A “single young man with a spray of tattoos and a troubled background” is the common image of a typical housing benefit tenant.

But benefit claimants represent a far wider social range - including older women, lone parents, single pensioners and people with long-term, work-limiting illnesses or disabilities - according to a leading housing academic.

And their relationships with private sector landlords is about to alter when the existing housing benefit system changes next April.

Many landlords have warned that the changes could force them to quit the benefit sector. But their fears may be unjustified, says Dr Julie Rugg, senior research fellow at the Centre for Housing Policy, part of the University of York.

Writing in the RLA’s bi-monthly magazine Residential Property Investor Dr Rugg argues that “although survey after survey indicates the unwillingness of landlords to let to tenants on housing benefit, the fact remains that they represent around a quarter of all lets in an often extremely stable corner of the private rented sector.

“Renting to housing benefit claimants is not always a conscious decision. Many landlords are drawn into that position when existing tenant lose their jobs or partners.

“And, while renting a home is usually a temporary measure, the benefit market prefers longer-term tenancies. Sometimes for decades. And landlords often buy especially suitable properties.

“But it is often difficult to be part of the ‘complex, unwieldy and unpredictable’ housing benefit market administered by local authorities and overseen by the Department for Work and Pensions.

“For one thing, housing benefit application forms are complicated in order to combat fraud. They require a mass of supporting evidence before the rent officer agrees a benefit payment that may not cover the whole rent figure.

“Until now there has been an option for payments to be made direct to landlords – but that will largely change in April when the Local Housing Allowance is introduced after a selective trial over nearly four years.

“In receiving the benefit payment themselves tenants will be more ‘empowered’ in their relationship with landlords. Although, in some circumstances, direct payments might still be made to landlords where claimants are considered vulnerable – perhaps due to problems with long-term health or mounting rent arrears.

“And the allowance will also be based not on the landlord’s set rent but on the size of the household. If the actual rent is higher or lower then the claimant either makes it up or pockets the difference.

“Certainly the reduced opportunity for direct payments to landlords has made many of them rethink their position and review their risk in the benefit market but, for others, there is a welcome transparency with the new system.”

But the proposed new housing allowance has divided the private rented sector. The Residential Landlords Association, whose members own over 100,000 UK properties, has already warned of landlords threatening to withdraw from the benefit market - which would create a housing shortage in a sector that can least afford it.

“The rules are too rigid and, with the allowance paid to claimants, the rent money often gets spent on other priorities,” says Lee Dribben, chairman of the Residential Landlords Association, which is urging the government to re-think its policy.

“Landlords can’t afford to take financial losses like that on a routine basis. And neither is it good for tenants to drift further into arrears and debt.

“The review may have been well intentioned but it misses the mark by a mile.”

 
Housing allowance payments are among several issues on which the Residential Landlords Association is campaigning. They include lobbying for the formal acceptance of a Code of Practice laying down expected standards for professional landlords, a common sense approach to the implementation of Housing Act licence conditions and fees relating to houses in multiple occupation, as well as a re-think on fire safety regulations and the Tenancy Deposit Scheme.