DAD OF EIGHT IN BENEFIT CAP HOME PLIGHT - Family get £8k a month in Housing Benefit
Published: 27 May 2011
by JOSH LOEB
A FATHER-of-eight who is being forced out of his home because of a controversial cap on housing benefit has warned that hundreds more families in Westminster will soon lose their homes.
André Rostant, 47, lives with his family in a five-bedroom former council home in Maida Vale that was sold by Westminster Council under the Right-to-Buy scheme in the 1990s.
The rent – £8,000 a month, the going rate for a large family home on the private market – is covered by housing benefit. But under government reforms, housing benefit has been capped at £400 a week and Mr Rostant has been told by the council that he must move to Walthamstow or Barking, where rents are cheaper, by January.
Mr Rostant (pictured), a former regulatory adviser at the Financial Services Authority, who now works as a hypnotist, said he was “born and raised” in Westminster and his children go to local schools.
He blamed “insane” rent levels and chronic shortage of affordable housing and said he intends to register as homeless at the council’s housing department next week.
A council spokeswoman said large families “have to be realistic” about the cost of living in the heart of the capital.
Mr Rostant said the new benefit rules would “…force poor people to move, families like mine, single poor people, including pensioners who have worked all their lives”.
Westminster North Labour MP Karen Buck said the council was already planning for an increase in homelessness as a result of the cap – something that could place a financial strain on the council, which has a duty to house residents.
She said: “The fundamental problem is that is that there is a long-term shortage in affordable housing for rent. The government… say they want people to go into work, but around about 40 per cent of housing benefit recipients are in work. Housing benefit is not just out-of-work benefit, it’s a top-up for people who are in work.”
Many working people would be affected, too, said Mr Rostant. “Under the new housing benefit rules a ‘normal’ married couple with two children, earning £48,000 a year between them and paying the median £530 a week for a privately rented, two-bed, Westminster home, will receive as little as £1,700 a year in housing benefit,” he said.
Ms Buck said: “Sure, housing costs are high in London but if you respond by pushing people out of London then you reduce their ability to work because most jobs are in London.”
Supporters of the benefit cap argue it is unfair to expect the taxpayer to foot the rental bill for large families.
Councillor Philippa Roe, the council’s cabinet member for strategic finance, said: “We simply cannot continue with a system where people are getting as much as £104,000 a year to live in homes that the average family would only dream of. The state should not be providing accommodation that working people could not afford themselves.
“We are providing support and assistance for every family affected by the new caps and, in this case, we are already trying to help the family find suitable alternative accommodation. If people request to be housed in Westminster we will do our best to help. But large families do have to be realistic about living in the heart of the capital and may need to be housed outside the borough.”