Housing benefit freeze: 9 in 10 homes unaffordable for families - NHF report

Research by the National Housing Federation shows just how inadequate Local Housing Allowance now is for the 1.3million families who rely on it to cover the high cost of private rent.

This is contributing to children living in overcrowded and poor quality accommodation, as well as increasing levels of poverty and debt; with families who can’t find anywhere affordable to rent likely to end up homeless. The number of homeless children in temporary accommodation has increased by 83% since 2011 to 126,020.

The National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations in England – social landlords to over 6 million people, analysed 75,000 rental homes advertised on Zoopla in July 2019. It compared the cost of rent for each property with the rate of Local Housing Allowance that a family requiring that sized property would be entitled to.

Local Housing Allowance was initially designed to cover bottom 50% of market rents in any area. However this was reduced to 30% in 2011. Rates were then divorced from market rents altogether in 2013; and finally frozen in 2016, so they stopped keeping up even with inflation.

There are now parts of the country where less than 1% of private rented properties are covered by the Local Housing Allowance rate, at a time when record numbers of low income families have no other option for finding a home, due to a severe lack of social housing.

The most unaffordable places include:

Area	Total properties advertised for private rent	Not affordable	Affordable	% affordable
Huntingdon	227	226	1	0.44%
Thanet	217	216	1	0.46%
Stevenage & North Herts	159	158	1	0.63%
Ipswich	390	387	3	0.77%
Milton Keynes	508	504	4	0.79%
Peterborough	627	621	6	0.96%
Dover-Shepway	176	174	2	1.14%
Central London	3,747	3,703	44	1.17%
Outer East London	865	854	11	1.27%
Bury St Edmunds	227	230	3	1.30%

The National Housing Federation is urgently calling on the government to:

• End the freeze and increase LHA payments so that they cover at least the bottom 30% of private rent homes in any local area.
• Commit to investing £12.8bn annually in building new social housing, so that fewer families have to depend on unaffordable and insecure privately rented accommodation.

Kate Henderson, Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation said:

Low income families in England are being punished two fold, no longer able to access social housing because of the dire shortage of it, they now can’t access enough housing benefit to rent privately either.

The crippling effects of the housing crisis and significant cuts to benefits have forced thousands of parents into impossible situations in order to keep a roof over their children’s heads, many having to choose between crippling debt, overcrowding or homelessness.

The time to act is now - government must increase LHA payments in line with at least the bottom 30% of rents; as well as investing in building more social housing so we can ensure there are secure and affordable homes for these families in the future.

Case study 

Emma Langdon is 30 and lives with her two young sons in a private rented property in Plymouth. After splitting up with her partner, Emma had to move out of their shared home, and struggled to find anywhere affordable to live. After looking for several months, she could not find a single property covered by the rate of Local Housing Allowance she is entitled to.

To avoid being made homeless, Emma had to move eight miles away from her children’s school. She still has to find an extra £60 each month to pay for the rent. She said: “It’s a nightmare. As well as trying to afford the rent, I’m now spending £50 a week on fuel to get the children to school and back.”

After a year of looking, Emma is still unable to find anywhere more suitable or affordable for her family to live. She said: “It’s practically impossible to find anywhere affordable that accepts people on housing benefit. If we lived nearer the children school it would cost an extra £100 each month in rent, but at least I would save money on petrol and they would be near their friends. There are so many families like us in this situation. I’m lucky to have my father as a guarantor or we wouldn’t have been able to find anywhere to live.”

Brent Council apologises for day late payment of housing benefit

A Brent Council spokesperson said:

Brent Council is today apologising to Housing Benefit claimants, and to their landlords, who should have received their regular payment into their bank accounts on Monday 2nd April, the Bank Holiday. Instead, they will now receive the money due a day later, on Tuesday 3rd April, due to problems with an earlier payment run. We can confirm to any landlords who may therefore receive their rent payments a day late as a result that this was our error, and not that of their tenants, so this should not cause any tenants any major problems. We are working hard to identify what went wrong with this payment run, so as to ensure that there is no repeat in future.

Organising to develop a strategy on the housing crisis

With the Bedroom Tax protests at the weekend and publicity over the benefit changes, the press, TV and radio have at last woken up to the issues involved.

On Tuesday April 9th there will be a meeting in Brent to discuss next steps in a  local housing campaign. A report of the inaugural meeting follows:

Around 25 people attended the initial Housing Strategy meeting called by Brent Fightback, on Tuesday 19th March at the Brent Mencap offices in Willesden.

Attendees included the lead member for Housing for Brent Council, the Somali Advice Centre, the Counihan Family Housing campaign, Mencap campaigners, a tenants representative, a housing worker, and a high school teacher concerned about the cases arising at her school. Apologies were received from the Brent Law Centre and the Brent Private Tenants Rights Group and from some who attended the Health Scrutiny Committee.

It was a constructive and serious meeting, with information and experiences shared about the current situation and the general background to housing in Brent. Potential strategies and targets for campaigning were discussed, including:

GLA powers to set Rent Caps; advice and signposting training; "Bedroom Tax" strategies; the Right to Buy discounting; helping residents speak out and organise; mutual exchanges on properties; resisting evictions; linking up with other campaigners.

Janice Long, lead member for Housing has agreed to provide current local information of how changes are expected to affect people locally.

We agreed a next meeting time: 7pm, Tuesday 9th April, Brent Mencap offices, 379-381 High Road, Willesden. We will consider the actions that were suggested at the intial meeting and any further priorities, and estabish the name and aims of a local housing campaign.

Please forward widely.

Robin Sivapalan robsivapalan@hotmail.com 07974 331 053
Ken Montague kenmontague@msn.com

Brent housing crisis hits the headlines

Wembley and Willesden Observer 10.3.13

M'Luds won't you help me on welfare reform

Written, sung and produced by Sue Marsh, diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com

Coalition's 100 days: Poor and vulnerable hit by cuts, says TUC

Given the high number of unemployed people and the record number on the housing list Brent is going to be badly hit by the coalition cuts and benefit changes. The TUC has today set out the implications of decisions made in the Coalition's first 100 days:

Some of the UK's poorest families have been hit by more than 100 unfair spending cuts during the first 100 days of the new Government, a TUC analysis of departmental spending reveals today
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The TUC research, published in advance of the 100 day anniversary of the coalition Government tomorrow (Thursday), shows that cuts which impact more on the poorest families in the UK have been made across the board in services including education, health, housing, welfare and social care.
Examples of cuts the TUC believes are unfair include:

• Free school meals - The cancelled measure would have extended entitlement to free school meals to about 500,000 families in work on low pay from September this year. Cost £125m.
• Every child a reader - This programme to provide early support to children with literacy difficulties (focussed on inner-city schools) will be cut by at least £5m and its future is not guaranteed.
• City Challenge Fund - This programme aimed to provide extra support to under-performing children in the most deprived areas, but has been cut by £8m this year.
• Building Schools for the Future - This scrapped programme was the biggest-ever school buildings investment plan. The aim was to rebuild or renew nearly every secondary school in England. Cost £7.5bn.
• Housing benefit - Nearly a million (936,960) households will lose around £624 a year as a result of changes to housing benefit. Londoners will be worst hit.
• Homes and Communities Agency - Cuts to programmes including Kickstart (for restarting stalled house building programmes), affordable housing, gypsy and traveller support and Housing Market Renewal (improvements to housing in deprived areas). Cost £450m.
• Young Person's Guarantee - £450m has been cut from the Guarantee, which will be abolished in April 2011. This Guarantee promised unemployed young people access to a job, training or work after six months of unemployment.
• Working Neighbourhood Fund - This fund, which aimed to help unemployed people in deprived areas to move into work, has been cut by £49.9m.
• Domestic Violence Protection Orders - Scheme to create two-week banning orders so that victims of domestic abuse can look for protection in the safety of their own house.

The TUC is calling on the Government to reconsider its plan of swingeing spending cuts to public services, and focus instead on other ways to reduce the deficit, such as a Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions that could raise up to £20bn a year.

The TUC is also a member of a coalition, which includes Barnardo's, Oxfam and Save the Children, who want the Government to guarantee that any future budget cuts will be put through rigorous fairness testing - or a Fairness Test - by the Treasury, to ensure that vulnerable people, low-paid workers, women and children are not left to bear the brunt of spending cuts.

"Conservative-Lib Dem cuts will hit the poorer people in society”, says Lucas

Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green Party and MP for Brighton Pavilion, has warned that the coalition government's cuts to housing benefit could result in increasing social problems with serious debt and homelessness. Crisis estimates that Brent is one of the most seriously impacted areas in the country with 9,650 households affected.

The report also warns that cuts to housing benefit could have hidden costs in the future, in order to deal with the social problems of homelessness, including health problems and providing accommodation.

Housing benefit cut is equivalent to big increase in income tax for poorer people

Caroline Lucas MP said:

“Consider someone earning £16,000 (after tax-free allowance) and receiving housing benefit. If they lose £728 that would be the equivalent of paying an income tax rise of over 4.5 per cent.

“These particular Tory-Lib Dem cuts will leave more people struggling to pay the rent, more people falling into serious debt and ultimately more people becoming homeless.

“This is very unfair, coming at a time when many of these people are facing economic uncertainty or even redundancy.

“Once again we see the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition’s cuts hitting the poorer people in society. The government could avoid these cuts by properly tackling tax avoidance and tax evasion perpetrated by some of the wealthiest, which could raise billions of pounds a year.”