Well.
A month or so ago, I rang some East London letting agents to ask if they would let flats to N, a single mother who’d pay her rent with universal credit. I explained that N was homeless, living in an emergency hostel with her 2 very young children, and in need of a 2-bedroom flat in the local area.
Readers of this site will know that I had high hopes which were met a bit lower. It is illegal now for letting agents to refuse to take benefit claimants onto their books, but letting agents also know very well that their landlords would rather bulldoze a flat than see a benefit claimant in it. When a benefit claimant calls, they must achieve a delicate straddle.
Gives them a good stretch anyway. The London agents I called were enthusiastic – one almost bodily from the sounds of it – about tenants who claim benefits. They said that N absolutely could register at their agencies.
Things peaked about there, though. The feeling among these agents was that after N registered with them, her best option was absolutely to give up. Hand on heart, these agents said – they would never reject N themselves, but as for asking their landlords… well, probably not worth it even for the laugh, really. Landlords demanded rich guarantors and upscale tenants, and would generally only let a single mother into one of their flats to mop it. What could you do, etc, etc.
Which is not to say these London letting agents were totally out of helpful suggestions. Far from it. Sure, London and London landlords might be a stretch, but the dream didn’t have to end there. Wouldn’t N be perfectly suited to a gumtree landlord and a flat in one of those out-of-London, up-North hellholes where the standards and hope are as meagre as the gene pool? – one of those timeworn places where everyone’s still paid in salt or buttons.
As luck would have it, I live in a such a place myself and I am always buoyed by a London endorsement, so I sat down straight away to ring up some Stockport and Manchester letting agents.
This was an intriguing experiment, to be sure. I didn’t end it convinced that landlord enthusiasm for benefit claimants is as ingrained up north as London letting agents think it is, but just as a human being, you somehow need to believe that people are at least trying to enter the spirit and that there are still regions left where the private rental market remains varied enough to include that rung of landlords who rent hovels to single mothers, so you go for the benefit of the doubt. That is how hope works.
Which is not to say that asking northern letting agents if they accepted benefit claimants was an entirely hopeful exercise.
I rang a central Manchester letting agent first, mainly to give them a fright. It was a rewarding call in that sense, but the rest of it I could have quoted verbatim without actually staying on the line:
“…we need to check with the landlords [whether they’ll take benefit claimants] …at the end of the day, it depends on what the rent is and how much you guys are getting annually… you need to be earning 30 times whatever the rent is and if your universal credit doesn’t match that, you need to provide a guarantor…it depends on what your budget is… rentwise, a minimum 2 bed in the city centre is like over £1000… that’s why I would suggest looking outside the city centre…”
Of course, I thought. Of course. You need to go into these things thinking dumping-ground, rather than housing: one of those places where you can build a whole life around waiting outside boarded-up shops fantasising about public transport. Fortunately, there are neighbourhoods round here where this game is very much on: the longstanding local gameplan being to flytip the very poorest people into a couple of postcodes with terrible food, chances and public transport, and then leave them to figure it out.
Obviously, though, you need to move fast before these places are levelled up. Skates on. God knows I nearly left it too late. The second agent I spoke to said, “we do now and then [have properties for people who claim universal credit],” which was encouraging – but that they only counted 20% of a person’s universal credit income when deciding if that person could afford a place. Less encouraging there.
“It’s an affordability requirement with that taken into account…[a tenant needs to earn] 3 times the rent [and] we can only take into account 20% of the benefits… the rest would have to be made up with earnings.”
Righto.
One more call for the collection, then. The 3rd and final agent said that they counted all of a tenant’s income as long as that income was “official” – “as long as they [the prospective tenant] can prove where it has come from… the only thing we would not include is if it was unofficial – so like your partner gave you £10 a week, but it was not through any sort of books or anything like that.”
I loved that. I always love that. Cost of living crisis hits and anyone who does a bit extra for cash is straightaway fingered as a reprobate: people who clean for extra, or get tips from deliveries, or do hairdressing for cash, or sell grass, or stolen slate or whatever it is. If there’s money in it, you’ll do it and bugger the rest.
It’s hard not to share the frustration. I mean, really – we’re in a situation where there’s no housing, money for energy bills, or health system to speak of, but the only priority that anyone has is making sure that poor people behave.
Intriguingly, you don’t have to behave if you’re rich. You can do things like party during lockdown, or get huge government contracts as ongoing rewards for being useless, and you most certainly can skip paying tax. Think we can safely say that this last is one of the main reasons that rich people are rich.
Anyway – N is still in the homelessness hostel. We’re having a think about what to do next.
Just shows that the Class War is as relevant today as it ever was. “Levelling up”, my arse. We may as well still be living in the Middle Ages. What to do next? Good question. Might as well just give it up and die of Monkey Pox. But the thing about Universal Credit, and the landlord’s reluctance towards it, might just be something to do with no rent for 5 (or more) weeks and the massive amount of rent arrears it has directly caused. Give it up for Iain Duncan Smith and his partners in crime. 👏👏👏
Iain Duncan Smith. What happened to him. Not that I care. Haven’t looked at the papers for a week, but am guessing he isn’t involved in partygate for the simple reason that nobody would invite him.
Wow, I never even thought of that, imagine him turning up at a Happy Hardcore All-nighter, what a party killer. He’d put the mockers on a Tupperware party. Last I heard in the news, though (and I didn’t bother to read it) was some small headline about him calling for Benefits to be increased?! Probably just some attempt at internal political shit-stirring against Boris/Sunak/whoever now that he (IDS) is yesterday’s man.
Think it’s been downhill since Jesus appeared to him at Easterhouse and told him bin legacy benefits.
It’s been a big success for the Tories . In ten years, with a bit of help from their friends in the right-wing press, they have basically destroyed social security in this country. And replaced it with Universal Credit. The whole thing based on right-wing ”get off benefits ” ideology. Look at the disabled, now condemned to endless re-tests to get their benefits. Even people who ten years ago, any doctor would have said could never work again. Always this constant insecurity, this push-back against claimants.
Yes and the way in which they’ve treated those still on ‘legacy’ Benefits (like myself) is disgusting too. During the pandemic the workers got Furlough, those on UC got the £20 “Uplift”, and those on JSA/ESA got bugger all, left to starve. Now there’s much discussion of the ‘cost-of-living crisis’ (that is really a crisis of Capitalism if not yet a full blown Recession) and of increasing UC levels of payment, but once again no mention whatsoever of legacy Benefits. Not even on the TV news. Not even by the “Opposition”.
P. S.
There’s also talk of giving Energy rebates but how does that affect people like me who rent from one of the aforementioned “Gumtree Landlords”, where the electricity account/bill is in the landlord’s name and I pay them in cash for what I’ve used? Who gets the rebate, me or the landlord?
Good question. Does the LL pay the council tax? That’s where the rebate is I think.
Oh right, I wasn’t sure how they were planning to do it but if that’s the case then I will get it as I pay the Council Tax. I’m still waiting for the last one, the £150 that we’re all supposed to be getting from Central Gov. via local Councils, the last I heard about that was that the Council are paying Direct Debit users first directly into their Bank accounts but others like me who pay in cash at the local newsagents Paypoint have to apply for it online when they get around to creating a form and setting up payments, probably sometime after May.
yep I think that’s how the rebate works tho need to check we got ours. such riches.
According to what I’ve just read in the local news it looks like I won’t be able to get the £400 rebate;
“It’s thought that unlike the council tax rebate of £150, the support will be deducted from people’s bills directly through supplier firms. Direct debit and credit customers will have the money credited to their accounts, while customers on pre-payment meters will have the money applied to their meter or paid to them via a voucher.”
I don’t have a proper pre-payment meter like the ones fitted by a supplier, there is no supply registered to my flat, the meter I have is an old coin one like many flats had 40 years ago, belonging to the landlord who empties it and is meant to read it though my landlord never reads the meter and never issues any sort of receipt for the payment, just pockets the cash and gives me the old coins back.
The ‘get off benefits’ rhetoric actually predates the Tories and was introduced by Labour as was the awful and endless capability tests for the disabled. It’s important to remember, that vile as they are, the Tories aren’t the only shits around, there are plenty in Labour, and unfortunately, it’s those who are currently in the Labour leadership who are the kind of people we’re talking of. Starmer and his crew are just Tory lite, and we’d be best to remember that, lest we let our expectations run away with themselves.
Remember the utterances of Rachel Reeves, every bit as vile as McVey or Patel. The current Shadow Social Security Minister, Jonathan Ashworth might be okay, as he was initially appointed by Jeremy Corbyn, but it could be that should Labour gain power he’d be shifted out and we’d get someone like Reeves or the equally awful Nandy.
An alternative to “Levelling up”, perhaps the eventually inevitable outcome…
https://basicincome.org
One would hope so Trev, but there are forces out to more or less see the idea fail, such as the much vaunted trial of ‘UBI’ in Wales, which is to be paid to care leavers at a rate of £1, 600 a month for a two year period. This is despite widespread appeals that the trial be much broader based so that meaningful data can be collected as to how a system of UBI affects a society.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/ubi-universal-basic-income-trial-21131341
Unfortunately, there is also some, I think, deliberate misinformation doing the rounds about UBI trails, which in some cases were not and are not UBI. One oft referenced ‘UBI’ scheme was the trial in Finland where unemployed people were given a set amount of money each month. That scheme was not, and was never intended to be regarded as a UBI scheme by the Finnish government, who were at pains to point this out – in vain when idiots in the press arbitrarily decided it was UBI. The scheme in Wales equally shouldn’t really be called a UBI trial as it’s far from universal and is probably paying at a rate that is something like double what a rational and affordable UBI would pay.
Record number of Benefit Sanctions…
https://thepoorsideof.life/2022/06/02/whilst-the-queen-celebrates-jubilee-record-level-of-universal-credit-sanctions-published/
Benefit Sanctions found to be ineffective and damaging (2018)
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/22/benefit-sanctions-found-to-be-ineffective-and-damaging
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/benefit-sanctions-are-harmful-and-ineffective/
BREAKING NEWS….
It’s Official, Boris Johnson is to be replaced with Paddington Bear.
May he spend eternity in a landfill. Under the nappies.
Seen on Twitter…
“If Johnson goes down tonight, there is a lovely irony that the tin pot Churchill wannabe was defeated on D-Day. It’s about the only link that could be legitimately made between them.”
Mind the benefit cap: why families are still falling through our welfare system
June 23, 2022
Zach Mills
“The government’s latest benefit cap statistics, released by DWP this week, reveal that around 120,000 families had their benefits capped in February 2022. New analysis from Policy in Practice shows that larger families cannot afford to rent anywhere in Britain without sacrificing money meant for food and daily living if they are affected by the benefit cap. This blog explores the benefit cap’s effect on families as living costs rise, and gives one potential solution that could ease the financial pressure being faced.”
https://policyinpractice.co.uk/mind-the-benefit-cap-why-families-are-still-falling-through-our-welfare-system/
“I ‘d be worse off with a job than on benefits’ – man who lost everything in pandemic struggling to pay sky-high rent”
“A volunteer on benefits struggling to make ends meet after losing his business during the pandemic says he would be worse off now if he had a job because he is having pay so much in rent”
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/cost-of-living/id-worse-job-benefits-man-24251814
On the subject of poverty, if not housing…
“Free School Meals should be extended to all households on Universal Credit. This is a good way for Conservative party leader candidates to tackle the cost of living crisis while improving work incentives.”
https://policyinpractice.co.uk/free-school-meals-should-be-extended-to-all-households-on-universal-credit/
How the Housing crisis has deepened the cost of living crisis
https://policyinpractice.co.uk/how-the-housing-crisis-has-deepened-the-cost-of-living-crisis/
It’s official, the “cost-of-living crisis” is now a Recession.
https://thepoorsideof.life/2022/08/04/uk-interest-rates-biggest-hike-in-27-years-inflation-rates-highest-since-1980/
If you can understand any of this you’re a better man than I am Gunga Din.
The making of a Housing Benefit Millionaire
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62497015