News from the Residential Property Investor, the bi-monthly magazine for RLA members other artilces from the June / July 2003 issue RPI news archive

Victims of unfriendly fire - June / July 2003

There seems no end to the measures the Government can think up to damage the residential renting market. The latest, from the Department for Work and Pensions, is to suggest that anti-social tenants should be penalised for their behaviour by having their housing benefit stopped.

The justification, according to Work and Pensions Secretary Andrew Smith, is that 'state benefits should combine rights with responsibilities' and that it is wrong 'to support the housing costs of people whose behaviour brings misery to the lives of individuals and communities'.

Perhaps so, but Smith's proposals will miss their mark by a country mile. For a start, as the Local Government Association has said, anti-social behaviour is not the monopoly of people on benefit and it would be wrong to give those who claim benefit an extra punishment when no equivalent sanctions apply to other people.

The measures suggested by the Government are certain to make housing benefit tenants an even more difficult proposition for private landlords. If it isn't enough to have to cope with the inefficiencies and delay in the system, now they could run the risk of not receiving payment at all.

It will not be the tenants of private landlords who are penalised by having their housing benefit withheld, it will be landlords themselves. The only logical outcome can be that few if any private landlords will be willing to take the risk of a double penalty ­ finding that a tenant, or one of the family of a tenant, is a nuisance who causes damage and disturbance, and of not being paid what is due into the bargain. So housing benefit tenants will find it increasingly difficult to find properties to rent while the properties themselves will be withdrawn from the letting market. How does that help all those well behaved tenants who wish to have a choice of reasonably priced housing?
 

other artilces from the June / July 2003 issue

• Victims of unfriendly fire
• Empty homes take over
• Little satisfaction in council complaints
• HB reform moves ahead
• HB reform moves ahead
• House prices still climbing
• Empire builder's charter
• Demand grows stronger
• In brief