DWP In the Dock Again, This Time Over Benefit Cap

Another of Iain Duncan Smith’s flagship welfare reforms is to face a court challenge it has been reported this week.  Four families are to bring a judicial review against the cap on benefits at £500 a week which was recently brought into force in three London boroughs and is due to be extended throughout the UK from July.  The families will argue that the cap is ‘discriminatory and unreasonable’.

This latest legal challenge comes in the same week that the DWP faced a humiliating court defeat over the Atos assessments for sickness and disability benefits – which were ruled to discriminate against people with mental health conditions.  This followed last week’s news that the DWP had lost a tribunal hearing and was ordered to release the names of the companies and charities profiting from workfare schemes.

These are the very same workfare schemes which were ruled unlawful in the Appeal Court earlier in the year.  This judgement forced Iain Duncan Smith, with the shameful support of Labour, to introduce emergency legislation to steal compensation payments due to those who had benefits sanctioned under the illegal schemes.  Despite this, the DWP are clearly on a losing streak and long may it continue.

The department may hope to be on safer ground with the benefit cap, which the Tories believe has been one of their most popular reforms.  Yet along with the housing benefit caps, in many ways this policy has been one of the nastiest of all.

The benefit cap has been the one policy that has absolutely guaranteed that tens of thousands of claimants -  almost all with children – would lose their homes.  There is not even a remote possibility of families being able to scrimp and save to pay the rent if they live in the capital.  Across huge swathes of London grasping landlords charge far more in rent than even the maximum now allowed in benefits, leaving these families with no choice but to leave the city.  One of the richest cities in the world, is about to export it’s poorest residents to places like Bradford and Birmingham where unemployment is already soaring and public services are stretched to breaking point

It is not the fault of claimants that rents have sky-rocketed out of control in London and that no government has made any meaningful attempt to address the chronic lack of social housing.  The difficulties involved in finding a private sector flat, where many landlords demand ‘No DSS’, is already one of the main causes of homelessness in the city.  Often claimants have faced eye-watering rents simply because these were the only properties available.  Slum landlords have been all too happy to exploit the situation, with astronomical rent demands for shitty rooms in B&Bs or flats that they wouldn’t be able to let to someone who was working – and who had a choice about where they lived.

Yet the Government has chosen to punish claimants themselves for the greed of landlords by forcing them from their homes. Two of the families who have launched the legal challenge against the benefit cap have recently fled domestic violence.  Many claimants in high rent London properties have been those who have faced desperate circumstances and have done what any decent parent would – which is made sure their children have a roof over their heads by any means possible.  These children, who may already have faced significant trauma due to witnessing or experiencing abuse, homelessness and just simple poverty, will have settled in these new homes, gone to school and made friends.  Now they are to be uprooted again, possibly hundreds of miles away, whilst watching their parent(s) disintegrate under the pressures of forced relocation and a new threat of homelessness.

Rarely has a government policy been so precision targeted to attack the most marginalised in society.  People who may just have been starting to put the pieces of their lives back together in safe if shabby accommodation, only to have that security destroyed as they face being cast out onto the streets.

And like so many of Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms, the policy was based on a lie – which is that there were claimants living in areas or properties that those in work could not afford.  Housing Benefit  is available to families in and out of work alike.  Working families in the capital living in high rent areas would be just as eligible for housing benefits as those out of work. Even families on salaries of £30k plus may have been eligible for some housing benefit in parts of the capital.

Housing Benefit has  functioned as a crude sticking plaster for a dysfunctional housing market, and now that sticking plaster is being ripped away.  The consequences of this, for some of the UK’s poorest and most vulnerable children, will be terrifying.  All those who have cheered this reform from the sidelines should think of those children whose lives are about to be destroyed as a result of this bodged experiment in social cleansing.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

‘We won’t reduce the rent … We’ll kick them out’: Research Reveals Landlord’s Response to Housing Benefit Reform

A report published by the DWP gives a glimpse of the horrific future hundreds of thousands of people are set to face due to housing benefit reforms.

The report is part of an ongoing piece of ‘independent’ research commissioned by the DWP to look at the impact of the first raft of welfare reforms – the vicious cuts to housing benefits.  These included the caps on the amount of benefit available to pay for housing and a reduction in local housing allowance rates from the bottom 50% to 30% of the local rental market.  Another change meant that those aged under 35 are no longer entitled to a self-contained property, but can only claim the Shared Accommodation Rate (SAR).

The research features wide ranging interviews with claimants, landlords and housing advisors discussing the changes.  As is repeatedly pointed out, as these interviews were carried out throughout 2012, then many, if not most claimants will not have yet been affected by the reforms.  This research is therefore an indicator of how people are intending to  respond to the changes.   The report is also quite long so I won’t try cover it all in one post.

Predictably the most telling comments come from landlords.  According to the report, 16% of landlords who currently let to claimants plan to stop doing so due to the cuts.  Most landlords seem well aware of what is to come and are already making plans:

“I’m giving notice on [20 tenants affected by the change to the Shared Accommodation Rate], it’s not fair, I don’t like doing it. And we’re not taking any [more] on. We have to protect ourselves and we have to protect our landlords.”

This was the response of one letting agent to the vicious slashing of housing benefits for those under 35 and is an attitude which seems to dominate the private rental sector.  Despite initial claims by the Government that landlords would lower rents in response to the changes it seems that barely any of them have been prepared to do so.  Only those renting in areas with high numbers of claimants have seriously considered this as an option – but crucially even this in many cases appears to be just a temporary measure.  Landlords may be willing to accept a temporary small reduction in rent to avoid the expense of eviction, but will turf tenants out when tenancies are due for renewal.

Local Housing Allowance (LHA) is a localised benefit, which is paid according to the local cost of rents.  This decision to peg the maximum available at the bottom 30%, rather than 50% of the market, will mean hundreds of thousands of private sector tenants forced to pay some of their rent out of meagre benefits intended to pay for other living expenses.

The average loss to claimants according to the report is £7.76 a week – although due to the caps in some areas this will be far higher.  Landlords appear to be sceptical that those on benefits will be able to afford this, with one warning: “Some of them are making it up but a lot of them are struggling because it’s not just [LHA] that’s been cut, they’re getting other money cut as well, so it’s making it harder and harder.”

Many landlords report having already reduced the number of claimants they rent to on Local Housing Allowance due to the introduction of Direct Payments by the Labour Government in 2008.  This meant that generally rent payments were sent direct  to tenants not landlords, a move which was hugely unpopular amongst those renting out property.  When Universal Credit is finally launched, the Direct Payments regime will be strengthened and also applied to the social housing sector.  The  very thing that most landlords say puts them off renting to claimants is about to be hugely extended.

As would be expected, one of the biggest impacts of the reforms has been in London where in some boroughs almost no properties are now affordable to those on benefits due to the caps.  This will not just affect those out of work – 44% of housing benefit claimants in London are working.  It will also not just impact on central London boroughs such as Westminster where rents are astronomical.  A letting agent in Barking and Dagenham reports their current strategy on renting to tenants on benefits: “We have slowly, slowly been booting them out, average between 150 and 200 properties.”

The research also reveals that a less well known, but sweeping reform to housing benefits, the introduction of the Shared Accommodation Rate for those under 35, could bring some of the most devastating consequences.   This change, which means anyone under 35 will have to find a room in a shared house to be eligible for LHA, was carried out without any assessment of whether enough properties exist to house all those who need them.

The report suggests that this is not the case, with many landlords pulling out of the multiple occupancy market due to recently introduced regulations.  Planning permission is now needed if a property is to be used for multiple tenants in a move which many landlords claim has made the sector unprofitable.  Quite simply, most landlords say the Shared Accommodation rate is too low, summed up by this quote from a landlord in Perth:  “‘Where’s the difference going to come from £52 [LHA] up to £85 a week [rent]?  There’s no way somebody on £120 a fortnight can afford to pay the difference and I can’t rent them out at £53 a week. I think they’ll possibly be moving, I can’t see any alternative.”

Almost all landlords quoted say they are planning to evict claimants under 35, with some going even further and suggesting they will now not rent to anyone from this age group: “We’re not housing under 35s now, so long term it will resolve itself because we’re not putting anyone in under 35. But we’ve got this 15, 20 people who are going to be on the street.”

This comment is backed up by a housing advice worker later in the report who says: “a lot of existing agents and landlords have told me they’ve now served notice on every tenant they have under 35. Even those tenants who might be in work at the moment, a lot of landlords have thought if they lose their job they won’t be able to pay the rent.”

Many landlords fear that tenants under 35 will face homelessness as a result of the drastic cuts: “[They’ll end up] on the streets, they’ve got nowhere to go. These people haven’t got no funds.”

Others have concerns that separated parents will no longer be able to have their children stay with one Hackney landlord saying: “There are going to be certain tenants who it’s going to have a massive impact on.  My heart bleeds for them, because the majority of them are divorced fathers who see their kids. I’ve got one lovely guy, he’s got three kids, wife lives in Hillingdon, kids come and spend the weekend with him, where’s he going to put them? Does he lose his visitation rights to his children because he hasn’t got a job or hasn’t got the home to be able to offer the children somewhere to sleep [because] there isn’t any room?”

Like many of the bodged welfare reforms, it will be the most marginalised who are worst affected by the slashing of LHA rates for under 35s.  Those likely to end up homeless will be the people who cannot go back to live with their parents, or who face other difficulties such as a mental or physical health condition which makes sharing difficult or even impossible.

Whilst claimants in some form of supported accommodation, such as homeless nightshelters or women’s refuges have been exempt from the reforms (so far), many Local Authorities used informal relationships with landlords to provide housing for those they deem ‘vulnerable’.  The report suggests this is all likely to come to an end, with one landlord reporting: “‘I’m kicking them all out … I’m serving them notices because I want, on the day the rent will have to be changed, they’ll already be out … It’s a complete change to the portfolio.  I’ve always been the person they phone up and say they’ve got somebody who’s not well or who’s just come out of drug rehabilitation, that kind. I’ve always taken them in and never had a problem but I’m not going to do it any more.”

To read the DWP’s gushing press release which accompanied this report you would never guess the bleak future it describes for low income tenants.  This is far from surprising.  Minister for Welfare Reform, Lord Fraud claimed the first piece of research in this series proved tenants were not facing excessive financial difficulties due to housing benefit reforms.  In fact the research had revealed that many tenants were having serious money problem before the cuts were even introduced.

This time the DWP is attempting to use the research to claim that there has been no Kosovo style social cleansing due to LHA reforms and people are not being exported from London in huge numbers.  But that’s because the report was carried before most claimants had been affected by the changes.  The views of claimants themselves, along with housing advice workers, (both of which I’ll cover later this week) reveals that this mass forced expulsion is simply yet to come.

It’s also important to note this research does not include the impact of the Bedroom Tax, the overall benefit cap or Council Tax benefit reform.  Nor does it consider the changes to DLA, Employment Support Allowance, the upcoming nightmare that is Universal Credit or the huge rise in the numbers of claimants having benefit’s sanctioned.  It also does not examine the consequences of the Benefit Uprating Bill which will see Local Housing Allowance rises capped at 1% annually despite rents soaring by over ten times that figure in some parts of the UK.

If this report makes grim reading (and it does) for all those concerned about the future of housing for people on low incomes, then it is only a small taste of what is to come.

The report can be read at: http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/report_abstracts/rr_abstracts/rra_838.asp

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Stephanie Bottrill Blamed The Government For Her Suicide And So Should The Rest Of Us

When a stock-broker throws themselves out of a window due to financial pressures it is presumed – by the right wing press at least, if not the rest of us – to be a tragedy.

Yet when the same events occur in the lives of someone not just working class, but on benefits, the reaction of some is to immediately start a hunt for character or lifestyle flaws in the recently deceased.  “She can’t have been poor, she had a cat” was the astonishing reaction of one person on twitter to news of the suicide of a grandmother driven to the desperate act by the bedroom tax.  It can’t be long before right wing cheerleaders of welfare reform join the bandwagon, no doubt to be led by yet more crass utterances from Tory Ministers.  After all Iain Duncan Smith said he could live on £53 a week, so what was her problem?

Stephanie Bottrill is not the first death directly attributable to welfare reform and it won’t be the last.  This will not stop the vile scramble from pieces of shit like Brendan O Niell to declare she must have had mental health conditions, she should have done this, there must have been other factors involved or that she should have sold her fucking cat.  They will look for anything which might deflect from the all too real and predictable consequences of the war against the poor which they themselves are partly involved in waging.

No-one in the right wing press would dare speak like this if someone rich committed suicide over money problems.  And for those lucky enough to have never been on the breadline, then imagine the biggest money problem you’ve ever had and times it by a thousand and you’re still nowhere near what Stephanie Bottrill was facing.

Politicians have said that people should just move if they can’t pay the bedroom tax as if this is the easiest thing in the world for those with nothing.  Yet there are no smaller social housing properties for people to move into.  People are being expected to leave what they thought was a lifetime tenancy – and a home they may have lived in for decades – to rent in the more expensive private sector where they can be evicted on the whims of a landlord with just two months notice.

Not only that, but people are to be expected to do this at a vulnerable time.  Shortly after their children have left home, or when a relationship has ended.  Not even the death of a child will spare the eviction notices, they are simply delayed for 12 months, the ‘official’ period of grieving that parents are permitted before the bailiffs step in if they can no longer pay for their dead child’s bedroom.

But it is not just the loss of a home those affected by the bedroom tax must face but the near impossibilities involved in securing a new one.  Almost all  letting agents have bold notices declaring NO DSS on every property they advertise.  Increasingly agents ask for fees which claimants can’t afford, or credit checks that some claimants will fail.  Huge deposits are required along with anything from 4 to 8 weeks rent in advance.  Only an ever shrinking number of properties are affordable to those on housing benefits and in some parts of the UK none at all.  People are not just expected to lose their homes, but in some cases will be forced to relocate, hundreds of miles away from family and friends.  Even the act of moving costs a lot of money, and few claimants can afford to run a car or rent a van.

This combination of stress, sadness or despair along with seemingly inescapable practical problems is why people end up on the streets.  It’s why some people find themselves sat on the pavement amongst their belongings after bailiffs have ransacked and then locked them out of their former homes.  That is a money problem, not having to sell the second home or losing a chunk of your investment portfolio.

Yet when someone rich has their finances affected by government policy then the whole fucking world has to stop and listen as their whinging dominates the debate over government cuts.  The Tories were far more terrified of cutting child benefit for those earning large salaries than they were of cutting in half the incomes of people  like Stephanie Bottrill. Whilst the super rich are given tax cuts and the middle classes gently squeezed, the lives of those with least are being quietly demolished.   If we really are all in it together then why are only the poor being expected to give up their homes?

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

This Is What Austerity Looks Like – First Suicide Due To Bedroom Tax Reported

The welfare reform death toll has risen by one more tragic victim the Sunday People is reporting.  The papers says:

Ten days ago Stephanie Bottrill sat in the redbrick terrace house which had been home for 18 years to write notes to her loved ones, the Sunday People reports .

She ripped the pages from a spiral-bound notebook and placed them neatly in little brown envelopes.

There was one for her son. Another for her daughter. Her mother. Friends. And a very special one for the year-old grandson she doted on.

Then in the early hours of last Saturday Stephanie, 53, left her home for the last time, leaving her cat Joey behind as the front-door clicked shut.

She crossed her road in Meriden Drive, Solihull, to drop one of her letters and her house keys through a neighbour’s letterbox. Then she walked 15 minutes through the sleeping estate to Junction 4 of the M6.

And at 6.15am she walked straight into the path of a northbound lorry and was killed instantly. Stephanie Bottrill had become the first known suicide victim of the hated Bedroom Tax.

In the letter to her son, Steven, 27, she had written: “Don’t blame yourself for me ending my life. The only people to blame are the Government.”

This is what happens when people are left with nothing at all, something the millionaire scum in Government will never understand.  Money runs out for most of us, and very quickly if you are on benefits.  It’s hard to even think about anything else if you have no money.  If it goes on for days, or weeks or longer it can be torture.   Even before welfare reforms the benefits system was not generous.  It did contain some strange anomalies, usually down to the huge cost of renting in some parts of the UK, but people on benefits were already living in dire poverty.  It was landlords living it up, not claimants.  Yet a handful of unusual cases – often large homeless families in expensive, emergency housing – have been presented as the norm and used as cover to slash social security even further.

When you take away money from people in already in poverty it drives them to destitution.  Desperate people do desperate things.  Yes there will always be a complex combination of factors in tragic deaths such as these.  But homelessness, hunger and despair are not trivial matters that can be cleared up with a bit of counselling or a work related activity meeting with some welfare-to-work poverty pimp.  They don’t go away – not without money.  So whilst Iain Duncan Smith hands out billions to Atos, A4e and his friends in the private sector remember Stephanie Bottrill.  She didn’t need incentivising, assessing, motivating to find those ‘hidden vacancies’ or any other bullshit.  She was too ill to work, and there aren’t any vacancies, hidden or otherwise in many parts of the UK.

She needed twenty quid a week because she was poor and couldn’t pay her rent and was going to lose her home.  What little she had in this world, this Government took away, and now she is dead.  And she was someone’s mum.  The price of her life was  just half of what Iain Duncan Smith spends on breakfast in a day, let alone a week.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

How Universal Credit Will Incentivise Rent Debt

A perverse incentive in the Universal Credit pilot scheme has already emerged which will mean that social housing tenants who go into rent arrears will be able to have the housing element of the new benefit sent direct to their landlord.

Universal Credit will feature Direct Payments, meaning that council or housing association tenants will receive a monthly cash payment towards their rent.  At present Housing Benefits for social tenants go directly to social landlords in most cases.

This senseless move is based on yet another of Iain Duncan Smith’s pet obsessions, which is that housing benefits going direct to tenants will teach claimants to manage their money.

Housing Associations have been horrified by the changes, issuing warnings that they expect rent arrears to soar.  The DWP’s panicky response to this has been to decide that claimants who fall two months in arrears will automatically have payments switched back to landlords.

This means that tenants concerned about the impact of Direct Payments can simply avoid paying their rent for a couple of months.  This will automatically trigger their benefits to be directed back to their landlords, removing a stressful and senseless burden for already struggling claimants.

To be extra sure that their tenancy is not affected, claimants can keep hold of the cash and as soon as the two months are up then simply pay off the arrears.  Alternatively they could arrange to pay back the money owed in installments and use the two month’s housing benefit as an interest free loan.

It is not clear if tenants will be switched back to Direct Payments once rent arrears are paid off.  If they are then they will just have to stop paying their rent for a couple of months again.  As long as there is a continuous willingness to pay, and arrears stay around the two month mark, then few social landlords will launch formal eviction proceedings.  And just in case they do, the canniest tenants will make sure the rent is safely in the bank to be handed over any time the situation gets a little too hot for comfort.

In fact with Housing Associations also set to take a hit due to the new payments system, it would even in be their interest to support tenants to go into short term arrears. Social landlords are likely to ignore rent arrears once they hit five to six weeks, knowing that the trigger point, which will  clear up any future rent problems, is just a fortnight away.

This is exactly the kind of perverse incentive that the Government promised would be brought to an end due to welfare reforms.  In truth it will be the first of many as 50 year’s of steady development in the Welfare State is thrown away overnight in favour of Iain Duncan Smith’s endless back of the envelope crazy schemes.

The DWP have made clear that this arrangement may not stay in place as Universal Credit is fully rolled out.  The alternative however could leave some social housing providers on the brink of bankruptcy as the most marginalised tenants – who may have well documented drug, alcohol, gambling or debt problems, are given a huge monthly cash sum intended to pay their rent.  The reality is for some this will be a temptation they are unable to resist and lead to huge rent arrears.

Ultimately this will mean more evictions, which will be devastating for those tenants most in need of help, and hugely expensive for both social landlords and the tax payer alike.  Those evicted are likely to be shunted into the far more costly private sector or even face the extortionate rents charged by temporary accommodation and hostels.

Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Fraud are about to learn a stark lesson which will no doubt teach them exactly why the welfare system was quite complicated.  Unfortunately by the time that happens it will be too late for all of us, as the Daily Mail inspired delusions of two desperately out of touch rich men plunge millions of claimant’s lives into chaos.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Blockade the Bailiffs – Take On The Sewer Rats Set To Profit From Welfare Reform

Over the next few months hundreds of thousands of people face losing their homes due to the Bedroom Tax whilst others will be driven into debts they can never pay by the endless tsunami of cuts to benefits.

Already some companies are salivating at the prospect of dragging families from their homes and stealing the few remaining possessions of those with least. Little more than a privatised police force to protect the profits of bankers and landlords, bailiffs will be just one of the many sectors getting rich on the back of the brutal and shambolic welfare reforms.

In the North West of England, Jacobs Bailiffs, one of the largest firms in the area, are chomping at the bit to get started.  A post on their website details how they have been actively promoting their vile services to make every last penny they can from the misery to come.  Whilst exhibiting at a trade show for local authorities recently, Jacobs Bailiffs boasted that “with Welfare Reforms taking effect from 1^st April the Jacobs team can talk you through our recovery strategies for maximising collections.”

A communications blockade against the company has been called for this Monday (29th April) in what will hopefully be the first of many attempts to hold these scum to account for their actions.

For more details join the facebook page or visit: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/04/508885.html

Please spread the word.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Unemployed Essex Residents Could Now Pay More In Council Tax Than Kensington Millionaires

Shocking details are emerging of how bungled Council Tax Benefit reforms mean that an unemployed tenant in Essex could now pay more in Council Tax than a millionaire living in a half a million pound luxury Kensington pad.

Council Tax Benefit this month became Local Council Tax Support (LCTS).  Under the new system Local Authorities can now set their own criteria for the benefit and face a cut of 10% in the amount they can allocate in Council Tax reductions to their poorest residents.  How that cut is achieved has been left largely up to them, with the sole condition they must not cut benefits for pensioners.  Most have made the decision to charge all residents, including those on benefits, low wages, disabled people and single parents, a small weekly fee towards Council Tax of between £3 and £7.

The Tory controlled Tendring Borough Council in Essex have gone one step further and made the decision that some claimants -  including many of those on the sickness and disability benefit Employment Support Allowance – will not be entitled to any Council Tax Benefit at all.

Only those who have been resident in the borough for over five years will automatically be eligible for help towards Council Tax bills should they become unable to work for any reason.  Whilst people made ‘redundant’ will be allocated some short term support (six months), along with squaddies, those fleeing domestic violence and the most severely sick or disabled people, the vast majority of recently arrived claimants will face full Council Tax rates.

This means should someone affected by the residency criteria become unemployed, or too sick to work, then they could find themselves paying more for a small Essex Band B flat (£855.75 annually) than the plush Band D two bedroom flat in fashionable Kensington & Chelsea pictured above which would come in at around £857.32.

Even those affected in Band A properties will face a bill of around £15 a week.  Tendril’s newly socially housed residents who are also hit by the bedroom tax could now see just under half of a weekly Job Seekers Allowance claim of £71.70 a week being spend on tax and rent.   For those under 25 in the same boat the situation will be even more acute, leaving claimants with around £25 a week to live on.

Life-long residents of Tendril will also not be spared if they are unable to find a job quick enough.  Anyone in the borough who has been claiming Jobseekers Allowance for over three years will now be eligible to pay 35% of their Council Tax bill.

It is likely that Tendril have spotted the impact of the mass economic expulsion of London’s poor and are sending a message that unemployed, sick or disabled people are not welcome in their part of the world.  With councils now given free reign to make life near impossible for claimants, those forced to move from London due to the benefit caps may find there is eventually nowhere left to go.  They will be joined on the road by anyone foolish enough to move to Tendril in the last five years and then found themselves out of work.

Ultimately these changes will be imposed by violence.  Claimants who refuse to leave their London homes will be physically evicted.  Claimants in Tendril who won’t or can’t pay the Council Tax bill will face prosecution and possibly prison.  In a 21st century Western democracy (stop laughing) social cleansing has no need for bullets or bayonets.   Jails, bailiffs and impossible to pay bills are the weapons of choice.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Watch Out Surrey, Here Come The Benefit Claimants!

The Home Counties could soon be swamped by tens of thousands of families fleeing London due to this months benefit changes.   With almost every London borough set to become unaffordable for families on benefits, many people will be sensibly looking to the surrounding areas to escape imminent homelessness.

The cap begins this months in Croydon, Bromley, Enfield and Haringey, meaning Surrey and Kent in the south and Hertfordshire and Essex in the north of London could be first to take the hit.  Luckily the leafy home counties still have some reasonably priced  accommodation for those on benefits who wish to remain within commuting distance of friends and family in London.

Take a look at this delightful 2 bedroom house in Mertsham, the perfect starter home for a young single mum looking to start a large family.   Two single claimants wishing to escape London’s housing benefit caps could try this cottage – unsuitable for children due to ongoing renovations nearby – but ideal for a group of young unemployed friends who like the country air.

In reality Surrey residents should not be overly concerned about the upcoming influx.  Far from the lurid tabloid portrayals, the vast majority of claimants are thoroughly decent people.  Statistics show that those on sickness benefits are no more likely to commit crime than any other sector of the population.

Whilst claimants are no more likely to commit crime than anyone else, they are often high users of public services and so can be expensive.  Despite this Government’s lies, many people on sickness and disability benefits are subject to the Benefit Cap and will need to leave the capital.  GPs and hospitals across the South East are likely to see a surge in demand as a result.  Some large families leaving London may not speak English as a first language, but Surrey’s excellent schools system should soon help clear that up.

The first mass influx will begin over the next few months as an estimated 40,000 families affected by the Benefit Cap will be forced to seek housing outside the capital.  This is only likely to be the beginning however as soaring rents and shrinking benefits could mean soon almost all private sector tenants on benefits will be priced out of the capital.  Hundreds of thousands of claimants could soon be making a move to Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire and Kent over the next few years.

Boris has been only too aware of the impact of the radical changes to Housing Benefits.  Back in July 2010 he wrote to Iain Duncan Smith (tif file, spotted by @AnitaBellows12)  about the likely impact of the unprecedented cuts.  According to the Mayor, quarter of a million Londoners could be affected by the changes with many moving to ‘fringe’ areas of the capital.  Since he wrote that letter the situation has become far worse, with the emergence of the Benefit Uprating Bill which will cap annual Housing Benefit rises at 1%. London rents rose by 7.9% over the last year.

Boris has spotted it will not just be poor inner Londoners affected but those in the leafy commuter belt, where some people actually voted for the clown.

And Tory voters in the Home Counties will only have themselves to blame as public services are overwhelmed and unemployment is exported out of the capital straight into their backyards.  So desperate have they been to punish London’s poor with the badly thought out Benefit Cap, they have cut off their noses to spite their already chinless faces.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Benefit Cap For Single People Is Just A Claimant Bashing Propaganda Stunt

The benefit cap for single people, which comes into force this week, appears to be little more than an attempt to use the law to tell lies about benefits.  The cap for those without children will not save the government a penny, and apart from gradually eating away at the income of a handful of sick or disabled claimants* – who may not even exist – it will barely affect anyone at all.

The cap overall will have a devastating impact on London poorest families with up to 40,000 people now staring homelessness in the face.  For those who are single and without children however the cap is set at £350 a week.  This is higher than anyone unemployed is currently receiving on benefits, and just 15p less than the maximum currently available for those on sickness or disability benefits.

Disabled people, which in this case means those on DLA, its replacement PIP, or those in the Support Group part of Employment Support Allowance (ESA) are exempt from the cap.  Not disabled enough people, in the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) part of ESA, are affected, but only those living in properties which are priced at the maximum possible level which can be paid by housing benefits – £250 a week for a single person.  This handful of people in high rent central London boroughs, will lose 15p a week, although that will become worse over time as rents and prices rise and benefit levels stays the same.

Most single claimants in London are not eligible for anything like £250 a week in Housing Benefits, which are also capped at the bottom 30% of rents in the local housing market.  Even if 500 people in the high rent London boroughs are currently claiming the full rate of Housing Benefit – and are in the ESA WRAG group -  then the single person’s benefit cap will save less than £100 a week in total.  This is considerably less than it will cost to administer and inform everybody about the cap.

Claimants on Job Seeker’s Allowance can currently also claim a maximum of £250 in Housing Benefit, but again this is restricted to those living in the central London boroughs.  Job Seeker’s Allowance is currently £71.70, meaning nobody on the dole will be affected by the benefit cap for single people of £350 a week.

Iain Duncan Smith’s seemed to love his benefit cap so much that he did it twice.  The first time, when he capped Housing Benefits, it genuinely hurt, with every measure of homelessness -  including the number of people sleeping on the streets – rising as vast swathes of London became unaffordable overnight to the poorest.

The second time it also hurt, but only for those with children who are now being socially cleansed from most of London.  For single people however it seems to have been little more than a crass PR exercise designed to give the impression that many claimants were receiving far higher benefits than is legally possible.  The only reason for this can be an attempt at entrenching Tory benefit bullshitting in legislation.  Not content with the endless abuse aimed at claimants from the right wing press, the DWP have introduced a pointless law simply to mislead people into believing that everyone on benefits was receiving a small fortune.

*It is technically possible that should there exist a non-resident carer, who happens to be paying the full rent of £250 a week and is on income based Employment Support Allowance in the WRAG group, then they may see their income affected by the cap.  If such a person exists they must feel very special that Iain Duncan Smith has invented a whole new law just for them.

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Benefit Cap Means The Safety Net For London’s Poorest Children Has Disappeared

It is not hyperbole to say that yesterday’s introduction of the benefit cap effectively ends the safety net of social security for poor families in London.

Households in Enfield, Haringey, Croydon and Bromley from today will now face losing their homes should they become unemployed or too ill to work.  This social cleansing is to be extended to all London Boroughs and elsewhere in the UK from July.

It is true that the cap, set at £500 a week , is a lot of money.  It is not true however that it meant equivalent families receive more on benefit then they would in work.  A family earning £26,000 a year and living in the private sector in London would receive significant housing benefits.  Those who objected to people living in high rent areas whilst on benefits were perfectly free to do the same, and would have had some help with housing costs even if they were in full time work.

It is not the fault of claimants that rents have soared out of control in London, making often the most modest of properties unaffordable without some benefits.  Even in the very cheapest outskirts of the capital rents are soaring.  Most of the families struggling with rocketing private sector housing costs were born in London or have lived here for years.  Some have seen neighbourhoods previously regarded as poor like Notting Hill, Dalston or Brixton turn into playgrounds for the latte slurping middle classes around them, sometimes in the space of just a few years.  Others live in areas which were always poor, like Tottenham and Catford.  With the benefit cap pegged at £500 a week and housing benefit now frozen far below the rate of rent increases, very soon even these areas will be unaffordable for medium sized families on benefits.

The DWP went on the offensive yesterday in support of the cap, which is set to cost 40,000 people their homes over the next few months.  Skiving Employment Minister Mark Hoban was even dragged off his silk cushions to lie that 8000 people had found jobs due to the cap.  The Government has revised down the number of people they think will be affected, but this is not down to people finding work as ministers claim.

The fall is almost certain to be due to the disregard from the cap announced late last year for the housing costs of  people in Supported Exempt Accommodation.  This means that people living in supported housing such as homelessness hostels and women’s refuges – where rents can be eye-watering – will still have those rents met by benefits, for now.  Far from London claimants living the high life in Chelsea mansions, the reality is that some of the poorest people, in the most difficult circumstances, are those paying the highest rents.

Anyone working enough hours to qualify for Working Tax Credits will be exempt from the cap, leading to a perverse situation where someone in work may now be eligible for more in benefit payments then someone unable to work due to sickness or unemployment.  To qualify for the exemption, a single parent must be working at least 16 hours a week.  Therefore a single mum working ten hours a week in term time may now be forced to give up her job and move hundreds of miles away, often to an area of high unemployment where rents are lower.

But even those who meet the threshold for Tax Credits will now face the threat of imminent homelessness should they become unemployed.  The same applies to anyone who has managed to find a job to escape the cap. With increasingly only casualised or temporary jobs available for low waged workers, almost all those at the bottom of the labour market may face the prospect of losing their homes at some point in the future.  Only those who have been in continuous work for 12 months when they lose their jobs will have a short term exemption of 39 weeks from the cap

Shelter recently released a report which showed that one in three people could not pay their rent for more than a month if they lost their job.  For those families living in London, the welfare state will no longer provide a safety net to help them keep their homes.  Some will be unable to pay the rent immediately leading to eviction in a matter of weeks.  Others will face a desperate scramble to find work within the exemption period – or get better in the case of sickness -  or they too will no longer be able to stay in their homes.

Whilst 40,000 people could be made homeless overnight due to yesterday’s changes, possibly hundreds of thousands more Londoners will now live in fear of the streets should they fall ill or are made redundant.

Above pic from: http://hackneyrenters.org/

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