Many unhappy returns to the bedroom tax
Posted: April 1, 2014 Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit, Universal credit, Welfare reform | Tags: Esther McVey, Iain Duncan Smith 3 CommentsStop carping, you lot. The removal of the spare room subsidy is a success.
Today is of course the first of the month as well as the first anniversary of the introduction of the bedroom tax and a wave of other welfare reforms. But I am paraphrasing Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey rather than making a token effort at an April Fool.
Yesterday’s work and pensions questions brought inevitable attacks on the policy that has caused so much controversy since its introduction a year ago.
Labour’s Kate Green quoted last week’s reports from the BBC that just 6 per cent of households affected by the bedroom tax have managed to move and from Real Life Reform that eight out of ten are in debt and their borrowing is increasing by £52 a week. ‘Rather than preaching about careful budgeting, why do Ministers not just scrap this hated and unworkable tax, which is sending people spiralling into debt? Read the rest of this entry »
Making the move
Posted: March 13, 2014 Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Legal, Local government, Private renting Leave a commentForced out of area moves are on the increase and they are not just happening in London.
The Oxford Times reports this week on cases of people being offered homes as far away in Cardiff, Cheltenham and Birmingham. The council blames the cuts in housing benefit and the benefit cap that make it impossible to find affordable private rented accommodation but a local solicitor has accused it of dumping people outside the area.
Elysha Britnell, a 22 year old mother of two children, was told she would have to move out of her temporary accommodation in Oxford and accept a home in Birmingham. She says she has no family and friends outside Oxford and has never lived anywhere else and is appealing against the decision:
‘I’m Oxford born and bred. If this appeal fails I’ll be completely homeless. I have got nowhere else to go. Even if I go to Birmingham, I may as well be homeless, because I have nobody there.’
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Five years on
Posted: March 5, 2014 Filed under: Buy to let, Housing benefit, Housing market, Private renting | Tags: Interest rates, QE Leave a commentOn today’s fifth anniversary of record low interest rates all the talk is about how savers have lost out to borrowers. It should also be about renters and owners.
On 5 March, 2009 the Bank of England cut its main interest rate to 0.5 per cent, the lowest in history, and began its associated policy of quantitative easing in a successful attempt to prevent economic collapse.
But the effects continue to be controversial. The campaign group Save Our Savers estimates that savers have lost £117 billion in lost interest over the last five years plus another £209 billion from the way inflation has reduced the spending power of their money.
In contrast, borrowers have gained billions from lower interest rates. SOS’s message resonates because of the perceived unfairness that prudent savers and are paying to extricate us from a crisis caused by excess borrowing.
But what about the housing impact? In a CIH policy essay a few months ago, I did a rough calculation that mortgage borrowers have saved around £30 billion a year as a result of lower mortgage rates, QE and politcies such as Funding for Lending. Those with larger mortgages and with enough equity to remortgage to lower rates will have gained proportionately the most. The impact has also varied considerably between different regions.
Mixed messages
Posted: January 23, 2014 Filed under: Buy to let, Housing benefit, Private renting, Universal credit | Tags: Fergus and Judith Wilson, housing benefit, private landlords Leave a commentSo are private landlords about to pull out of the housing benefit market or not?
It’s one of the most crucial questions for the future of the housing system but the answer may be more complex than recent publicity suggests.
The alarm was raised when Fergus and Judith Wilson, the King and Queen of buy to let, revealed that they were evicting all of their tenants on benefit. A poll yesterday by the website spareroom.co.uk found that only 18 per cent of landlords currently rent to claimants, down from a third two years ago.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
The hardest word
Posted: January 14, 2014 Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit, Universal credit, Welfare reform | Tags: Iain Duncan Smith Leave a commentA remarkable thing happened iyesterday: Iain Duncan Smith used a five-letter word beginning with S.
Apologising for a mistake is just about the last thing any minister wants to do, but IDS got his chance when Labour’s John Healey asked him at work and pensions questions about the DWP’s bulletin admitting the pre-1996 under-occupation penalty error. Healey quoted the latest survey from the Northern Housing Consortium that ‘nearly half of all frontline housing workers have dealt with someone who has threatened to commit suicide’ largely because of the government’s welfare changes. ‘Will he apologise this afternoon to those people for the concern and chaos that he is causing?’
Duncan Smith replied: ‘I said it all right, and I say it again: the Department is, and I am, absolutely sorry that anybody may have been caught up in this who should not have been.’ So not just an apology but a double ‘sorry’ from both the secretary of state and his department. But before anyone gets too excited, he went on:
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 