General Chat

Sounds familiar Ann, and I bet that's exactly what will happen.

Either that or B&Bs will be full of homeless families again, which we have also seen before.

Just looking at rentals, near where i used to live so commuter belt for London, terraced house £800 per mnth then you add the £1500 pa rail season ticket.Moving people out of London will only add huge pressure to the cash strapped councils, not to mention the potential backlash from residents who find council tax goes up as the services are even more stretched.

And the one thing that statistics cannot show, the stress of not knowing how you can afford the rent, whether you will have a roof over your family's head much longer.

I'm not sure but if families are made homeless don't they have to be housed in the area where they already are living?

its good to hear other peoples opinions
thank you folks

maybe the cheep rail and tube fairs is the way to go
allowing poeple to comute from outer london
where the rents are cheeper

Joy, that wouldn't work because rent is ridiculously high in the commuter belt. I live an hour or so by train out of London and it's property values are at the highest level here.

This is the crunch,,,everyone knew what would happen from the onset of the election...times would get hard and its not finished with yet !,some said they didnt mind suffering ias long as we get the country out of debt,suffer now and reap later,,,,some will never benifit.....

Uptowards £500 a week==2 grand a month rent benifits aint so bad really,the B&Bs and small hotels will make a killing.

David how would you sort the problem
where i live rents are only about £100 to £150 a week so
i dont really understand why rents are so dear
this capping is not just in the cities
i know people up here get nearly £100 a week housing benefits
and have to pay the diffrence themselves
so why not in other areas

Kay even hotels and B&B do special rates for longer stays
So it may be cheper to stay there

maybe the government would find it cheeper
to help provide cheeper mortgages
or assisted mortgages
our town council did this in the sixties i think

I don't think it is the crunch yet Kay.... it's just the beginning of it, I fear lt will be Darwinism in action, the survival of the fittest and to hell with the needy and those less able. ( I do gloom and doom well ;-))

Thats what I said Rose ,,it aint finshed with yet.


Wait for the price to register with a doctor comes in and unless you can meet some of the expense of health care,then you will be buggered,)) sure as eggs some form will come in the NHS........... :-D :-D :-D

Was,nt there at one time something called "London Weighting" on wages for people who worked in London,to compensate for the higher prices there? or has this been stopped.Also there used to be some one from the Council who would come and tell you the amount you could charge for rental of a property if let out to people who claimed benifit/rent allowance.I think the main problem is the High rental Charges made knowing that the Councils would pay it no matter what, Re Prefabs.They were,nt too bad,some are still around and they,re much better than being homeless.**M** :-S

It is a difficult one isn't it. We are all talking about those who are made redundant etc. Not so long ago there was a discussion about those who refused to work and drew benefits for everything. I think this is one of the things that has generated the capping. But if there is no work?????? Or is there?

Hayley

It was called London Weighting - nothing to do with a few pounds you had put on - although it was only a few pounds extra. It was usually paid to public service employees but did not really compensate for higher cost of living. That was back in the day when hospitals served afternoon tea to their staff. I think times may have changed.

It will be interesting to see how this all pans out. The Government need to cut their costs, the landlord needs to cover his costs and the low paid workers, who are essential to areas of high living costs, need to find enough money for their rent.

If past governments had began a decent low cost housing programme to meet the needs of the lower paid workers, we would not have this problem.

Vera

'plenty' of jobs locally....assuming you can afford to take one working for 1-15 hrs per week... i like this one especially lol

"Professional wrestlers wanted for immediate start. Working with fast growing family friendly, nationally touring company potential applicants must be able to be sent on media interviews, have drive and determination to succeed to the highest level, be professional in conduct and have at least some experience of the wrestling industry. Experience of working in the ring in front of paying crowds in desirable but training is available. Wrestling attire required."

Back to commuting into the city instead of living there. My son lives in Chelmsford, he has a job which, when he first started was in nearby Danbury. He still has this job at the moment, but they have closed their Danbury office and transferred operations to their London office. My son hasn't had a pay rise to compensate for the £4000 a year rail season ticket...(yes thats right, £4000!) so he is between a rock and a hard place at the moment.

Fortunately he is in a council house so rent isn't too bad, and he does get family tax credit, and my DIL works part time, but he doesn't want to leave his job, he loves it, but he may have to.

By the way, Chelmsford is about 45 mins train journey, plus tube, so it's really not an option to ask people to move out of London, thus saving them possibly £1000 in rent, then to spend £4000 on train fairs to keep their jobs!

There is a huge diversity in rental charges around the country - if I was renting here, I'd expect to pay around £700 a month for an ordinary 3-bed, but go 12 miles down the road to Bath, and you can more than double that for a similar property. I think that the cap is too low, and that 'expensive' cases should be looked at on an individual basis. Why should a hard-working (but low-earning, or recently made redundant) family who have roots, children at local schools, maybe family nearby etc. have to move away?

I agree the cap is too low Sheila. Has it been finalised or are they just talking about it?

I live in a council house.These were built as the homes fit for heroes that were promised after the Great War. A smallish house, 12ft like the labourer's cottage, with a reasonable sized garden. This was for the working man to grow food to feed his family and to have a place in which his children could safely play.

Families lived and grew up in these houses with little thought of moving. It lead to stable communities.

It seems that houses now are being thrown up all over the place with no garden and little room to live.In fact they are built more as investments than homes and are intended to be inhabited by one person. They are cruel places with nowhere for children to play and little room to grow fresh food. How odd that we should have an obesity epidemic.

The modest council houses have been bought and extended beyond the pocket of many families and when they are rented it is generally for a ridiculous price but theseare the homes that families need.

There used to be rent controls on private housing, until Thatcher decided otherwise.

"The private rented sector
Part I of the Housing Act 1988 is aimed at transforming the private
rented sector, which at present accounts for less than 8 per cent of
homes in Britain. It is the Government’s intention to regenerate the
sector through deregulation, stimulating its growth by removing rent
controls and introducing new-style assured tenancies."

http://www.psi.org.uk/publications/archivepdfs/Changing%20role/HOUS2.pdf

Moving further away from the job is not always cheaper because of travel costs. Then those with children have to consider their schooling, plus they may very well be moving away from their support systems.

From the pov of the landlord they need to charge enough to cover costs.

I really think the government haven't thought this through, or probably don't really care so long as they're seen to be doing something.

I'd suspect that the £500 pw limit was a wet finger in the area job. After all, £2000 pm does seem an awful lot, and if people couldn't afford that amount on their own, then perhaps the thought was they should be looking for somewhere cheaper?

But as has been discussed, it does not take into account those low income families who live in inner city/more expensive areas. Or those who used to be able to afford the rent and (for what ever reason) can no longer do so.

Possibly the solution should be for each case above the £500 pw threshold to be taken on merit, and certainly not to accept applicants who deliberately move to a high rental property assuming the authorities will pay for it.

If private landlords can no longer get tenants for high value rents,. they will have to drop them to more affordable levels i.e £500 pw or less.

Wrt private rents many councils (maybe all, I'm not sure) will only pay for what they deem that you need. For example a couple with one child will only have the rent equivalent to what would be charged for a two bedroomed house in that area paid.