Big Solution: a policy of ethnic and social cleansing which slithered in over the back of the sparkling propaganda coup of holding up to scorn and ridicule a handfull of confused refugees (people fleeing war, persecution etc) - placed by chance in expensive accommodation by Councils, describing these refugees as “asylum seekers”.They also highlighed stories about benefit cheats and “scroungers” who in reality make up a small minority of those on benefits and whose motives and reasons are actually far too diverse and complex to lump into any meaningful category.They only just stopped short of depicting these people as rats.

As Mr Cameron crudely and tritely says: “immigration and welfare reform are two sides of the same coin”. Propaganda is wont to ignore inconvenient truths: UK benefit rates are not fabulously more generous than those of many other European countries, and the bulk of refugees are put in far from salubrious accommodation. Mr Cameron asserts that Immigration has put “real pressures on communities... on schools, housing and healthcare... significant numbers of new people… not able to speak the same language...not really wanting or even willing to integrate…” and, he says of the unemployed and working poor:“if they're out of work, or on a low wage, and living in an expensive home in the centre of a city [that] the decision to go back to work, or take a better paid job could mean having to move to a cheaper home, in a different part of the city, in order to escape benefit dependency.”

How is a poor manual worker going to simply make “the decision” to take a better paid job? The combination of benefit “reforms” will force poor people to move: families like mine, single poor people, including pensioners who have worked all their lives, hard working unskilled people, the disabled and the ill. People will die: not least unsettled pensioners, those whose medical or psychiatric treatment is disrupted, those who break down (Iknow at least one recent local suicide has been directly attributed to benefit cuts).

Already disadvantaged people will be rendered utterly destitute because of the reality that hard work counts for nothing while the money you have - pretty much however you got it - counts for much.Of course, black people and other minorities will be disproportionately afflicted, because we are, in reality, more likely to be poor. So, Mr Cameron will fix “undesireable” immigration, welfare dependency and parasitism by resettling us all, somewhere out of the way of “hard working taxpayers” of the big society: so that better paid work or, indeed, any work sets us free... 

I do work, as it happens, as do more benefit claimants than are unemployed - the OECD predicts that without rent subsidy low paid workers “will be restricted to poorer areas with few jobs” where we will “become locked in a cycle of worklessness” in other words: ghettoes.Where to from there?Well, barring a miracle, thousands of us, including my family and I, are on our way to “the fringes of London” or further afield, for a start.Perhaps the Government might offer to lay on trains for us...

Bleak Winter for Housing Benefit Families

Estate agents in Brent are already taking action

The Winter Bulletin from the Brent Citizens Advice Bureau has two pieces of worrying news.

The first concerns the impact of changes in Housing Benefit, which although not in force until January 2012 is already having an impact, with private landlords taking drastic action. I have already seen this in a primary school where I am a governor with tenants receiving notice to quit and families having to move into bed and breakfast hotel accommodation.

Brent CAB say:

Although the government has delayed the changes, evidence is emerging of the impact of the proposed housing benefit cap.

We are receiving a mounting number of enquiries from prospective tenants, who are being rejected by landlords because they rely on housing benefit.


We are also seeing many residents whose tenancy agreement is not renewed because of the HB changes. In other cases, landlords are simply issuing Section 21 notice to evict tenants.


The full implementation of these proposals, next January, is bound to have a devastating effect on Brent residents - of the 10,225 families receiving LHA in Brent, 1,988 are receiving LHA above the cap - and it may be compounded by the pressures on accommodation and other basic services - such as schools and health, as a result of families being displaced from more affluent central London boroughs.


We are already working with Brent Council to look at ways of easing the impact of such changes.


We have also raised our concerns with local MPs. Brent CAN attended a meeting of the Work and Pensions Select Committee to make the case against a cut in housing benefits.

Brent CAB is looking for a multi-agency partnership to support people affected by these changes. We are also trying to secure extra resources to deal with housing benefit cases and displaced families.

If you would like to know more about working in partnership with Brent CAB, please contact Jacqueline.carr@brentcab.co.uk

UNCERTAINTY ABOUT THE FUTURE

Ian Brownhill, Chair of Brent CAB, warns that they have already lost a quarter of their total funding and that more cuts are on the way. The reorganisation of Children's Centres may result in a significant reduction in the service that Brent CAB offers at the Centres. Last year they helped 2,820 families and since April 2009 have gained £3.7m for parents.

He says:

It is alarming to see funding being reduced as part of a budgetary drill, paying little or no attention to outcomes or impact on vulnerable people.

He goes on to welcomes the Council's decision to protect the most vulnerable people from cuts and says:

I trust this policy to be fully implemented, when it comes to deciding on essential advice services for Brent residents and the future of Brent CAB.

He is absolutely right and that is why Brent Fightback is so essential to monitor cuts that the Council is making and ensure that the policy is being followed.