Caps, cuts and moving home

Posted: November 8, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Private renting | 2 Comments

Donald Rumsfeld would call it an unknown unknown: how many people will be forced to move miles away from home as a result of the government’s housing and welfare reforms?

As a new law allowing local authorities to discharge their duty to homeless people into the private rented sector comes into force from this Friday (November 9) and the countdown continues to sweeping cuts in benefit from April 2013, it’s a question that will be asked over and over again.

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April is the cruellest month

Posted: November 5, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Welfare reform | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Every time you think you have got your head around the impact of the April 2013 welfare changes you realise you have forgotten something that makes it even worse.

I don’t need reminding that there are now just 147 days until the bedroom tax and overall benefit cap take affect. I know that increases in the local housing allowance will be restricted to CPI inflation from the same date. I realise that a range of other cuts in benefits and the localisation of council tax benefit and the social fund with reduced funding come in at the same time.

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Taken for granted

Posted: September 4, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Housebuilding, Social housing | Leave a comment

Many people will be celebrating the departure Grant Shapps today. My own feelings are much more mixed.

I’ve disagreed with the housing minister on most of the major policy changes he’s made, from ending security of tenure to affordable rent and from watering down the homelessness legislation to pay to stay, as well as those he hasn’t like greater regulation of the private rented sector.

However, I’ve never agreed with those who regard him as a few sheets short of a ministerial brief: the Stan Laurel to the Oliver Hardy of Eric Pickles. Entertaining as the comparison was at the time, amusing as it may be to play #shappstistics and #shappsbingo on twitter, if he was just a figure of fun would he have been able to deliver the most radical change in social housing policy for 30 years?

Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.

Out for the count

Posted: July 3, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Homelessness, Social housing | Leave a comment

It was seconds out, round 27 in the Commons yesterday in the housing stats war but where were the two main contenders?

Communities and local government questions has become a stats slugfest between Grant ‘Slasher’ Shapps in the blue trunks and Jack ‘Jabber’ Dromey in the red but yesterday as the theme music from Rocky began to play there were two new boxers in the spotlight. Given everything that’s been happening outside the ring – new and highly contentious stats on affordable housing and homelessness to argue about and an official complaint from Dromey to the referee – was I the only one in the crowd to feel let down?

Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Hidden reality

Posted: May 29, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit | Leave a comment

If you missed Britain’s Hidden Homeless last night it’s well worth making time to catch on iPlayer.

The BBC documentary was presented by Speech Debelle, the Mercury-prize winning rapper with personal experience of what she was talking about. She spent three years sofa surfing and in hostels after falling out with her mum at 19 and wrote the opening song of what went on to be her prize-winning first album while in a hostel.

So this was far more than the standard celeb-fronted BBC3 documentary. You believed her when she said that hidden homelessness is three times bigger than the official figures suggest and that things are worse now than they were for her ten years ago.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.

The many (more) faces of Grant Shapps

Posted: April 29, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Housebuilding | Leave a comment

No sooner had I written about a vintage week for Shapps watchers than another one followed quickly behind like a No 19 bus. Could this week be yet another?

Last week for our esteemed minister began with housing topping the agenda on the Today programme as Newham prepared to ship its homeless people to Stoke and all points north, south, east and west. This was proof, surely, of the impact of a combination of cuts in investment and housing benefit and the weakening of the homelessness safety net. Shapps on the ropes?

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Stoke-on-Thames: location, location, location

Posted: April 24, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Private renting | 5 Comments

The news about Newham and Stoke has touched a nerve like few other housing stories this year. I wonder though if the coverage so far has identified the crucial issue.

The story broke on the Today programme on Tuesday morning. Newham had written to 1,179 housing associations around the country asking for help in finding homes for people affected by housing benefit cuts. The reason Stoke is in the headlines is that a housing association there went public with the letter (here). Housing minister Grant Shapps appeared alongside Newham mayor Robin Wales and accused him of ‘playing politics’ with the issue (something that Shapps himself would of course never do). I blogged my initial take on the issue for Inside Housing here but there are excellent blogs out there too from Polly Curtis, Steve Hilditch, Nancy Kelley and Toby Lloyd.

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Stoke-on-Thames

Posted: April 24, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Private renting | Leave a comment

Stoke? Hull? Newham? Croydon? Westminster? Housing benefit cuts are a story in search of a location.

What I mean by that is that the story that dominated this morning’s Today programme could have been about just about any borough in London and any city in the north and midlands. We all know that sooner or later there will be real faces to put to the victims of the housing benefit cuts and real places where the problems will emerge. Up to now, though, and with several of the more draconian cuts still to come, we’ve had largely anecdotal evidence.

Read more on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.

Repeating the same mistake?

Posted: April 5, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit | 7 Comments

I am getting an appalling sense of déjà vu reading a story in today’s Telegraph that ‘young unemployed may be forced to live with mum and dad’.

The ‘radical proposal’ is apparently being worked on by Downing Street and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as ‘part of a drive to make sure people are better off working than on benefits’.

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