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consultation on support for mortgage interest under universal credit
Among other things, the proposed extension of time limiting of help with housing costs is a concern.
I think we are gradually being de-sensitised for a wider move to time limit benefit payments for people of working age who are capable of work in the same way that the US limits all means tested benefits to two years except for locally administered food stamps (echos of abolition of the Social Fund here). And all in the name of incentivising people to move into paid work.
I’ve long suspected that time limiting benefit is the government’s real intention.
My first quick calculation shows that someone with a £50,000 mortgage at 4.5% on a £100,000 home who pays only the SMI interest to their lender goes negative equity after about 19 and a half years. That’s using assumptions such as 0% house inflation, constant interest rates and a 0.25% government charge.
That might not seem too bad but with a £90,000 mortgage they’re in negative equity by the end of year 3. The DWP may not pursue past that point but there are the lender and other creditors.
[ Edited: 6 Dec 2011 at 04:07 pm by Gareth Morgan ]So the government arent prepared to pay 90 quid a month SMI on my mortgage under the new rules but will happily pay £400 per month to me in Housing benefit instead?? Selling the violin to buy a violin case springs to mind.
Lord Freud reckons the 400 million SMI bill is unsustainable? When you consider spending on Olympics, Libya etc it dont seem too bad.
So the government arent prepared to pay 90 quid a month SMI on my mortgage under the new rules but will happily pay £400 per month to me in Housing benefit instead??
Happily?
Happily? At the moment but watch this space ......
As I wrote in my thread at http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/2160/
here at Disability Alliance’s Benefits of Working service, we find that one of the groups of people who are worse off when they move into work of 16 or more hours a week is people who lose their support with mortgage interest at that point.
Now it is proposed that people in this group will become liable at that point for a debt for the support for mortgage interest that they have had.
This now looks like a double whammy blow to the ‘make work pay’ aspiration of UC.
Oh for crying out loud. It is relentless. So now someone gets made redundant due to government cuts and the government then goes and puts a legal charge on his house if he claims MI payments. Presumably the government will also slap a charge on MP’s houses to recover the cost of second home payments. Or do the same to those parasites who cost the country billions through tax avoidance. And what about the financiers who cost the country billions through sheer greed and profligacy and gave this government the perfect excuse to cut public spending to recoup the losses? A plague on all their houses!