A private tenant in London has told how caps on housing benefit are leading to people ‘vanishing’ from his neighbourhood, apparently fulfilling critics' predictions of social cleansing.
Andre Rostant himself receives Local Housing Allowance and pays £2,000 weekly rent on his family’s modest flat in Maida Vale, which falls under Westminster City Council.
Changes to LHA which came in for new tenants last year and for existing tenants from the start of this month has capped the benefit to £400 for a four-bed home, £340 for a three-bed home, £290 for a two-bed home and £250 for a one bed home.
Rostant, whose benefit is being capped at £400 per week, told 24housing magazine: “People are vanishing from the neighbourhood. Removal vans are turning up all over the place. Children are being taken out of school.”
Westminster City Council estimates that the new caps will affect approximately 5,000 households.
It has secured £1.1m in Discretionary Housing Payments for 2011/12 to help some families to stay in the borough.
Ben Reeve-Lewis, property writer and housing legislation expert, said: “Housing benefit cuts, particularly in London are resulting in an economic cleansing of benefit claimants who are being forced out to areas of cheaper rent, as far away as Margate on the south coast.
“Concerns about benefit cuts are spreading. The Chartered Institute of Housing recently estimated that 810,000 housing benefit tenants are now being priced out of the rental market by these cuts.
“In a market that is overloaded with salaried tenants looking for properties and rising rents I see no reason why landlords would bother to negotiate a lower rent with tenants on benefits.”
Meanwhile, one landlord in a seaside town on the south coast is considering buying up hotels and converting them into cheap rental accommodation for people displaced out of their existing rental homes by the new LHA caps.
See today’s blog by Crystal Horwood.
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Comments
nope - it's £2000 a week - an insane rent - the more you get into trouble with rent, the more expensive the only landlords who will "accept" you - so that a simple f&%$£d up house purchase can send your finances in a downward spiral and your rent in an upward spiral - it's the spiral of the debt dna of the system
we've tried moving to: deptford, holland, burnley and even looked to move to scotland to get out of the either work or live or exist conundrum - and it's got nothing to do with the children - the solitary thing that's screwing up our lives is the rent
the system definitely needed something doing - but this evil policy isn't the thing - in any event - if the government really only had a problem with families like mine, why didn't it just limit the policy to westminster mansion dwelling families - why are people losing their homes all over the place?
andré rostant - me - was also said to be living in a five bed mansion with tropical fish near baroque warwick avenue - a sort of cross between downton abbey and the london aquarium - before we get back to the quote - i told the reporter(s) that it's not the landlords' fault - i was most emphatic about this - i also told them that our situation had seen us be "bad" tenants in the past, even abandoning a tenancy at one point - people in desperate situations can make some pretty dumb/rubbish decisions under pressure - i also most emphatically told the reporter(s) that our family is resilient and we'd find somewhere to live (although the jimcrow signs and the rents don't help, but that's another carp) - also, i made the point that rents will remain high and there will still be people who come to rent - the system clearly needed changing - but if you look at the language used "scroungers" "hard working people could only dream" (by the way, both myself and my wife work and one or both of us has always worked) - there is lots of rhetoric which masks the fact that what the government is doing isn't solving the problem - it's just moving the figure down to £400 - still beyond affordability for the average worker - people are moving out - mothers are openly crying in our school playground and people have, in fact, died as a direct result of these cuts - if you want a full account of how we got into this crappy situation (a partitioned up three bed ex council house set in a gangland shooting gallery)- for which, actually, i repeatedly told the journalists, we are very very grateful and in which we had no intention of remaining for any length of time if it was within our power - if you want to know this and hear that i actually proferred solutions and was mainly talking with the journalists about nearby single psychiatric patients (and some of their medical carers) who are being affected by this specious policy - then get in touch at andre_@feelings.com - i'd be only too happy to discuss/explain more
It can't be £2,000 weekly!!
Based on the LHA amount payable for that area, the tenant would have to top up a substantial amount in excess of £1500 a week.
If this was the case than the individual would not get any benefit as he would be on such a good weekly income if he can afford £1500 a week!!
This is a clear mistake and clouding your judgement on the issue...
Just checked online - and there are plenty of fairly 'modest' rentals in Maida Vale at £2,000 a week.
The article is wrong, it's £2000 a month not a week, surely you lot could have worked that out? And most people on housing benefit are in work, but the beloved market doesn't provide them with a decent wage.
The problem is a chronic lack of social housing, which is not 'subsidised' it is a decent rent paid to a landlord who doesn't need to profit from unearned income. I suppose the irony of buy to let landlords claiming about people sat around earning money without working is lost on you? Just in case it needs to be spelt out, you profit from your tenants labour by virtue of ownership not work.
I think the article meant £2,000 monthly and not weekly!
I love when people talk about "my taxes"
Well how about this fact...
Housing Benefit fraud costs the TAXPAYER £1 billion a year...
Corporate tax evasion costs the TAXPAYER £15 billion a year... Don't see anyone making a song and dance about this one... why should you pay through your taxes?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/22/vodafone-tax-case-leaves-sour-taste
The government are now for the first time in debt by £1 trillion pounds.... but hey the bank were saved, fatcats get their big bonuses and excessive pay...
Lloyds chief Antonio Horta-Osorio earned £1.06 million in the year after the bank was bailed out and wait for the best bit... he took 2 months of due to fatigue!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16544654
I just feel that our efforts for fairness are being unfairly misdirected....
One last thing... Only 1 in 8 people claiming benefits are unemployed!!! The rest work and earn low income, disabled etc...
£400 a week! Thats nearly double my mortgage. What a mug I am going out to work to pay for my own family when I could give it all up and live in a much nicer house and much nicer area than I do now, and watch TV all day.
Why should someone who doesnt work live in a the best areas that most of us who are working cannot afford? Where is the motivation to get off your bottom and find a job?
£2K! Madness. High time the cap was introduced. I think people who have to move out of over-crowded, highly priced London will thank their lucky stars after a while. Let us just hope that neo-Rachmans won't now ask too high rents for tiny accomodation. People need room to breathe, have hobbies, get away from the family to a space of their own, have a pet, a bit of garden to go into. Think of the National Geographic's expose of those poor 'cage people' in Hong Kong - too much more immigration and that is what will happen here.
About time too! What worries me is Ben Reeve-Lewis using the term, 'economic cleansing', which equates it with ethnic cleansing. There are and always will be expensive areas and cheap areas, Ben. Why on all earth should I pay, through my taxes, for unemployed people to live in areas which I can't afford to live in myself? It is of course sad that people have to uproot their lives and take their children out of school but previous stupid socialist policies are to blame; not these recent changes putting right those mistakes.
£2000 a week! Lives in one fo the best areas of London. Is it worth reading on from there. I don't care how 'modest' the flat is he gets LHA of four times plus the national average wage so how can that ever be fair?