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Jam Jars.
There has been a lot of discussion around Jam Jars….
In the good ole days, your local housing officer ( Ok this is a long time back when local housing offices existed and officers visited) was tramping round his/her patch, they used to advise their tenants to put their rent money in a seperate jam jar, from the other household bills, thus cunningly ensuring that the rent would always be paid…..
Times changed and govts gave up with the cunning idea of social tenants on housing benefit having the HB paid direct to their rent account, cleverly negating the rent collection process…Genius.
Rather than HB pay the tenant then getting the landlord to collect the rent…Hb was paid direct to the social landlord.
Times changed, and we are about to approach the end of HB direct for social tenants (in most cases) and we are back to the age old question, how do landlords collect the rent.
Cometh the hour. The Jam Jar is reborn!
One problem, unlike the old jam jar… these new jam jar accounts seem to have a high cost.
Everybody seems to think this a billy whizz idea, but getting folks, with little money to pay for help managing their money, raises questions. Of course Social landlords could whack up rents to finance this, but then why should good rent payers subsidise poor rent payers?
I havnt dont much research on this but have been quoted figures of up to £30.00 a month to administer a Jam Jar account….
I would be interested if RN advisors know of any cheap Jam Jars schemes, which are suitable for “Vulnerable folks” that struggle to pay the rent.
Do you use Jam Jars accounts with your clients? Do they really work?
Any help gratefully received.