marylsommers: Housing benefit cuts injure us all

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Housing benefit cuts injure us all | Leslie Morphy

The effects of removing support from those most vulnerable to homelessness will be felt across society

A million households up and down the country are facing a very grim New Year. Cruel, counterproductive cuts to housing benefit kicking in as I write will leave hundreds of thousands unable to pay the rent, and facing stark choices between debt, putting food on the table and heating the home. Many will be forced to move. Others face the very real prospect of homelessness.

Monday's revelation from the Chartered Institute of Housing that 800,000 homes in the private rented sector will be beyond the reach of benefit claimants, leaving them to scramble for a dwindling number of cheap homes at a time when demand is soaring, is just one consequence of the raft of caps, cuts and recalculations announced since the coalition came into power.

An average housing benefit loss of �12 a week is massive when you're already struggling to make ends meet, and could be devastating for someone scraping by on �67.50 (or �53.45 if they're under 25) of jobseeker's allowance ? a single person's only other form of income.

The most severe housing benefit cuts now coming into force will hit 63,500 single 25- to 35-year-olds, who will now only be eligible for housing benefit that covers the cost of a shared room in a house, rather than a one-bed flat or studio. Many will see their housing benefit halved. They face the prospect of trying to find shared houses that in many areas just do not exist. But even where they do, for those who are vulnerable ? disabled people or those trying to rebuild their lives following homelessness ? this type of accommodation is just not appropriate. We expect many will end up on the streets.

Even without housing benefit cuts the situation would be very serious. Due to the economic downturn and other austerity measures, homelessness is on the rise for the first time in years. Unemployment and underemployment mean rents and mortgages are going unpaid. The housing market is still at a standstill with the lowest number of social homes built for nearly a century. Local authorities are slashing services that prevent and solve homelessness.

Research by the University of York commissioned by Crisis demonstrates that housing benefit acts as the main buffer between low-income and jobless households and homelessness. That buffer is now being dismantled and if the Lords don't stand up and challenge further cuts and caps before them in the welfare reform bill the gap between rents payable and benefits received will, we fear, become unbridgeable for countless families and individuals across the UK.

Letting thousands slip into homelessness is not without a price. Costs will be borne by the NHS, schools, local authorities and central government, and it will become harder for people to stay in or find employment.

The human cost is even steeper. What sort of government takes the decision to make people choose between food, warmth or shelter?

Attacking housing benefit amounts to attacking those in our country least able to defend themselves. Much misunderstood, in reality it is all that stands between poor, often working, households and very bad housing or the horrors of homelessness. I urge the government to rethink before we do irreversible damage to the poorest in our country, and by extension to us all. Carrying on blindly down the current path is not only wrong but counterproductive on its own terms.

Leslie Morphy