General Chat

Many councils do chase up the owners of empty properties, they work with them to do the places up and rent them to people off their housing lists.

Lizx

sadly I live on the outskirts of london where rent for proprties has risen fast. Landlords know they can charge high rents since our borders were opened and those from the EU are willing to pay the prices.Local people on low incomes don't stand a chance.
Sadly a friends daughter had a house fire and was made homeless. Only the threat of Court action forced the Counsel to rehome her. In one room in a hostel with 2 kids. She had to apply for housing benefit. The hostel charged £219 a week.
Could rent a 1 bedroom flat for that if you were lucky.
Moving out of town is not always a good option, not when you have family and friends locally.
Perhaps the Councils should take over all the vacent properties and utilise them for those in need. There are plenty of them thats for sure

what a great idea Purple

Hi Sheila,

We have blocks of offices here in Norwich that are unused, some have been made into posh expensive apartments but as you say, it would be good to make use of other places for local people who can't stay near their family because of the cost of housing.

Until we have a PM who was educated at an ordinary school and came from a council estate and knows the real problems, I don't think life will improve for people who need a decent reasonably priced home.

Lizx

I have done some work connected with homeless in Bath, and know that there is always more demand for hostel beds than are available (true for most cities I'm sure). There is a fairly large block in the centre, which was once flats for elderly people, but is now lying empty. It's not a very pretty building, but hasn't yet become derelict, why can't places like this be renovated to provide affordable housing for locals?

Enjoyed that. What a mess eh. It seems no one political party wants to fight for anything these days. The poorest no doubt will be the ones to suffer in the end.

Vera

Obviously things weren't properly thought out before the big announcement!!!!


Large families to dodge benefits cap
Adrian Holliday
Jul 5th 2011Text SizeAAAFiled under: Personal Finance, Tax, Property, Public Services, Policy

Large families living on housing benefit in London and the South East may not need to move under the new benefits cap. A big U-turn given that George Osborne heralded his £26,000 rent 'benefits cap' widely. A new £190m transitional fund may allow some to remain - even if the rent is way ahead of the £26k limit.

Cap not fitting
It's not clear just how long such 'transitional' arrangements may be allowed to stay in place. Possibly for a good four years. And there could even be exemptions to cover families with just two or three kids, because some London rents remain so exorbitant.

So some watering down looks inevitable - especially where children go to a local school and cheaper accommodation in their local area is not open to them. According to official stats, around 100,000 benefit claimants have four or more children while at least 900 have more than eight children.


Costs exceed savings warning
Following a leaked letter from Eric Pickles' office, there's also increasing concern that a £26k benefits cap could actually increase homelessness and temporary accommodation on local authorities - and those costs could exceed any claimed savings from the original benefits cap policy.

So a real mess. Especially that the government is now having to find extra cash for the 'transition' arrangements.

But you wonder how this pile-up has been kept quiet for so long. Have the Lib Dems completely lost their voice in cabinet meetings? And also what about Labour? This is a policy that they could have jumped on.

But they're too terrified as being as seen as soft on the issue, prefering to make smaller suggestions in how such a policy could be tweaked...

jean i spent my first 3 years in a prefab and loved it
everybody did it was like one big happy family
real cominity spirit

We get housing benefit. Ours is a two bedroomed bungalow on which we have spent a lot of our savings to get as we want it. We have always left any home we have had better than when we moved in. Our rent ,here in a housing association bungalow stands around the £75 a week mark, but in the local paper place are advertised at more than this, with no pets, no smoking and no DSS. Where are they supposed to go? All the little farmworkers cottages were sold off long ago. There arent even any permanent homes on caravan sites around here. Bring back the prefabs!

Suzanne if your daughter is working 16+ hours a week then she should be entitled to working and child tax credit. If she uses a childminder/nursery then she should also be entitled to up to 70% of the costs of childcare.

As TW says, she should also be entitled to housing benefit, and possibly council tax benefit. Water rates are paid to private companies so everybody has to pay them.

Yes, very little if any new stock built.

If you look deeper into that, it is the government who told local authorities they had to sell off the housing stock, yet they were also told that the money raised should not go into rebuilding new, which is the obvious thing to do, but to subsidise poorer councils....This came from Thatcher's time, through 12 years of Labour and now into the coalition...so everyone's to blame for that one.

the local athoritys have made a mistake
by selling off all the cheep housing they had build
losing revenue

might be time to start a mass rebuild

I'm not sure about the benefits system in Wales, or whether it differs at all from England, but Suzanne, your daughter, working part time, should be entitled to family tax credit, which will in turn entitle her to housing benefit. Not the whole lot but certainly something toward her rent. I did when I was working full time but in a relatively low paid job, I got about a 1/4 of my rent paid.

Housing benefit is worked out on three main things. Income, actual agreed rent, and their own estimates for what you should be paying for the property you rent. i my monthly rent for my one-bed ground floor flat is £405, though the average for the area is £450, but the council estimates that my rent should be £392. Therefore they work out my entitlement on £392 per month rent and my income.

by capping the housing benefits
it just might bring theprivate rents down
landlords some times exsploit the tenents

better to get a lower rent then to have empty houses

here on anglesey people on benifits are given 70pound a wk,280 a month,if the rent is higher than that(which it is for the private sector)then they pay the difference.private rents start at 450 a month.my daughter who went back to work 5months after having her daughter who is now nearly 10m old,works part time,she gets no help with rent ,rates or water rates.x but shes not on benifits.500 a wk is a lot of money,its more than i earn per wk as a nurse in the n.h.sxx

The point is Muffy, that it is going to be a false economy if the money saved from these cuts to housing benefit is then going to have to be used (and some) to help those who are made homeless because they cannot pay their rent. It's another policy that hasn't been properly thought through, and it is becoming quite obvious that this largely inexperienced government have panicked and just cut everything without thinking about the consequences. In this instance the consequences of this particular cut is going to be more costly than keeping the status quo.

I agree that the welfare system needs an overhaul, but how about dealing with those who are scamming the system instead of penalising those who genuinely need it. OK it may cost a bit to put certain measures in place, but you have to speculate to accumulate. It will save in the long term.

Where do you draw the line? Savings need to be made to the welfare bill..and though not ideal, I can't think of any other way to do it than to create a cap. £500 on the face of it in most places is on the high end. Too much means testing would negate any savings.

I can see the pitfalls..but something has to give...and I've not heard of any better ideas except to stick to the status quo...which clearly isn't a runner. x

Surely the fact that the Government is subsidising housing costs is a factor in pushing rents up to unaffordable levels and house prices similarly.

When mortgages were restricted to two and a half or three times income and the Government was not paying telephone book number rents to landlords housing was much more affordable.

As far as I am concerned even £500 a week is still far to much. And why should benefits be expected to cover the full cost?

My son and his oh rent a reasonably nice property in Wandsworth, ten minutes walk from Wimbledon Park and this costs £250 a week out of their wages - no benefits there.