In 2013 payments for Local Housing Allowance, (LHA),
or Housing Benefit will be under the new Universal
Credit system, which aims to simplify the benefits
system by combining all in-work benefits into a single
payment and this will be paid to tenants rather than
directly to landlords.
Landlords
in the private rental and social housing sectors have
been exposed to rental arrears under the current Local
Housing Allowance (LHA) system because local authorities
pay in arrears or pay money for the rent directly
to tenants, who fail to pass on such payments to landlords.
Under current proposals from the UK Government the
Housing element of Universal Credit will be paid directly
to claimants to encourage personal responsibility
and help claimants make the transition to work. Although
landlords will receive payments directly should the
claimant fall into considerable arrears by persistently
defaulting.
Welfare
reform minister Lord Freud has announced that direct
payments of the new credit system will be tested by
six councils and their housing associated partners.
These welfare reforms do little to guarantee any rental
income for landlords and do even less to protect them
from rent arrears. There are already enough tenant
evictions clogging Magistrates courts citing a mountain
of accumulated evidence supporting the fact that the
majority of tenants facing eviction have been in receipt
of housing benefit and have not passed payments on
to their landlords. It is already too easy for tenants
to spend housing benefit money on other things (mostly
cigarettes and alcohol) rather than rent, blaming
the increase in the cost of living expenses. The new
welfare system reforms have chosen to ignore this
fact.
Landlords
have always been at risk of having their property
repossessed due to tenants not passing over the housing
benefit payments and the landlords have struggled
to evict them in a quick fashion. The law still sees
landlords as a bad money grabbing and evil stereotype
from the 1970’s. It does not see things from
a financial, moral or even sensible point of view.
The law sees landlords as second class citizens and
we are at the bottom of the pile when it comes to
justice. Instead landlords are always made out to
be the bad guy. Even in cases such as the murder of
tenant Joanna Yeates in Bristol in January 2011, the
first suspect was the tenant’s landlord Christopher
Jefferies. (He was eventually cleared and another
tenant from the same building, Vincent Tabak, was
eventually charged with her murder). Landlords are
the victims of many crimes against them including
theft, fraud, vandalism and malicious damage. They
are expected to suffer in silence and if they do raise
any salient points to local authorities they are quickly
dismissed and ignored if not forgotten.
