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.
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