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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

Hide the following 8 comments

Too much time on the Rothschilds' yacht.

22.06.2010 15:29

This will lead to massive homelessness but it could hit the scumbag landlords too. Those who rely on state benefits to obtain enormous levels of rent may find they are losing out.

Osborn is out of touch with life in the UK today, just like the rest of them. He has spent so much time with the Rothschilds cruising the Med on their yacht, along with Mandelson another Bilderberger. No wonder he is set to puruse an agenda that will suit his backers.

CLASS WAR NOW!

Aktion Direkt


there all the same

22.06.2010 16:41

you think Labour were /are any better or different?

war?
castist policies?
pfi?
demoloshing communities.
welfare to work and blunklett and a4e?
rise of religous facism?
inernational policing / police?
bent grants system
fat dishonest jobs for the boys and girls paid for out of our taxes
Oh they and their IMF policies had a good hand in the rise of the other defunct fascist twats such as the BNP ( indistinghishable from the SWP in terms of bullshit and classism ).
Labour lords? Oxbridge solicitors?
People talk like tabloids.It's a global class war ....and Labour ain't your mates (or their middle class marxist-liberal mates )

All they all do is buy votes.
don't buy the trots and their lies
don't buy the BNP ( see trot and opportunism )
stop religious leaders and their books and cults of poisonous lies ( thought for today ) - thieves and racist opportunists ramming puritan nonsense down our throats ( see cromwell )
smash CAP - it's theft ( sfrom toff farmers to coporates to junk food )
smash PFI - thieves
stop property speculation and 2nd homes
stop the smack, the coke, the crack
fuck the EU and the corporate facist gravy train
fuck the culture of highly paid non-jobs and poverty leechers
get religion out of schools - science not fascistic segregation and braindead creationism
fuck corporate capitalism and all who are coming for her
stop Dianne Abbot and Michael Portillo and their fat ways
stop toffs running charities and quangoes ( see also g****peace and other c**ts - fe
don't divide us through age class race gender for your middle class incomes - and stop using the c word ( community ))
stop hippies
continue with the enlightenment
watch civillisation collapse through hubris
that's better

long term unemployed - I must be scum


ignore the rabid trolls....

22.06.2010 16:53

do not feed.....

@narchist


A message to the trolls

22.06.2010 17:07

Mainstream Housing Benefit (called "Standard HB") is an IN WORK BENEFIT. Got it? that means it's for people who HAVE jobs. In other words it's a massive subsidy for shitty employers who pay wages far below what anyone needs to have a roof over their heads. For people who don't have a job and are claiming some other benefit to live on there's "Certificated HB".

Fed up with idiots spouting through their arses.

Stroppyoldgit


tough situation

22.06.2010 19:02

the problem with a massive benefit system is that although its nice and comfortable at times, and a great social net, it makes us all too dependant on the system, it allows landlords to charge charge crazy rents.

for example I've been looking for a place to rent, all the landlords said "No DSS!"

until I mentioned I'm above 25 and single, then they're keen to have me, because under 25, your only able to get about 60 quid a week, over 25 you can get up to £200 a week.
As this will affect the landlords also, it will be great to see all the scumbag landlords out in the street marching against the Torys benefit cuts, it will be like seeing the Countryside Alliance get a battering back in 2002 from the plod!

jo blogs


HB caps

22.06.2010 21:04

Gosh, I would have thought people who read indymedia would have a better understanding of issues around benefit claimaints. To imagine that it's a minority of the 'workless' who claim HB is to completely misunderstand the housing situation.

Without the LHS safety net thousands of people in inner city London boroughs won't be able to get housing, as they need a subsidy for their low paid jobs. Forcing them to outer London, Kent etc isn't giving them access to well paid jobs, it's pushing people further away from them.

It's not about buy to let landlords, it's about people who can't find somewhere to live. We should build more social housing, but without that LHA is the only option to many people, and limiting means people will (even more) end up in the worse housing, over-crowded and ultimately homeless.

And if people don't have children who will look after us when we've old?

AC


It's all an illusion

22.06.2010 21:43

The move can only mean homelessness. If unemployment is going to increase then people will have to depend on benefits to pay their rent. If that is cut, then that’s homelessness.

The truth is this recession/depression is an illusion.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s happening. But it’s not an inevitable part of the economic system. It is created. Recessions and depressions are about a wealth shift. You’ve paid of much of your house but it’s going to get taken off you by the financial elite. They’ll be able to buy it up cheap. That’s what a recession is.

It is not about over-production as Marx claimed. This view was always silly. He says one business gets greedy, produces more than people can consume, loses money and bang all over business lose money. Makes no sense.

What really happens is that the financial elite who controls central banks and creates money, stop creating money. People don’t have money to buy goods and services. Businesses go out of business. People lose their jobs and homes, etc. Think about it. The 1930 recession ended because of WWII. But where did they get the money from to produce weapons of war if we were all skint. Answer – they had the money all along, they just hoarded it.

This recession was created by pumping up the money supply so people bet with phony money. When a business does get paid because the money is phony, panic sets in. During this panic, the central bank decreases the money supply and guarantees a recession.

Billions were wasted due to derivatives. Banks bet billions with hedge funds and lost, as they would. Banks then demand taxpayer money to cover their losses. Government coughs up and the banks hands the money to hedge funds. Who owns the hedge funds? Same people who own the banks.

They’ll use this illusory recession to improvish people. Make them less confident and less able to challenge the elite. They then privatize public services and reverse the post-war consensus.

It’s a scam. Their plans depend on our ignorance. They get their feudalism back.

insidejob


Obvious point really

23.06.2010 07:59

What if you already live in London, you have three kids and then you lose your job or your husband leaves you?

Please don't say "don't have children you can't afford", that just gives the rich the priviledge [sic] of reproduction. And yes, I know people have too many children they do but this isn't the way to go about it...and the fact is underclass mothers are less likely to have abortions.

Anarchoneilist


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