London Flats Housing Benefit DHSS LHA Rents Mess

Yesterday’s budget was a Harold Wilson budget – why? Because whichever way I think about it something Harold Wilson said springs to mind, indeed just saying that illustrates the point as most readers won’t remember 60s PM Harold Wilson although they may know his expression

“A week is a long time in politics.”

How true, but a long memory can be useful as

plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

Less well known is his statement

Whichever party is in office, the Treasury is in power.

Without doubt yesterday’s budget was a defining moment for the next five year’s politics …………

For some strange reason during the lead up to the budget Landlord organisations such as the NLA lobbied extensively about Capital Gains Tax – I consider this strange because it isn’t a tax that Landlord’s pay in the normal course of their business. However quite a lot of Landlords have at least some involvement with Housing Benefit (LHA), and Housing Benefit has become one of the biggest expenses of government  now costing £21billion a year, compared with £14billion 10 years ago. We now spend more on housing benefit than we do on the police and on universities combined, and the Chancellor thinks housing benefit is completely out of control and in dire need for reform …… George, this may surprise you but a lot of Landlords got there before you. You quote some families receiving as much as £104,000 a year in housing benefit in some parts of London “The cost of that single award is equivalent to the total income tax and national insurance paid by 16 working people on median incomes.” – so what are you going to do about the mess?

New limits for housing benefit – £280 a week for a one-bedroom home to £400 a week for a four-bedroom property, radically cutting the maximum that could be claimed.

Errr ….. right. So in Westminster, where Pimlico Flats offers the best value flats available (I’m not just saying that) a Bedsit rents for £100 a week, a 4 bedroom home (we don’t have any) £700 a week. George – engage brain before opening mouth, it’s a simple fact that DHSS tenants bring problems and need managing, you are lucky that you can find private landlords to rent to them at all but if you think that landlords are going to rent to DHSS tenants at less than they can rent to private tenants you haven’t got the hang of a market economy yet. That’s not good for the dude in charge of the country’s economy, but this is what your civil servants typed out:

Housing Benefit is often criticised as making excessively generous payments that damage work incentives. To address this, the Government will remove payments that trap benefit claimants in poverty instead of providing incentives to work as well as being unfair to the millions of families on low income who do not depend on welfare. The Government will introduce a package of reforms to Housing Benefit from April 2011 onwards. This includes changing the percentile of market rents used to calculate Local Housing Allowance rates, and uprating these rates by CPI from 2013-14, capping the maximum Local Housing Allowance payable for each property size, time-limiting the receipt of full Housing Benefit for claimants who can be expected to look for work, and restricting Housing Benefit for working age claimants in the social rented sector who are occupying a larger property than their household size warrants.

Status Quo is Latin for the mess that we are in

I’m an optimist, but an optimist who carries a raincoat