More food for thought from conversations about the benefit cap at the actual coal face:
I’ve posted below a recording in which a Basildon council officer says that people who are evicted because of benefit cap rent arrears could be found to have made themselves intentionally homeless.
Which was not the best news. Council help for you is very much reduced if you’re judged responsible for your homelessness. You’re more or less on your own with your homelessness problems if that happens as I’ve seen it. You would have thought that people evicted on account of rent arrears caused by the benefit cap should and would be cut slack in this area – particularly if they were placed in housing that they could afford before the benefit cap was lowered – but maybe not.
Certainly, officers make interesting remarks on the ground. It’s all important to note:
The recording below was made at a February meeting with a woman who has serious rent arrears because of the recently-lowered benefit cap. The woman and her three young children were placed in a Basildon flat by Newham council. Basildon council handles the family’s housing benefit claim. This woman’s housing benefit was cut by about £100 a week when the cap was lowered at the end of last year. A small discretionary housing payment covers part of her rent shortfall until the end of March. We went to Basildon council to ask what else she could do.
The officer said the woman should go back to Newham council to ask if Newham thought her flat was still affordable now that her housing benefit had been cut.
The officer then said intentional homelessness was on the cards if this woman was evicted because of benefit cap arrears:
(This audio has been altered to disguise voices. Am not particularly in pursuit of individual officers here. It’s the message that’s the issue).
“If you become homeless, it could be that you’d be seen as intentionally homeless anyway, because you… if you’ve been evicted for rent arrears, then it is through non-payment of rent that you’ve lost your property.
That got my attention, all right. In the recording, you hear me ask:
“Would that mean no one would have a duty to house her? Is that the case, even when [the rent arrears have been caused by] something like that [benefit] cap that’s come in subsequently….?”
“This is why you need to see Newham council about the affordability, because if they say it is affordable, then you’re going to have to struggle by and get it paid…” the officer said. “If they don’t think it’s affordable, then because they have a duty, they have a duty to assist you to find something cheaper, or…”
Or what? I thought.
I contacted Newham council to ask whether or not the council was likely to decide that people had made themselves homeless intentionally if they were evicted because of rent arrears caused by the benefit cap. Unfortunately, the council did not respond. Think I must still be on their blacklist (we apparently fell out over my Focus E15 stories. Do they hold a grudge or what). If anyone else can get an answer out of them, by all means let me know. It would be good to have that peg in the ground for future reference.
Anyway. Official positions don’t always matter when you get down to it. This is the sort of thing you hear on the ground. Putting it all out there.
Many thanks to @nearlylegal for help with benefit cap questions over the past while.
Councils are unutterably inhumane.Irrespective of their supposed Party affiliation.
I know you’re not in Scotland but the Scottish Guidance on Homelessness is very clear on this. See Page 12 and 47. What does the English Guidance say?
http://www.gov.scot/Resource/Doc/53814/0012265.pdf
Rent arrears
7.17 It should not be assumed automatically that an applicant is intentionally homeless where they have lost their accommodation because of rent or mortgage arrears. Reasons should be fully explored and decisions made as to whether arrears resulted from deliberate acts or omissions.
All part of the steady harassment of people on benefits. The unemployed, the disabled, and now, under Universal Credit, even the working poor.
It’s not enough to be sanctioned down to the local foodbank in hunger.
It’s not enough for seriously sick and dying people to be driven off disability benefits with fixed medical ‘tests’ that they can’t win.
Now its a case of putting people in impossible difficulties trying to pay the rent. So that they lose their homes and are thrown onto the street.
And why ? To make them get a job, – even if it kills them.
I think his advice was broadly correct. I think that he is not actually saying you would be intentionally homeless if you lost your home due to a benefit cap.
If the cap made the property unaffordable then the failure to pay the rent could not be deliberate and you would not be intentionally homeless. If on the other hand the cap only led to a small reduction of your Housing Benenfit such that you could afford to pay the shortfall but deliberately didn’t then you would be intentionally homeless. The issue will turn on where the council pin the tail on the donkey in determining when the cap makes the rent unaffordable.
All of this homelessness was caused by uncaring governments who wants the lower classses to revert back to victorian times and laws, Laws that keeps the people under their thumbs. We, fought two wold wars to keep our country free from occupation ,and to the right to live in our homes till death, but because of the rich running our country now, we find ourselves being dictated too by the rich who now run the country. Thatcher took us into Europe, (despite us asking for a referendom that was denied us). which allowed every Tom Dick or Harry entering our country un- checked. We now have all the gangsters and
scum of europe over here running prostitution, white slavery, and buying up all the housing, then renting them out at extortunate rents. I could go on and on at what has happend to this country by the miss matched governments who are only in parliament for one thing, and that is to feather their own ends and bank accounts. A great statesman once said, quote: ” If the government of the day does not listen to its people, Then there is only one thing left to do, and that is to REVOLT!”. Unquote. This was spoken by George Washington before the American revolt against the British who would not listen to the people of the day, and looking at things today, I feel that only a revolt would put this country back on track again. terr
TERRYHANLEY@HOTMAIL.COM