London’s future ALISON GELDER
Filling the housing gap
Plans to cut housing benefit have been met with claims that it is both fair to the taxpayer and unjust to the poorest in society. But if cuts are being made what alternatives might there be to help people find cheap, decent housing in expensive parts of Britain?
oor people will be priced out of inner London; the capital’s councils will have to block-book bed-and- breakfast accommodation at the coast to house ousted families; another gen- eration of young people will spend their early adulthood sofa-surfing. These are some of the predictions made since the coalition Government announced it would reform housing benefit by calculating the amount due at 30 per cent of median rents instead of 50 per cent and capping it at no more than £400 a week. The critics were not confined to the Opposition benches either; the Conservative London mayor, Boris Johnson, upped the ante by claiming that he would not tolerate “Kosovo-style social cleansing of central London”. His Balkans retort cut no ice with the Prime Minister, David Cameron, but it proved that emotions are running high over the extent to which cutting a budget which, at £20 billion, costs more than the police and universities combined, is just, given the burden it puts on taxpayers; or fair, in that the poorest will be hardest hit. In other words, are there people who are bearing too big a proportion of the pain of tackling the deficit? The changes to housing benefit are just one
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part of a set of welfare reforms that will change how the poorest are dealt with by the state.
Conference in Memory of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
November 27, 2010
The Search For Peace with God, our Neighbour and Ourselves Conference will take place at
St. Sava’s Church Hall, 89 Lancaster Road, Kensington, London W11 1QQ
Programme and application form:
www.exarchate.org.uk Queries: 01869 347457 or
mafoundationconf@live.com
6 | THE TABLET | 6 November 2010
The most daring proposal is the plan by Iain Duncan Smith, now in charge at the Department for Work and Pensions, to simplify the whole welfare benefit system by introducing a single universal benefit. This system, to be imple- mented gradually over five years, is planned to be cheaper than the present one, especially if it achieves its aim of getting more people into work. However, mak- ing the change will bring additional costs, and some of the extra money is being taken from current benefit recipients in the form of cuts. Cutting housing benefit, or to put it more accurately, reducing Local Housing Allowance (Housing Benefit), is the second part of the coalition’s welfare strategy and is justified by ministers on grounds of fair- ness – a family on benefits should not be able to pay more in rent than a family in work is the usual example offered. According to a gov- ernment impact assessment, around 774,970 UK households will be affected and, while they will lose an average of £9 a week, the impact will be far greater in London and other rent hotspots, such as Bristol and Cambridge. The difficulty that people receiving the benefit, who are either unemployed or low earners, will face is that they have to pay the same rent, meaning they either make up the difference or they move. Then there are
‘Those involved in housing fear that we will see an increase in the street homeless population.’ Photo: Rufus Exton/Housing Justice
The coalition Government’s proposal of 150,000
affordable homes over four years is less than a third of what is needed
the young people who will no longer be thought to need their own home; the age threshold for being deemed to need only shared accommodation will go up to 35, affecting more than a quarter of a million young adults. The end result: substantial numbers of people looking for affordable accommodation. Yet the third aspect of the coalition
Government’s welfare strategy is that it seems intent on withdrawing from the provision of social housing. One of the starkest cuts in the Comprehensive Spending Review was the reduction by 74 per cent of the budget for building new affordable housing. The coali- tion’s proposal of 150,000 affordable homes over four years is, according to Shelter, less than a third of what is needed.
The universal benefit will be a good thing once it finally arrives, providing (and it is an important proviso and one we need to watch) it is sufficient to cover reasonable living and housing costs, and sufficiently flexible to cope with the different circumstances of claimants. Most people who claim housing benefit are working in low-paid and/or part-time jobs, or they are pensioners, or they are sick or dis- abled. Many are themselves paying income tax and National Insurance contribu- tions. Only 22 per cent are in households where no one is in work. Very few, even in expensive areas of London, live in luxu- rious, five-star accommodation. The
vast majority are in ordinary properties, often in areas where they have lived all their lives. Some have suffered a temporary blip and will be back on their feet again in a short time; some have fled from a violent partner; some are refugees dealing with the trauma of war. The cuts will come upon people, all of whom
have little or no savings (one of the require- ments of eligibility for the benefit), quite suddenly, starting with the introduction of caps on weekly rent in April, and escalating as the rent level against which local housing allowance is set is reduced from the fiftieth to the thirtieth percentile (a particular prob- lem in areas where large numbers of properties are let to housing benefit claimants); and the total a household can receive in benefits
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