Housing benefits: Changes 'sees 6% of tenants move' ~ Newsline77

Friday, 28 March 2014

Housing benefits: Changes 'sees 6% of tenants move'

Only 6% of social housing tenants in Britain affected by changes to benefits partly designed to cut under-occupancy have moved home, BBC research suggests.

Ministers had hoped cutting benefits for tenants deemed to have a spare room would free up larger homes.
A year after the changes came in, BBC analysis of data from social housing providers also suggests 28% of affected tenants have fallen into rent arrears.
The government said the change was saving taxpayers more than £1m a day.

Among the benefits changes introduced on 1 April 2013 was the removal of what ministers called the "spare room subsidy" - social housing tenants deemed to have one spare bedroom have had their housing benefit reduced by 14%. Those with two or more spare bedrooms had reductions of 25%.

Critics dubbed the change "the bedroom tax" and Labour has promised to scrap it if it wins the next election.
'Knock-on costs' The government had argued there were two reasons for cutting housing benefit for those of working age living in social housing with spare bedrooms - to reduce the benefits bill and to help the 300,000 people living in overcrowded accommodation.
But the BBC research - involving 331 social housing providers across England, Scotland and Wales with Freedom of Information requests submitted to council and surveys of housing associations - found just under 6% of tenants whose benefit was cut had moved house.
It also found that while most were paying their rent, 28% had fallen into arrears for the first time in the past 12 months.

Iain Duncan Smith said action had been taken to 'control the spiralling housing benefit bill'

Prof Rebecca Tunstall, director of the centre for housing policy at the University of York, said: "There were two major aims to this policy - one was to encourage people to move, and the other was to save money for the government in housing benefit payments.

"But those two aims are mutually exclusive. The government has achieved one to a greater extent and the other to a lesser extent."

Affected tenants who had not moved were being forced to make up the shortfall in their income, leading to extra pressure being placed on them to make ends meet, said Prof Tunstall.
Asked if the policy had proved successful, she added: "To some extent it's achieved some of its aims. It's achieved an aim of making a saving in housing benefit for national government, probably slightly less than they'd originally hoped for.

"But there are other knock-on costs. There's a social cost for tenants and a cost of having less efficient and fewer new homes. And you can imagine that those costs can start to mount up.
She said that while tenants in arrears could have been in debt for other reasons, the fact remains that there is "new debt for local authorities and that means fewer pounds to go round to spend on improvements for others".

'Spiralling bill' Carl Mitchell, assistant director of Riverside Housing Association, based in Hull, said the service had noticed an impact in the past 12 months.
He said: "Approximately two thirds of all tenants affected by the bedroom tax essentially struggle to pay the rent and associated bills.

"So by default that usually means that people are ether falling into rent arrears or having to compromise on other things such as fuel costs and the cost of living in respect of food. So there's a knock on effect elsewhere, it's not just rent arrears.

"From Riverside as a service, the lack of income coming in does mean it impacts on the new build properties that we have to build, and services that we offer to tenants."

Labour's Chris Bryant, the shadow work and pensions minister, said: "Trapped with nowhere else to go, thousands of people have had no choice but to fork out an extra £14 a week.

"David Cameron's government have pretended this was all about helping people who are overcrowded, but in truth the bedroom tax is a cruel, unfair and appallingly administered policy."

But Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said: "It was absolutely necessary that we fixed the broken system which just a year ago allowed the taxpayer to cover the £1m daily cost of spare rooms in social housing.

"We have taken action to help the hundreds of thousands of people living in cramped, overcrowded accommodation and to control the spiralling housing benefit bill, as part of the government's long-term economic plan.
"Our reforms ensure we can sustain a strong welfare safety net, and we are providing an extra £165m next year to support the most vulnerable claimants."

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Friday, 28 March 2014