From Private tenant - to Living on the streets in 3 easy steps

Increasingly I am seeing more and more people come through the door, with eviction notices for rent arrears, nothing new about that you may think, but on brief closer inspection, it transpires that these rent arrears aren’t actually the tenants fault…… I know you are now all screaming  “well of course it’s their fault, they should pay their rent”

In essence I would agree, after all that is the main term of any tenancy agreement, however, many tenants are finding themselves the victim of the benefit caps.

We have all read recently that 1 in 3 council tenants & thousands of housing association tenants have been forced into arrears since April this year, however less is being voiced about the number of private renting tenants who are also finding themselves in rent arrears that they had no control over.

Under LHA rules tenants are only paid for the number of rooms that they are deemed to need not the number of rooms in the property.

This is seriously affecting private renting tenants who have either been on HB from the start of their tenancy or have found themselves on benefits due to redundancy.

The bedroom tax penalises tenants if they have a “spare” bedroom by reducing their housing benefit by up to 25 per cent. As emergency funds from councils dry up, experts warn the situation is expected to deteriorate further over the coming months

Many PRS tenants who could easily afford their rent in the past have found themselves struggling to meet the full cost or in most situations I’ve seen  been served with notice for rent arrears.

Most tenants in this situation are not in any financial position to make payment arrangements with their landlords to pay off the arrears due to the cut in their benefit payments coupled with the lack of employment out there.

Local councils are also wiping their hands of these tenants and seeing them as intentionally homeless due to the rent arrears.

In the last 2 weeks alone I have dealt with 4 families in my local area who this has happened too and the councils are evicting them from the temporary accommodation and ending their duty of care.

So what now for these families who find themselves literally on the street with nowhere to go?

NO private landlord will take them on (rent arrears)

NO local council won’t touch them (rent arrears)

NO Housing association will house them (rent arrears)

And in all fairness who whats to live the rest of their life in a Hostel…

The government really need to sharpen their pencils and make some sense of this mess before most of the UK find themselves living on the streets.

I guess thats one way to 'Cheapen' Housing.... Demote it

Well, we all sat by our TVs, Radios and social media apps waiting for the outcome of the government reshuffle, but were we really prepared for the outcome?

Yet another Housing Minister bites the dust before the poor man's even had a chance to make a difference and to add insult to injury it was over 24hrs before anyone was put in his place.

Now a cynic would say that this lack of a replacement was because someone 'forgot' to fill the box on the reshuffle spreadsheet.... but coupled with the fact that the post of Housing Minister has been down graded, this is less of an oversight and screams more of the fact that the government don’t see Housing as a very important issue.

With the launch of Help-to-Buy and the loudhailer call for a regulation of the letting industry we'd been lead to believe the government had finally taken the housing problems in the UK seriously.............

However it would now seem they were just lulling us into a false sense of security that something was actually going to be done.

So what now for the millions of people who can’t get on the housing ladder and the millions of people still being ripped off by agents and landlords??

Well it would seem the answer is "tough" So what can this new demoted Housing Minister bring to the table... not forgetting Mark Prisk was at least a FRICS

Well Kris Hopkins is an ex-squaddie (nothing wrong with that at all) has previously been portfolio holder for social services and council housing.

His achievements included overseeing the delivery of housing stock transfer in Bradford and he has combined the roles with the Chairmanships of the Bradford Local Strategic Partnership and the Yorkshire and Humber Housing and Regeneration Board, so on the surface at least he does have some background and hopefully understanding of the UK Housing situation and what steps to take next.

On the other side of the coin however, his past voting history does leave me with a rather highly raised Sean Connery eye brow...

He was strongly FOR the increase in VAT rate

He was Strongly FOR EU Integration

He was strongly FOR University fees

This makes me wonder is we are going to see a strong push in a financial directing for Housing and the PRS? Will this mean more cost, more fees and more debt?..... We can only wait and see......