FORUM: David Cameron’s cutting words about benefits are false

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Published: 14 October, 2010
by GRACE LIVINGSTONE

Changes to housing benefit are a ticking time bomb of evictions and homelessness in Camden

YOU walk down the road on your way to work and you see the curtains drawn in their house. You know they could work, but they choose not to. And just as maddening is the fact that they seem to get away with it.”   

That was David Cameron writing in the Sun newspaper about benefits claimants.

The Sun has taken up the campaign against “feckless benefit scroungers” with gusto: “Hundreds of thousands of scroungers in the UK are robbing hard-working Sun readers of their cash.

They cannot be bothered to find a job or they claim to be sick when they are perfectly capable of work because they prefer to sit at home watching widescreen TVs – paid for by YOU.”

But this image of the workshy claimant is a lie.

The cuts in housing benefit, announced in the Budget, will only affect people in the private rented sector (because council rents are low) and in Camden 92 per cent of the people in private rented accommodation are actually in work.

Those who claim housing benefit do it because their wages are too low to cover the exorbitant rents in this area.

There is a ticking time bomb of evictions and homelessness awaiting us in Camden. 

The housing benefit cuts, which were announced in the emergency Budget, will come into force next April. 
Many claimants are not even yet aware of the changes.

There are 3,000 people in the private rented sector in Camden and a third are likely to be affected by the housing benefit cap.

This means that more than a thousand families in Camden may be forced to leave their homes.

A further 10 per cent to 15 per cent are likely to be hit by the little-noticed measure of linking housing benefit to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) instead of housing costs. 

As rents tend to rise more quickly than the CPI, the value of housing benefit will fall over time.

In the same way, the measures just announced at the Conservative Party conference, to cap benefits at £500 a week, will affect those who live in London and the South-east where rents are high. 

This money does not go into the pockets of claimants to fritter away on plasma TVs, as the Sun would have us believe, but goes directly into the bank accounts of the landlords. 

If there is a racket going on, it is the private landlords keeping rents high knowing that the government will foot the bill. 

In some areas, housing benefit cuts might make landlords put the rents down, but in Camden and central London, where demand for property is high, the poor will be squeezed out.

If the government wants to cut the housing benefit bill, the simplest solution would be to cap private-sector rents.

But the real problem is the lack of affordable housing and failure of successive governments to build council houses.

In Camden, many organisations have come together to campaign against the housing benefit cuts and to inform and help claimants.

Camden Council, which is very concerned by the impact the housing benefit c­uts will have on homelessness, has met the Camden Law Centre, the Citizens Advice Bureau, the Camden Federation of Private Tenants, the Camden Federation of Tenants and the campaign group, Defend Council Housing.

On Monday, Defend Council Housing has called a cross-party meeting in the House of Commons where Ken Livingstone, Caroline Lucas MP and Simon Hughes MP will speak. 

All New Journal readers are invited to attend.

• Grace Livingstone is a local author and housing campaigner.

• Monday October 18, 7pm, at the House of Commons.Speakers: Ken Livingstone, Caroline Lucas MP, and Simon Hughes MP

• For more information
about how housing benefit cuts could affect you contact:
Camden Council: 020 7974 4444
Camden Federation of Private Tenants: admin@cfpt.org.uk
Defend Council Housing: info@defendcouncilhousing.org.uk