Britain’s first benefit refugees

Single mothers reliant on the state are among the first and biggest victims of the Government’s welfare reforms.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/polit...expires_in=6571

 

Sandra Munoz finds it hard to sleep at night. Shortly before Christmas she received a letter from her landlord notifying her that the rent on her two-bedroom flat in Battersea, south London, had gone up. As a single mother of one she receives financial help to put a roof over her head. But rather than languishing on the already backlogged waiting list for social housing, she uses cash payments, known as local housing allowance, to put towards renting in the private sector.

 

But as part of their series of welfare reform packages, the Government has capped the local housing allowance meaning people such as Ms Munoz and her five-year-old son Eduardo are now being evicted.

 

"If we have to move out of the area it will be like returning to zero for me," she says. "We'll have to start all over again. I'm a single mother and I have a strong support network in Battersea that makes it easier for me to find work. If I move somewhere else I won't have any of that to fall back on."

 

Much of the debate in recent weeks surrounding welfare reform has centred on plans to cap the overall amount of benefit that a family can receive at £26,000. The bill has floated back and forth between the two houses in Parliament with the Government promising to push it through with or without the support of the Lords.

 

If the total benefit cap comes in, Britain could experience the largest peacetime movement of families since the creation of the post-Second World War new towns.

 

Proponents of reform say the moves are necessary to save money and encourage families to pursue work, rather than rely on benefits. Critics say many of the benefits out there help keep parents in work and will push Britain towards a segregated future where the outer rings of expensive cities are populated with the poor while the centre of town is colonised by the rich.

 

But in many ways that exodus is already under way. The Chartered Institute of Housing estimates that as many as 800,000 homes have already become unaffordable for low-income families now that the local housing allowance has been capped. The new caps came in on 1 January and will, depending on when each person's local housing allowance is assessed, impact households over the next 12 months. Across the country, families are receiving letters saying they must move into cheaper accommodation, wherever that may be.

 

The new limits currently restrict the maximum amount of housing benefit payable weekly to £250 for a one-bedroom property, £290 for two bedrooms, £340 for three bedrooms and £400 for four bedrooms. The maximum anyone can receive in a year is £20,000.

 

In many parts of the country the capped allowance is more than enough to find half-decent accommodation. But in London, parts of the South-east, the Home Counties and beyond – where property prices are often extremely high – the caps are making vast swathes of our cities unaffordable to poor families.

 

Maida Vale, an affluent area of central London is a good example. Like many inner-city London suburbs, social housing is mixed up with Victorian and Edwardian mansion blocks that sell for millions.

 

Andre Rostant, a hypnotherapist and father of eight, is being evicted because of the housing allowance cap and will likely have to move his entire family outside the city to somewhere in Kent or Essex. "The benefits systems needs reforming and streamlining, I don't think anyone disagrees with that," he says. "But I don't believe it has to be done in such a way where there are such huge displacements across the country." Much has been made of how the benefit caps will primarily target large families, but he believes the Government has used families such as himself to mask a wider agenda.

 

"This whole policy has been pushed through on the back of propaganda that it's only large families and immigrants that will be affected," he adds. "My family is perfect tabloid fodder but there are single people, small families, people who work up and down the country that will be forced out of their homes."

 

The Department of Work and Pensions own estimates admit that 31 per cent of families affected by the various proposed welfare reforms will be families with two children or less. Karen Buck, Labour MP for Regent's Park and Kensington North, pictured, is also annoyed that much of the debate has been portrayed as only targeting the perennially unemployed. "The idea that welfare reform is about chasing the workshy out of Knightsbridge is a monstrous caricature," she says. "Between a quarter and a third of recipients of local housing allowances are employed."

 

Ms Munoz is a good example. She has lived in Battersea for seven years and her son Eduardo goes to school locally. A trained filmmaker, she freelances when she can while looking after her son. The flat is a former council-owned property, one of millions of former social housing units that were purchased by landlords who now rent them back to tenants reliant on local housing allowances. Although Battersea is an up-and-coming-area of London just across the Thames from Chelsea, there are plenty of have-nots living on less than salubrious estates.

 

The area's popularity, combined with a shortage of housing, has allowed landlords to increase their rents annually. In 2008 Ms Munoz's rent was £250 a month. It is now £350, beyond the maximum £290 a month she now receives through the local housing allowance.

 

Faced with eviction from a private rented property, she had no choice but to join the social housing waiting list. But there are no guarantees she will be rehoused in Battersea, the closest thing she has to a support network.

 

"I agree with the idea of a benefits cap, welfare shouldn't be unlimited," she says. "But caps need to be brought in that reflect the reality of circumstances and where you live. If you live in the countryside, £290 a week for a two-bedroom place might work well – in London that gets you very little. When I hear politicians say people won't actually suffer from these changes it makes me realise that they have no clue whatsoever about how people really live."

 

That argument appears to have won favour with the Labour party, which after initially supporting a nationwide benefits cap of £26,000 has moved towards supporting one set locally.

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As Shakespeare once said "O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables, meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;" Every time you see a Govt Minister, they just smile, dont they... And they smile even though they know that they're lying through their teeth..

 

And the facts of the matter are, they're lying about the Housing benefits caps, and here's the proof... They used one or two ridiculously extreme examples to try and make out like it's somehow the norm... Well, Battersea is not exactly a "posh" area, neither is Hackney, nor is Croydon. But rents in the private sector are absolutely ridiculous.. Private Landlords are basically coining it in and have been allowed to do so by a combination of the Tories and Labour while they've been in power. The Tories by selling off some of the best council properties in the land cheap as chips and not even allowing local councils to use the funds from sales to build replacement social housing, and Labour, by continuing the policy of not allowing councils to use the money, or really by building anything like enough social housing themselves, and also by not having the guts to impose a rent cap on how much these private scum-lords could charge people, oh, and of course the unsustainable housing bubble which saw property values inflate artificially. This has led to serious problems in Social Housing stock, with people languishing on waiting lists for years and years.. The Tories now come along with a "bull in a Chinashop approach" that will make cities like London basically only affordable for the super-rich, while everyone else is forced out.. Social Cleansing in essence.... Even bumbling Mayor Boris Johnson sees this as a serious problem and has said so..

 

I let no one off the hook here. All three parties have contributed to this unholy f***ing mess, the Tories and New Labour most of all, but the Lie Dems are scum as well for just going along with everything that Ian Duncan Donut says or does...

 

Bottom line, we cant trust any of the main three parties on this issue, they all speak with a forked tongue....

The benefits cap makes no sense. There are many reasons determining rent levels including good old-fashioned supply and demand. So, in areas with high employment, demand for housing is greater and, therefore, rents are higher. In areas of high unemployment, the reverse is true. So, what the government are saying is that an unemployed person in an area of relative low unemployment should move to an area with higher unemployment thus reducing their chances of getting a job. That's without mentioning the destructive effect on any children who have to move school or the general support network they might depend on to help look after the children if they do get a job.

 

Any law designed to respond to hysterical stories in the tabloid press is almost bound to be bad law. This is a prime example.