Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant'
18th July 2013, 12:21
BBC piece about the effects of the new housing benefit cap.
Britain's welfare system is undergoing a radical reform. Changes introduced this week include a benefits cap that limits the total amount any working-age household receives to £500 a week. How is this affecting families in London, which has some of the highest rents in the country?
Like many other girls of her age, 16-year-old Sarah Counihan Sanchez spent the summer term studying hard for her GCSEs. But there is more than exam stress on her mind - she and her family are facing the threat of eviction from their home in Ealing.
"Sometimes I have good days, when I feel I'm alright," explains Sarah as she gathers up her books for her next exam.
"But I am actually seeing a counsellor at the moment due to me feeling very low and feeling that no-one cares. When I heard about the notice to evict us, I started to get very panicky because I thought, 'What am I going to do? It's in the middle of my exams'."
Sarah, her mother, father and four siblings, aged four, seven, 12 and 14 are currently housed in temporary three-bedroom accommodation by the local council. Sarah doesn't have a bedroom, so she sleeps in the front room with her sister - and they aren't able to stay there long-term.
In the last four-bedroom home they lived in, the private landlord charged £690 a week - well over the new £500-a-week cap.
Isabel, Sarah's mother says: "We were paying £225 a week from our own pockets and housing benefit topped up the rest."
Although Isabel is unable to work due to health problems - she is waiting for back and hip surgery - her husband has a full-time job.
But his wages did not cover his family's housing costs, and even though he was entitled to financial support from the government, an administrative error with their housing benefit claim meant they fell into arrears, and the landlord threw them out.
Research by the Building and Social Housing federation showed recently, that 93% of new claimants for housing benefit were in working households.
I point out to Isabel that the government implemented these reforms to scale down an annual £210bn welfare bill. This includes a housing benefit bill which has increased 62% over the last decade.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said housing benefit completely exploded under the last government - it doubled in 10 years and was set to rise by another £5bn a year.
Isabel agrees that the bill for housing benefit is too high and that much of the money went straight to private landlords.
"The money spent on housing benefit is criminal, but the answer should be to build more public sector owned housing... rather than that money going to a landlord."
Isabel says the new benefits cap prices the family out of living in the capital, where private rents have increased by 65% since 2001, according to the National Housing Federation.
"We feel it's like an ethnic cleansing of London, moving the poorer people out," she says.
View from the TaxPayer's Alliance
"Capping out-of-work benefits is fair to both the taxpayers picking up the benefits bill and to those in receipt of welfare. The public back the policy as they know that it is deeply unfair for families in work to subsidise a lifestyle for others that they cannot afford for themselves. Limiting payments to the average salary reinforces the principle that work should pay better than welfare by removing the perverse incentives that have condemned some to a life on hand-outs.
However, capping benefits will not tackle the root cause of our enormous housing benefit bill, which doubled in the last decade and now stands at an eye-watering £23 billion. Only when restrictive planning laws that stop new homes being built are axed will this bill be brought down and rents reduced. Until then, we need to make sure that social housing in particular is used efficiently and the under-occupancy charge will help by encouraging people to downsize or take on lodgers."
Matthew Sinclair, Chief Executive
Britain's welfare system is undergoing a radical reform. Changes introduced this week include a benefits cap that limits the total amount any working-age household receives to £500 a week. How is this affecting families in London, which has some of the highest rents in the country?
Like many other girls of her age, 16-year-old Sarah Counihan Sanchez spent the summer term studying hard for her GCSEs. But there is more than exam stress on her mind - she and her family are facing the threat of eviction from their home in Ealing.
"Sometimes I have good days, when I feel I'm alright," explains Sarah as she gathers up her books for her next exam.
"But I am actually seeing a counsellor at the moment due to me feeling very low and feeling that no-one cares. When I heard about the notice to evict us, I started to get very panicky because I thought, 'What am I going to do? It's in the middle of my exams'."
Sarah, her mother, father and four siblings, aged four, seven, 12 and 14 are currently housed in temporary three-bedroom accommodation by the local council. Sarah doesn't have a bedroom, so she sleeps in the front room with her sister - and they aren't able to stay there long-term.
In the last four-bedroom home they lived in, the private landlord charged £690 a week - well over the new £500-a-week cap.
Isabel, Sarah's mother says: "We were paying £225 a week from our own pockets and housing benefit topped up the rest."
Although Isabel is unable to work due to health problems - she is waiting for back and hip surgery - her husband has a full-time job.
But his wages did not cover his family's housing costs, and even though he was entitled to financial support from the government, an administrative error with their housing benefit claim meant they fell into arrears, and the landlord threw them out.
Research by the Building and Social Housing federation showed recently, that 93% of new claimants for housing benefit were in working households.
I point out to Isabel that the government implemented these reforms to scale down an annual £210bn welfare bill. This includes a housing benefit bill which has increased 62% over the last decade.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said housing benefit completely exploded under the last government - it doubled in 10 years and was set to rise by another £5bn a year.
Isabel agrees that the bill for housing benefit is too high and that much of the money went straight to private landlords.
"The money spent on housing benefit is criminal, but the answer should be to build more public sector owned housing... rather than that money going to a landlord."
Isabel says the new benefits cap prices the family out of living in the capital, where private rents have increased by 65% since 2001, according to the National Housing Federation.
"We feel it's like an ethnic cleansing of London, moving the poorer people out," she says.
View from the TaxPayer's Alliance
"Capping out-of-work benefits is fair to both the taxpayers picking up the benefits bill and to those in receipt of welfare. The public back the policy as they know that it is deeply unfair for families in work to subsidise a lifestyle for others that they cannot afford for themselves. Limiting payments to the average salary reinforces the principle that work should pay better than welfare by removing the perverse incentives that have condemned some to a life on hand-outs.
However, capping benefits will not tackle the root cause of our enormous housing benefit bill, which doubled in the last decade and now stands at an eye-watering £23 billion. Only when restrictive planning laws that stop new homes being built are axed will this bill be brought down and rents reduced. Until then, we need to make sure that social housing in particular is used efficiently and the under-occupancy charge will help by encouraging people to downsize or take on lodgers."
Matthew Sinclair, Chief Executive