Monday 21 December 2009

Local Housing Allowance: Another Good Idea Poorly Applied

Firstly, sorry for the delay between postings. I just had to put pen to paper on this:

The Local Housing Allowance was, in my opinion, one of the better pieces of housing legislation passed under the current government. Some -- in my opinion too many in my area -- landlords were being prejudicial and discriminatory against housing benefit claimants; tarring them all with the same brush.

Not that I am too harsh on the landlords for this: what they were doing is essentially the same as an insurance company using your credit history to judge the likelihood of you making a claim. None the less it was unfair to those looking for quality rented accommodation -- especially perfectly decent people like a member of my family and their family, who felt the brunt of this once too often.

The LHA was also supposed to allow people to top up their housing benefit to get better accommodation if they so chose. But -- like the Home Information Pack -- the LHA was a good idea poorly applied; giving the money straight to tenants was asking for trouble, and trouble it got as thousands of people simply failed to pass the money on.

The government well, the Department for Work and Pensions is currently in consultations as to how to combat the new problem. They are considering allowing tenants to choose to have the money paid straight to the landlord.

Immediately you could say that this will put tenants right back at square one, faced with the landlord seeing that the money was coming from the housing association. However, the kind of decent tenants, like the aforementioned member of my family would have no need to have the money paid straight to the landlord, because they would ensure their rent was being paid on time anyway.

So, I am definitely for that option, but again, applied in a better way, i.e. without the choice: any tenants found not to be passing the money on should have it taken and paid straight to the landlord, everyone else should be left alone.