Shelter and the Guardian / Observer do not have a clue when it comes to homelessness as yet another article today reveals. Here is the headline and the picture that adorns it:
It IS an outrage that in England we have 124,000 children in 74,630 families living in temporary homeless accommodation (and this means 1.66 children per homeless family to which I will return) yet it is fundamentally misleading to say that benefit cuts have made private rents unaffordable as they have made social rents unaffordable too!
That is THE really big issue that Shelter and the Guardian just do not get!
The overall benefit cap means that social renting – even in the cheapest council housing – is unaffordable because for example it sees a couple with three children receive a maximum of £50 per week towards their rent and those with four children just £0.50 pence per week in housing benefit.
Around 64,000 existing social renting households in the UK are at acute risk of homelessness due to this but a further 150,000 families will be REFUSED social housing this year because of the overall benefit cap (OBC) and means that homelessness is systemic because of it!
The average number of children in the existing social tenant households and those that will be refused its allocation will be 3.34 per family. 64,000 existing social renting households containing 214,000 children will be at acute risk of arrears, eviction and homelessness
However, 150,000 prospective social renting households containing 501,000 children will be refused each year and go directly to the homeless count as WHEN they cannot afford the cheapest council flat there is only one place they can be housed which is temporary B&B homeless accommodation.
The private landlord has refused to accommodate the benefit household in increasing numbers for years, and prior to the overall benefit cap these families were accommodated in social housing. As such social housing WAS the safety net for those refused by the private rented sector yet that safety net has now gone because of the overall benefit cap.
Almost four years ago social landlords started to refuse to accommodate the bedroom tax household – families who would under occupy and thus present a risk of arrears. Common practice across social landlords yet relatively small numbers and a small percentage of the 385,000 new social tenancies each year.
The average bedroom tax HB cut nationally is £15 per week yet that was enough of a financial risk for council and housing associations landlord to refuse allocation. Yet the overall benefit cap sees DWP saying the average cut is £44 per week and others £76 per week, with much greater credulity than the DWP figures.
As social landlords already believe a £15 per week HB cut is too high a risk then whether the overall benefit cap average cut is 3 times that or 5 times that figure is irrelevant. It means, must mean, and can only mean that council and housing association landlords will refuse to accommodate these households .
I can make allowances for the many Guardian and other journalists who do not perhaps realise that a council landlord can and in this case will refuse to house a family due to them not being able to afford the rent. Many wrongly believe a council landlord has a legal duty to house. They do not.
The councils housing department will refuse the benefit capped tenant who will then have to go to the councils homeless department to be housed. When the councils homeless department asks the council housing department if they will house the answer will again be no an so the family goes into temporary homeless accommodation and at huge cost.
I cannot make any such excuse for Shelter missing the systemic impact the OBC has as they should know this and also should have seen the impact on existing and especially prospective social tenants as the reductions to the overall benefit cap were announced in the Autumn Statement of 2015. They were also trailed heavily before that and were in the Tory and Labour Party general election manifestos in May 2015 – more than 18 months ago.
Yet the silence from Shelter has been deafening and yet not a peep about how the policy will see at least 150,000 families per year refused SOCIAL HOUSING and go directly to homelessness!!
Shelter today rightly makes a huge fuss and rightly condemn 124,000 children being in temporary homeless accommodation in England alone and rightly condemn this as a 14% increase on the year before. It is an outrage.
YET the systemic impact of the overall benefit cap will put at least 500,000 children in temporary homeless accommodation each and every year as I explain above and that is QUADRUPLE the figure that Shelter now heralds as outrageous and the silence from Shelter over this is deafening!
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PS – To reduce the overall benefit cap was on page 47 of the Labour Party 2015 General Election manifesto – and the policy has yet to be changed!
SPeye Joe (Welfarewrites) 
Stopped buying or even reading the Guardian some years ago. It is neither a socialist nor a green paper, but acts as a salve for the middle-class readers, who are totally out of touch with reality. They majority of them, are totally unaware of the abject poverty a large majority of the population are living in!
I agree, for me it was the Flat Earth News book…
Labour 2015 are dead, Long live Labour 2016 and the death of Neo-Liberalism. Citing a previous manifesto when there has been regime change is very poor.
So you can give me an example of post Miliband Labour policy which opposes the Benefit Cap?
Abrahams and Labour 2016 conference and since have not even mentioned the term at all!!
Not in Corbyns Ten Pledges either…
FAR MORE IMPORTANT than what is or is not Labour Party policy, half a million CHILDREN will be made homeless each year.
Children FFS!!!
Thank you Joe Halewood, its a about time someone not only points out that all agencies and organizations supposedly involved and committed to housing, that could and should be doing far more to shame and shout about the inhumane and scandalous effects of this and the previous governments punitive welfare policies and how this really impacts on families, are doing precious little to address the route cause of the misery to those affected.
And the irony is that in the long run it actually costs even more in financial terms, and that the the emotional and wellbeing to those affected its immeasurable and does nothing to help them become more self reliant.
Joe – isn’t the silence due to government policy early this year that prevented all charities with any central funding voicing any criticism of government policy? And wasn’t this applied to educational establishments the following week to silence research departments?
In a word…NO!! Policy was announced Nov 2015 and trailed and in Tory & Lab manifesto May 2015
What is going on with theses ‘charitable’ organisations?
The DWP’s Final Solution problem, of starving to death of the sick and vulnerable, carrying on regardless, without so much as a peep from SHELTER, MIND, SCOPE etc etc etc???
Doesn’t theses organisations give a damn about the suffering of the very people THEY’RE MEANT to be looking out for?
Even the BBC doesn’t report anything that they clearly think is ‘scandalous’ (including the United Nations condemnation) of this calous governments regime of terror and of the thousands dying and committing suicide EVERY year???
I truly believe there’s a conspiracy going on as happened in Nazi Germany!!!
This country is dangerously close