Council rent arrears?

[Roundabout]

Southwark Housing rent arrears as at January 2014 - ?16,094,461.29p. 16 mil:

Number of tenants in rent arrears - 22,350.

What Party is in control?

Well done!

[PokerTime]

A lot of the problems are to do with welfare reforms and bedroom tax (which party in is control of those?) with 60% of tenants affected by bedroom tax finding themselves in arrears in Southwark (compared to 28% before the reforms). Add to that that most of those affected are disabled and use the spare room for equipment and or carers it really highlights the stupidity of this coalition policy. And it is having the same impact on every social landlord across the country.

Southwark is pretty robust in dealing with rent arrears but often people get into arrears through no fault of their own and if they are vulnerable people, the council has welfare officers to help those people with payment plans. What those figures don't tell you either is how much of those arrears are on payment plans already and will in time be paid.

You really need to think why people are in arrears before blaming anyone. I'm happy to have a discussion those about the reasons and just who is to blame for that though.

[aquarius moon]

I agree with PokerTime.

Are you fortunate enough to have never been in rent arrears Roundabout?

Well done.

[ratty]

Southwark council also self fund their own floating support team to work with those in arrears and vulnerable.

The OP needs to do a tad more research imo! Or take his head out of his arse!

[Roundabout]

aquarius moon Wrote:

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> I agree with PokerTime.

>

> Are you fortunate enough to have never been in

> rent arrears Roundabout?

>

> Well done.

Never used Council accommodation or claimed income support.

Must admit I?m a total failure.

How many new flats would 16 mil build?

[uncleglen]

They have always had a bad record for collecting rents- also when some tenants are directed by a court to pay it back it is usually at some nominal level- like ?2 a week. There are probably some people who deliberately do not pay their rent especially if they have children and think they will not be evicted. Anyway, the lefties think it's ok for the rest of us to pick up the tab since we are all so well off and lucky etc.

[fazer71]

PokerTime

I though the bedroom tax had been adjusted to take into account disabled room use?

If anyone can come up with a better solution for Ie a 3 bed council houses being occupied by one person of an elderly married couple; I'd like to hear it especially when it's out hard earned tax which is paying for it.

Common sense if bedrooms going unused in the social sector something must be done to change that, we do have a housing shortage and these social tenants appear to be part of the problem. The private sector is a more efficient use of housing stock and also better for the environment on a sq ft occupancy energy usage.

I'm all for social housing but it is due a long overdue overhaul.

Too many ?100,000 a year black cab drivers still living in council housing on cheap rents the current system isn't fit for purpose.

[The Minkey]

"I though the bedroom tax had been adjusted to take into account disabled room use? " No, Cameron seems to think disabled people in need of a space to store equipment are exempt, but it's not true.

Reform may well have been needed but it should have been phased in such a way that vulnerable people were not left destitute, or so scared of destitution they kill themselves, imo. What a world.

[PokerTime]

No fazer, it hasn't. Most people affected by bedroom tax are not living in three bed houses, they are living in two bed flats.

Even where disability isn't an issue, local authorities just do not have the one bedroomed properties needed to move people into. In my brothers borough for example, it would take the LA 15 years to rehouse all the single people in two beds flats because there are NO one bed flats to move them to. Moving them to a private rented sector flat would cost the tax payer double what it costs to keep them in the two bedroomed social housing flat! It's completely a false economy on a local level. Several Housing Associations have published reports on the impact of bedroom Tax and they makes for uncomfortable reading. LA's and HA's have been put in impossible situations, unable to rehouse people, and unable to collect the full rent due.

No one would disagree about single occupancy of three bedroom houses, but it's a myth that these are the core of the problem. On a local level it's a disaster because it makes no account of localised availablity. The result is many people now having no choice but to pay ?14 a week from the ?71 they receive towards rent. These people are the worst affected.

And in areas of high unemployment, and yes there really are places in the country where the unemployed outnumber available jobs 10-1, there is NO solution that will save the tax payer any money whatsoever.

What frustrates me about this debate is that everyone focusses on the minority extremes, like Bob Crowe on a ?100,000 salary and still living in a council house. But the bedroom tax is only going after those in receipt of housing benefit.

The main reason for depleted social housing stock is right to buy. 40% of all the council properties bought under right to buy (since the scheme began) are now in the ownership of private landlords.

The main expense to the housing benefit bill is the payments made to private landlords who charge anything up to three times as much as social housing. We have a million people in full time work needing housing benefit and tax credits to make ends me and that is growing.

Tax payers are subsidising low wages, employers, corporations (in huge grants and tax relief) as well as pivate landlords. Let's talk about that shall we? Instead of making the lot of poorest more miserable than is already is for too many of them. We really have forgotton why social housing came about in the first place. Only an idit would want to see us go back there.

Uncleglen, if you don't pay your rent you are taken to court. If the magistrate doesn't evict you, you are given a suspended possesion order with a payment plan. If you fail to keep up with those repayments, the council do not need to go back to court to evict you, that can just serve notice. Having children does not exclude anyone. Your are writing nonsense.

Roundabout, rent is not used for capital building because the rules don't allow for it to be used for such. Housing Associations are the favoured option by government for capital building grants.

There is far too much ignorance around the issue of social housing. Yet a simple bit of research is all it requires to get the facts right.

[PokerTime]

Quite right Minkey. And people are killing themselves over it. There are quite a few cases, from Stephanie Botrill throwing herself under a lorry on the M6, to another person hanging himself on the day of his eviction. In addition, around 1300 people a year are dying within weeks of being failed by ATOS, mostly from their underlying health conditions but some sadly from suicide. I can't think of any other walk of live where we'd tolerate that level of wrong decision making and death. There would be an inquiry! And at the end of it all, the welfare bill is still rising, mainly due the to growing numbers of people over 65, low wages and rising rents. We are looking for the answers in the wrong places.

Our economy is not inbalanced because of the drain of the unemployed, it's inbalanced because we have lost a grasp of reality between the cost of living and wages. Job insecurity, low wages, loss of skilled jobs, are making it hard for increasing numbers of the workforce to have any quality of life. And we just don't have enough people in work to support the changing demographics of our labour market and retired population. Add to that, 10% of our national spending goes on arms and war, it's frustrating.

But the poor are easy to kick aren't they.

[EDmummy]

Great to see some well informed comments here. Refreshing!

I would like to say though, ATOS is being used as a scapegoat. They are only carrying out policy and process originally developed under the last govt and strengthened under the current govt. ATOS aren't evil,the policy and process is.

[PokerTime]

I absolutely agree with that. But there is no will to change the process, so it is complicit to a way of thinking.

[aquarius moon]

Roundabout Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> aquarius moon Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > I agree with PokerTime.

> >

> > Are you fortunate enough to have never been in

> > rent arrears Roundabout?

> >

> > Well done.

>

> Never used Council accommodation or claimed income

> support.

> Must admit I?m a total failure.

> How many new flats would 16 mil build?

Well you are very fortunate then aren't you.

I don't have rent arrears & am not on income support/housing benefit either. I do however have some compassion & empathy for those that are.

I suggest you read the excellent posts from PokerTime above and find out how the system actually works.

[????]

Black cab drivers earn ?100k a year? mmmmmm

[maxxi]

???? Wrote:

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> Black cab drivers earn ?100k a year? mmmmmm

That's before tips Quids B)

[SteveUK1978]

Clearly an emotive issue so not trying to make light of it at all - but I suspect the ?16m arrears has not arisen since April '13 when the "bedroom tax" was introduced which was implied in the first response to the OP.

[PokerTime]

Of course not Steve. There have always been those at the poorest end getting into difficulty for any number of reasons. When you have no disposable income, it only takes one thing to go wrong to set off whole spiral of consequence. It's the mark of a compassionate society that we try as far as possible, to make sure people are not left homeless and destitute.

It's possible to source figures for the shortfall of rent collection due to bedroom Tax though. So it is something that can be measured. The other thing is that the DWP are making errors too, particularly with regards to sanctioned claimants. Sanctioning does not remove HB but is many cases it has been stopped because the system falsely notifies of a change in circumstances. It then takes months for claimants to get the DWP to correct the mistakes. This too has an impact on rent collections. It will become worse when Universal Credit is phased in. At present the social landlord is paid HB directly. Under Universal Credit, it is the claimant who will receive all their benefits once a month and will then have to pay the social landlord themselves. That clearly is going to get some claimants into trouble. We'll see.

[Bluerevolution]

says it all

[BrandNewGuy]

PokerTime Wrote:

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> But the bedroom tax is only going

> after those in receipt of housing benefit.

Well, that's because it isn't a tax, it's a reduction in housing benefit. You can argue that that reduction is wrong, but calling it a 'bedroom tax' doesn't help the argument.

[binary_star]

How does the bedroom tax work in principle? If I was renting a 2 bed in the private sector and my landlord said "Your rent's going to go up, unless you want to move to one of my one bed flats", depending on whether or not I could afford it I might choose to lose the spare room.

But I didn't think the council had many one beds to actually house people in? How are they coping with the amount of tenants who can't justify/afford the extra room and would prefer to downsize?

[PokerTime]

They have no solutions BS. That's why some of these tenants are getting into arrears. There is something called 'a discretionary housing payment'. That is a fund the government allowed LAs to set up to help those in difficulty with the tax. But that payment is limited to a maximum of six months. I guess the idea was to give LAs and some affected tenants time to be moved before paying the tax. But in reality, with the lack of places to move people to, they are hit with the tax once the discretionary payment ends.

The level of problems varies from LA to LA. Some authorities have bigger shortage problems than others. It is also worth noting that a lot of the social building programmes over the last decade have been focussed on family size accomodation (as that is where the need was most pressing, many family sized homes having been bought through right to buy). The other thing that has happened over the last thirty years, is a migration of young single people to the south. Authorities in the north and midlands have actually been demolishing houses beacause there's no-one to live in them and they've fallen into disrepair. Now the Bedroom Tax has created a shortage of one bedroomed accomodation instead, with no building programmes in place to address that, not that that would help in the short term anyway. And when you combine that with areas of high unemployment, and the other welfare reforms, it paints an impossible picture for some.

I'm guessing most are waiting to see what happens at the next general election. Labour are already committed to abolishing the tax, which will make it then feasible to create affordable payment plans for those in arrears to it. If the conservatives win the election, then the situation becomes very different, with arrears continuing to grow, and tenants with no way of reducing the arrears until they are moved, or find employment.

And underlying all of this, if LAs can't collect all of the rent, then there is an impact on housing services and maintenance. Housing Revenue Account shortfalls have always existed because of the system of government creaming off rent revenue from LAs and giving some of it back as 'subsidy' (therefore perpetuating the myth that social housing rents are subsidised by the taxpayer, when in fact they are not). The Bedroom Tax is just another nail in the coffin. Rents are increased every year. The rate of increase is controlled by law, which is why the rise of social rents over the past thiry years has stayed in line with inflation and wages, whilst the unregulated prive rental market, hasn't.

The sensible option with this welfare reform would have been to localise the rules, setting in law a requirement for LAs to move people where possible. This would have protected those LAs with genuine suitable housing problems and their affected tenants.

At the end of the day it's just a really badly thought out reform. No feasibility study was taken for example, which means you have to question the competence and ideology of those behind the policy. No-one asked 'what does an LA that has no suitable accomodation to move people to, do?' any more than those same people asked ' how do those in areas of high unemployment/ low job availability suceed in finding a job?'. There is a lot of backward thinking when it comes to unemployment and low incomes.

Housing issues are complex, and so too is the housing market. There are huge problems with all of it and there's much to be said and debated around every aspect of it. But we have to remember why social housing came to be and the important role it plays. It's worth saying that in the 70's, one in three people lived in council housing. That in itself gives an idea of just how much has changed in terms of supply, which in turn affects demand. And the same can be said of the private housing sector. Buying a home was the clearest measure of upward social mobility, and it was perfectly possible for a houshold with a single average income to buy a modest family home. That is no longer possible either and is another reason why demand for social housing is increasing. Bottom line is, we need more affordable housing, be it is social or private.

[NomDePlume]

Great reading for a Sunday afternoon! I cannot understand why social housing is not means tested? Where is the sliding scale that would enable the council to reduce the benefit for those whose wages has risen? If the people whose income is above a certain level then is it not fair that they pay more? If when it gets to the point where they are paying something close to private rent then they might then want free up the stock to those whom have a greater need.

Same goes to all universal benefits, surely the welfare system was put in place to assist the poor? Peoples misconceptions about how their contributions are paying lazy people to lounge about on the dole is being deliberately enforced by the divisive tories. Where as the real reason lies with how the government chooses to spend the income it receives.

Trident Missiles? New hospital/school? Foreign aid? Roads and infrastructure? welfare.

Working Tax Credits equals more money for the company that pays crap wages and only benefits the shareholders.

Housing benefit to working people lines the pockets of "market rated" private landlords.

These are the very people whom berate the plight of the struggling poor whom benefit the most from the subsidies paid out.

The capitalist model is broken, the trickle down of wealth is on an upward spiral, the affluence from the haves has turned to effluence.

[uncleglen]

PokerTime please re-read my comment and leave my jugular alone

[fazer71]

binary_star Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> How does the bedroom tax work in principle? If I

> was renting a 2 bed in the private sector and my

> landlord said "Your rent's going to go up, unless

> you want to move to one of my one bed flats",

> depending on whether or not I could afford it I

> might choose to lose the spare room.

>

> But I didn't think the council had many one beds

> to actually house people in? How are they coping

> with the amount of tenants who can't

> justify/afford the extra room and would prefer to

> downsize?

If they stay in their 2 bed flat they pay ?14 a week. = ?728 a year more

In the private rental market a 2 bed flat is on average between 20% and 50% more. London rents that's ?24 to ?140 a week more or between ?1,248 and ?7,280 a year more. obviously there are much higher rentals these are within the cheaper range.

There appears to be a shortage of 1 bed flats.

Would the council tenant be allowed to rent out the 2nd room ? That would be worth ?50 to ?200+ a week depending on location ?

[fazer71]

maxxi Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> ???? Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > Black cab drivers earn ?100k a year? mmmmmm

>

>

> That's before tips Quids B)

I stopped tipping london blackcab drivers in the 90's when I discovered they were earning a lot more than I was.