When/if it is applied to Council Housing, situations where an OAP is alone in a 3 bedroom house with 100% rent paid by Housing Benefit will become a thing of the past.
not sure i agree with that.
There are a lot of old people who live alone in houses where they brought their families up, and the fear of loosing that home, and ending up in some residential home is often all that keeps them going.
I know a few old ladies, whos husbands and children have died/moved on and their house contains all the memories and sounds of decades. Most even struggle to heat and maintain their homes, some even stop using the upstairs, but at the end of the day it is where they have always lived.
Yes, I know 1 person in a three bedroom house is a waste.. but in a lot of cases the people who live in them have paid more than their dues into the system, they get shat on all the time and now they face residential care.
There aren't many 1 bed flats being built with affordable rent that aren't residential. These flats have to be ground floor, well built, affordable to the new housing benefit standard and built with the frail in mind with easy access and amenities.
My nan didn't mind moving into a flat with a warden, but then she walked out on her second husband so it wasn't a home that contained thousands of happy memories. The flats/bedsits she occupied where luckily ground floor and well built, but there were a lot of old people trapped on upper stories, without the ability to come down the often too steep stairs, whose only contact with the outside world was with visitors. It's horrendous and they deserve better.
Plus, as of April 8th, tenants of private landlords have had strict limits set on how much rent will be paid by Housing Benefit... many will have to pay the difference themselves or move to cheaper/smaller accommodation.
This isn't an neccesarily good thing either. Council/housing association houses, are hard to come by and private rents are much, much more expensive. It has the risk of putting more people into severe hardship.
We've been trying to move for the past 4+ years... we're still stuck here. Luckily the landlord hasn't the balls to put the rent up. But we can't afford to move somewhere more expensive, (rents have risen) and pauls wage is above minimum too.
If we needed help with the rent (and god forbid the job went), and the new housing benefit meant we had to cover a large amount of it, we would be screwed.
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