As readers of this site will know, I’ve been posting recently about social housing landlords (councils and their HAs) who prioritise people in work ahead of people who are not in work for social housing. I have found this worrying, to say the very least. It’s bad enough to know that filthy rich private landlords like Fergus and Judith Wilson are closing their doors to people who are on benefits. It is REALLY bad when you hear that social housing landlords – the landlords who you’d think were supposed to help people who are in real financial straits – are excluding people as well.
I wrote about Newham’s employed-people-are-our-priority housing policy last week. Here’s another example. On Thursday, I spoke for a while with Jeremy Birch, who is leader of Hastings borough council. I rang Jeremy to talk about his views on Hastings’ role as a place where London boroughs send impoverished tenants to live. As you are likely aware, London boroughs are using the private rental sector in Hastings to place tenants who are affected by the benefit cap and/or supposedly can’t be found appropriate housing in London. I’ve been speaking with a number of young women in Newham who are facing that sort of “move” to Hastings, miles away from parents and childcare.
Anyway – Jeremy Birch made a startling revelation during that conversation. He told me that Hastings borough now had housing projects from which it actively excludes people who are on benefits.
We were talking about the effects of rent pressures on rent and house prices when he said this:
“We have a project in one of the wards where houses of multiple occupation are particularly prevalent. We have a project where we’re buying up, with the housing association, some of the worst of these properties and renovating and improving them. The social landlord [that] is responsible for the running of them. The lettings agreement is that they will only take people who are in employment (my emphasis). The reason for that is to try and rebalance the nature of those communities, so that they are more settled and more stable communities.”
In other words – people who are in situations that Birch described as “benefits dependent” will be excluded from those improved homes. I have spoken with a couple of lawyers who think such an exclusion/discrimination could warrant legal challenge.
I’ve got more work to do on this – I want to know more about the definition of “benefits-dependent” in that context and I want to know more about the places that excluded tenants will be sent to, if they’re sent anywhere. Jeremy Birch says that exclusion policy only applies to that housing project at the moment. Elsewhere in the borough, people are housed according to need. You take my point, though. We’re in a messy and very unpleasant environment here. It seems that some people are allowed housing and others are not. It seems that some people are thought worthy of improved and renovated housing, while others are not (which is doubtless why these young mothers and their children are living in this sort of cramped and dirty place). It seems that social housing landlords are taking those decisions blatantly. It seems that private sector landlords are not the only ones who are thinking Cull when it comes to people on benefits.
Jeremy Birch is not keen on taking people who are benefits generally. He can’t stop London boroughs placing London tenants in Hastings private housing, but he makes it clear that he’d like to. “We’re a deprived community in the south east, who are trying to reduce the amount of benefit dependency in our own borough. While we welcome anyone who wants to come to Hastings to move here, we are not happy that we would be taking further people who were benefit dependent. That is putting extra pressure on the services that we’ve got in the town.”
I will be doing more on this. The point to note for now is that this “we’re taking these people, but not those people” rhetoric is the sort of line which ends with people on benefits being chucked in the workhouse, because all other doors have shut. You can find yourself on a benefit for all sorts of reasons – job loss, illness, disability, domestic violence, sickness. Just remember that as all this carries on, it won’t just be private landlords who want you gone.
As this behaviour roles out across the Country (and I do not believe if will be confined to affluent areas) Local Authorities will have no option to ‘house’ people in receipt of benefits in the B&B type of accommodation. This outcomes of this will be devastating
Yep knew all about this in august 2012 excuse me who would want to live in Hastings the attitude honestly is he not aware as to why people shipped there no work no homes if he’s under the illusion it’s an elitist area and after becoming disabled my one big fear was I would end up with no decent home exactly what happened its a joke after getting 3rd award for dla indefinetly and new home I’ve still not got any peace tough what’s right is right absolute farce lot of it should be a law against the misery lot of em cause
Kate – thanks for the article. I read it and it made me think of this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVh6SBfIEto
The problem we’re fighting against – not that any reading this won’t know already, I suppose – is that the war against welfare is based largely on misinformation and outright stupidity and paranoia. Most people do not have the intelligence or the compassion to see that benefits and welfare is a complex issue with all sorts of gradations and people involved, with different needs, backgrounds, abilities, etc. Or even that relatively little is spent on say JSA compared to pensions. Yet simply use the word benefits with most people and they immediately picture some extreme type in their head: a ‘scrounger’ who is playing the system, basically taking money directly from their pockets and spending it on drugs. Even when confronted with the factor of illness and inability to work, with all the different aspects and the truth of the situation, they are still unable to dismiss what they originally thought, and which is inculcated into them by the media. This is even the case with people who somehow see taking tax credits as not benefits – they can be receiving quite a large amount each week in tax credits and yet have a deep irrational hatred of some demonised version of the person receiving JSA or income support, and even a distrust of those found beyond any doubt at all, unfit for work and who therefore receive ESA.
Benefits dependent is an odd phrase, we are benefit dependent if we wish to eat (we do), yet husband works and I am a Carer, we are neither ‘unemployed’.
Strange, isn’t it. He kept saying it too.
I read the Freedom Charter and it was quite specific on this matter:
“All people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security;”
Maybe the Freedom Charter will arrive in Hastings quite soon
http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=72
The Freedom Charter goes on to say:
“The state shall recognise the right and duty of all to work, and to draw full unemployment benefits;”
Do they really want to go to hell?
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