Welfare cuts: housing benefit claimants not welcome here

Hackney CAB has done some recent research and found a resurgence in private landlords refusing to offer tenancies to benefit claimants, according to an article in the Guardian.

“No blacks, no dogs, no Irish” was, a familiar sign hanging by the front doors of 1950’s and 1960’s boarding houses. In the era of welfare reform and chronic housing shortage, a new category of tenant has emerged that many landlords are refusing to have any dealings with: those in receipt of housing benefit.

Hackney CAB noticed, over the past few months a steady stream of local people coming to see them for help. Some said they faced eviction, others said it was impossible to find somewhere to live that was affordable within the new, draconian, housing benefit limits. So they decided to investigate. It put together a team of five volunteers on 15 June to carry out a “mystery shopping” exercise to see what the private rental market looked like for people on housing benefit.

They found 1,585 properties for rent in Hackney - of these, only 143 were affordable within housing benefit limits. They also found that of these properties just 14 - or under 1% of the available pool of homes - had landlords who were willing to rent to people on housing benefit.

That was not all. As the CAB explains:

“When we looked at just the family-sized properties (properties with two bedrooms or more), the picture was even worse. Out of 1,090 family-sized properties (from two to five bedrooms), there were just 36 properties (3%) within the limits and five of those (0.5%) with landlords willing to rent to someone on housing benefit. “

For the full story, click here Welfare cuts: housing benefit claimants not welcome here

Back in the 1980’s in the local press, it was common, in accommodation to let adverts, to see “no DHSS”.  It’s back to the future, again.

I saw some easing off after the Housing Act 1988 came into force in 1989 as private landlords had new powers of eviction without grounds, thanks to the introduction of the assured shorthold tenancy.

On a purely unscientific basis, I would tend to agree that the 80’s was a peak and things did seem to have calmed down a bit over next 20 years. It would be naive to think that there haven’t always been landlords who, for whatever reason, didn’t want benefit claimants in their properties.

But this snapshot research suggests that the picture in Hackney is very grim indeed right now, with only 1% of private properties available to benefit claimants.

A short report has now been put together following this exercise.

You can download a pdf copy here Locked out