Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Housing Benefit Reform Set to Cause Mass Homelessness

riotact | 22.06.2010 13:19 | Repression | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements

Thousands of Londoners could be made homeless due to Gideon George’s attack on Housing Benefit.



The posh cunt who lives in the mansion above at our expense (when he’s not living at one of his other two houses) has decided to limit the rate of Housing Benefit will be set at £400 for a four bedroom house and £280 for a one bed flat.

Ignoring the simple fact that soaring rents are inflicted by parasitic landlords and buy to let scum, Gideon intends to force many of those on benefit in London out of their homes.

Housing Benefit, or Local Housing Allowance (LHA) as it is now known, is based on the bottem market rate for a particular size property in the local area (1). This is usually set way below the average rental, already forcing benefit claimants and those on low wages into poor quality housing. The LHA rate for central London for a four bedroom house is currently £1,000 a week. As this property website shows (2), the average rent for such a property in the same area is often more than twice that.

So whilst £400 a week for a house may sound appealing on a craggy rock off the Isle of Skye the reality is that in Central London and further afield you just can’t rent a 4 bed property for £400.

In Camden for example the LHA rate is set at £1000 for properties in the central London area of the borough and £575 for those closer to the outskirts. A one bed flat in central London is currently assessed as costing £350 a week, once again outside of Osborne’s £280 a week cut off point.

Even in Tower Hamlets, hardly the land of milk and honey, a four bedroom is house is currently assessed as costing £430 a week, leaving a thirty pount shortfall for claimants. And all this is based on the fact that people only need four bedrooms. For larger families the problems will be even more devastating.

This cuts will not just hit the unemployed. Hundreds of thousands of low paid workers also depend on Housing Benefit to pay their rent and will be forced to find extra money to pay the rent. Along with the VAT hike and cuts in child benefit it seems thew Tories are happy to put a penny in the cap of the poor whilst sending someone in through the back door to nick the telly.

The chinless twat didn’t say whether LHA changes would apply to existing claimants or new claimants only. If applied across the board this could lead to mass homelessness amongst London families at a time when Local Authority housing stock is desperately inadequate.

Even the reforms are only aimed at new claimants this will lead to benefit ghettoes on the outskirts of London with the unemployed and low waged forced out of Central London. This will put yet more strain on those boroughs which do not have the resources of Kensington and Chelsea or Westminster.

This will go down a treat with the Notting Hill set and other assorted scum who will now only have to deal with the plebs when they are stepping over them in shop doorways.

We suspect that Osborne has picked these figures out of the air. We’re not even sure that the Tories fully understand what Housing Benefit is. Why would they, the closest they’ve come to living in rented property was fagging at Eton.

And throughout it all the lapdog Libdems sat nodding like the spineless, worthless, tory-wannabe cunts they are.

(1)  https://lha-direct.voa.gov.uk/Secure/Default.aspx
(2)  http://www.londonpropertywatch.co.uk/average_rental_prices.html

Benefit Claimants Fightback - join at:  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=116432071735566

riotact
- Homepage: http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/

Comments

Display the following 8 comments

  1. Too much time on the Rothschilds' yacht. — Aktion Direkt
  2. there all the same — long term unemployed - I must be scum
  3. ignore the rabid trolls.... — @narchist
  4. A message to the trolls — Stroppyoldgit
  5. tough situation — jo blogs
  6. HB caps — AC
  7. It's all an illusion — insidejob
  8. Obvious point really — Anarchoneilist
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech