Homelessness charity Crisis and campaign group Health Equals have reported that less than 3% of private rental properties in England were affordable to people on housing benefit.
Impossible situation
From today housing benefits rates will be frozen until 2026. This will affect nearly six million households on low income who depend on the benefit to cover their rent.
Chief executive of Crisis, Matt Downie, described the situation as “impossible” adding: “Housing Benefit is supposed to cover the lowest third of rents in the private sector. We are currently nowhere near that.”
Rising homelessness
The benefits freeze undermines the charity’s attempts to end homelessness. They said further pressure would be piled on local authorities who are already spending £2.3 billion a year on temporary accommodation and facing massive financial difficulties including, in some cases, the threat of bankruptcy.
Paul McDonald, chief campaigns officer at Health Equals, said people who are forced to move house and live in temporary or shared accommodation face a huge impact on their wellbeing which amounts to their lives being shortened by up to 16 years.
Government response
The government says it inherited the worst housing crisis in living memory. It says it is building 1.5 million new homes to improve affordability. It announced a £2 billion investment in 18,000 social homes. The number of households who will be positively impacted falls far short of the six million households hit by the benefit freeze.
Rising to the challenge of providing affordable housing
Price gouging by private landlords, tackling mouldy properties and reducing the cost of temporary accommodation are all on the government’s agenda. Utilising empty properties, of which there are 700,000 in the UK, has long been discussed with little action taken.
This long-term and intractable problem requires some sustainable cross-party effort if we are to materially improve the quality of life of Britain’s poorest people
