A fresh threat for embattled landlords

The only answer is to build more social housing, tax the bankers to pay for it?

No, we're not going back to segregated ghettos. The market will just have to adjust itself to accepting lower private rents. I always suspect those who harp on about the shortage of social housing are more concerned with maintaining high house prices for themselves with little regard for the social costs associated with traditional forms of council housing.

I don't want to go and live on an estate. I'm marginalised enough without an income as it is. And I don't think that kind of social segregation does anyone any good, at the end of the day. A return to those policies will only play into the hands of loathsome social planners all over again. Evan's argument is too simplistic.

The real battle needs to take place in diversified communities with income earners and wageless people living alongside one another rather than reintroducing policies which encourage stigma and social competition between neighbours. We get enough of that in the education system these days.

Time to move on and evolve.

(I have a First Class Honours in sociology, incidentally, before you all get hysterical)

Sorry Karen no matter how you try to dress it up private landlords need to know that the rents are unfair, without but to let property prices would not be disgustingly inflated.

It appears I have stumbled on The Guardians' web site by mistake...get me out of here.

The current system achieves just what Karen's third paragraph describes, at least it does in the provincial small towns although maybe not in central London. If landlords have taken on people on LHA (many people in my local area receive LHA top-up benefits as it's a low-wage area and lots only work part-time or seasonally) the tenants are frequently supplementing the LHA payment by a few pounds a month to make up the rent. When the allowance is cut and they can't pay their rent they will be evicted after a few months - at the landlord's expense. If the rental market is simultaneously flooded with reluctant landlords as is suggested then the landlord won't be able to get a new tenant paying enough to cover his mortgage and the property will be repossessed, probably selling at a loss. Result: single mum and kids on the streets or in B & B at LA expense and landlord (whose rental surplus was supplementing his pension) in debt and claiming pension credits from the public purse, not to mention having his credit score trashed. What a reward for saving and trying to provide for your old age!

Why should anyone expect the state to pay for their housing up to the average of private tenants? Should half the hard-working private tenants be expected to live in worse accommodation than the state would provide for them if they were on benefits? Thank goodness this nonsense is to be ended.

Of course the landlord should be paid the benefit directly, why give the tenant the temptation to get into arrears? It's like condoning embezzlement just because employees deserve the money more than employers. The landlord has few enough enforceable contractual rights as it is.

House prices are unaffordable for most young families already. High rent subsidies can only inflate this problem. Rental property is an investment like any other. Landlords should accept, like shareholders, that capital value and dividend can go down as well as up.

Landlords only £12 pw worse off with a new HLA max of £400.

The maths here looks wrong or the average statistic hides reality for the majority.

My rents in the East Midlands range from £425 to a newish 1 bed flat to n£850 for a newish 4 bed/2 bath, garage town house on a select estate. So £400 will not get a HLA tenant into my properies and all are let to people in reasonable wage jobs except for 2 BOTS who became BOTS after becoming my tenants.

The trouble is Brown and his Benefits Britain dream has raised a lot of peoples expectations that the rest of us have to fund along with the BOTS way of life that means B'stards are no longer a stigma and its beneficial to live over the brush. Wedlock is penalised big time.

I was approached by a social worker the other day who said the local authority would provide some guarantees to get the unmarried unemployed homeless couple into a stable home. No doubt the LA realised that a typical homeless B & B would charge £30/head per night and that this would be more than a reasonable LHA i.e. £30x2x7x4pcm = £1,680 vs £525 furnished for a newish 2 bed with gchtg, dble glazing, nice area, small development. What bozos propose these figures for LHA! It will be a Poll TAx type disaster as thye BOTS and others march on Downing Street if the brutal Met Police State permit them to march......

Should be fun as it bites.....

I am a private landlord, with only 2 properties. The maximum rent I ask, in the North West of England, is £500 per month, so I don't think I will be panicking any time soon.

I know a landlord, who has a single mother and child as tenants, who is refusing to pay him rent as she wants to become homeless-so that the Council can house her.

He estimates that it will cost him about 1,000(one thousand) pounds to get her out.

No wonder many landlords avoid LHA tenants like the plague.

If payment was made direct to landlords such abuses could not take place, and help with integration of such tenants into "better" ares.

I don't think any of us fundamentally disagree. We're all just coming at the problem from different angles, I think.

I agree that some of the huge subsidies currently being paid to tenants in inner cities are no longer sustainable. But that's only because property prices in those areas have been hiked for too long. If you compare London to Paris, for example, where government policies restrict how high house prices can go, it's a very different ball park. Although France isn't without its own problems with social segregation for different reasons. Personally, I think the current crisis will force us to reconsider the way the population is distributed in the UK with such high concentrations of economically inactive people being problematised in urban ghettos.

I think, as Jem says, private landlords are going to have to live or die by the market sword one way or another and accept lower rents. I currently pay £110 per week for a one-bed flat in Torquay and receive £98 in LHA, so I am already paying £12 above the limit; that's 30% of my expendable income at the moment. I'm not complaining though, I just have to live very frugally while I try to secure some kind of income for myself after graduating. But the reality is that most jobs in the area are part-time now, so I will be in receipt of a LA subsidy either way unless I can earn some money from online trading or win the lottery.

In response to Pedent Landlord, I agree that many conscientious landlords are now facing constraints through no fault of their own due to devaluation. Remember, many buy-to-let landlords would be unemployed themselves if they hadn't taken leveraged risks. I just think it's a shame that such a 'them and us' mentality has been allowed to develop in recent years. In my town, I am seeing private landlords working together with tenants to find solutions, given the chronic shortage of housing association properties available now and the diminishing number of working tenants. I think we all need to keep our heads and work in solidarity together to force the legislators and lenders to act reasonably. History has shown us that the road points to fascism otherwise.

I also agree with Jingo that rents are too high at present and need to come down. The problem will have to be faced sooner or later when interest rates are forced up. This will be make or break time for many landlords. I just feel we're all treading water before the storm at present.

As for Donny's lament about The Guardian, I hope I've reassured him on that score. Although I should point out that I first found out about online trading from that paper's personal finance section. And I subscribe to CityWire primarily for market updates. So there.

To Anon 1, if the single mother you mention wants to be evicted so that the Council will have to find her alternative accomodation it wont cost the landlord a bean to get an eviction notice issued, presuming of course that she doesnt make problems ,seeing as it is what she wants. Some previous tenants I had once asked me to evict them for the same reason. I think from memory they paid the small fee for the paperwork.

Payment of LHA benefits to tenants rather than directly to landlords is simply disgusting. I have no problem with LHA being reduced along with all the other cuts, but why any authority in his right mind would pay to tenant what is rightfully the landlord's in the hope that it eventually find its way to the landlord is beyond me! Of all the rediculous regulations this surely must win the prize.

I thought Karen's comments - and others- were full of sense. Only people who have never lived on a council estate, or reported on their problems, as my reporters did for decades, would think social housing in any way desirable.

I was a young reporter when Basingstoke was rebuilt as a utopian "new town." I watched as planners created Clockwork Orange territory; charmless, souless and devoid of character. Stalin would have been proud of it. I live nearby but wouldn't dream of going there - only the old town part.

In Farnborough, Hampshire, one of the ghastliest estates I have ever seen was created as a London overspill housing area. I covered this area for years as a reporter, chief reporter and later editor. Problem after problem arose: leaky roofs, condensation, ruined clothes and call after plaintive call to the newspaper as frustrated tenants tried to get things changed. It had to be virtually rebuilt, at enormous cost to taxpayers, and is still for the most part a place you wouldn't want to live. (I am being polite.)

Every council estate in our large circulation area was beset with non-stop problems, a constant battle by tenants to get lighting fixed, leaks attended to - and so on and on. Only when Mrs Thatcher freed up tenants to buy their properties, creating a new class of homeowners, did anything change. Sudddenly there was pride in property: doors were painted, windows renewed and so on. Individuals, for the first time in their lives, were allowed to express themselves by making their properties pleasant places to live in.

I doubt any of them would ever go back to wanting to live on a vast estate run by some distant committee, people you have to go begging to to get a leaking tap fixed. No thanks! Younger readers please get the message: social housing doesn't work.

Cheap starter homes are surely needed and for that there needs to be a big relaxation of the ridiculous planning laws and curbing of the green belt. Burn most of the restrictions as they achieve little except to make young people's lives impossible. We all need to be able to realise our dreams. Free up less useful land (lots of secondrate land used as Army training areas, for example); make it available at cost price to groups of home-builders and keep the giant builders at bay. There would be an explosion of enterprise and a sprouting of individual new homes such as this country has seldom seen but sorely needs.

re Colin Grant

As I understand it, the case now is that it has to be a "genuine" eviction, and checks are done to ensure this.

Otherwise many LHA tenants would be asking for eviction.

Councils now have legally staffed deprtments to prevent evictions.

I think he is in for a rough ride.

Paying housiong allowance to the claimant was supposed to encourage financial responsibility! However, if rent is more than 8 weeks in arrears a landlord can apply for the benefit to be paid directly.

Why all the angst about private landords? They are running a business just like any other, just not through an company (usually). Let tham take the rough wiyh the smooth just like any other business. The fact that so many people have jumped on this bandwagon in recent years is probably an indication that things were too much loaded in their favour anyway.

As an aside I would suggest that restrictions be placed on landlords/developers buying up and converting family houses into flats which I am sure exacerbates problem of the cost of family housing in most large towns and cities.

A final point - why do we so often assume that souless council estates and social housing have to be synomynous. Large council estates are an outmoded idea but that does not mean by inference that social housing is equally outmoded.

Mike: Spot on

re Mike

Reducing LHA rents is market manipulation, which will upset the equilibrium.

According to economics

- lower prices will bring forth a reduced supply of housinf for LHA tenant

-at a time/recession when demand for such housing has grown/could continue growing, unemployment, demand up. Prices should be increasing.

There will be a mismatch between supply and demand, and the most likly effect will be poorer/worse housing conditions for LHA tenants and/or increased homelessness.

Then we come back to the taxation debate and its purposes.

Should the coalition be trying to reduce the budget deficit in this way OR by other methods like reducing some salaries of personnel in the service of Government/local Government as other countries are doing like Greece and Spain.

In reply to Anonymous 1, if your single mother & child tenant are evicted for non-payment of rent, presumably having pocketed any LHA they have received, they will be considered by their local authority as having made themselves "intentionally homeless", in which circumstances the LA will have no duty to rehouse them. The child will doubtless then be taken into care and the mother left to fend for herself.

In the LA where I do volunteer work the council would at least endeavour to prevent the situation escalating in this way for tenants genuinely in need, but in your example the single mother would find her plan backfires.

re Anonymous 2

I have spoken to several Lanlords and they think that what you suggest is the worst case/most expensive scenario for the LA, one which they will avoid at all costs.

Are you suggesting that the mother is to live on the streets without any income?

They think that after eviction by a bailliff the most likely outcome would be council housing.

9 out of 10 landlords reconsidering letting to LA tenants? come on who do they think they are going to let to?

rent will have to adjust the same as property prices. If it sound too good to be true.......

As a landlord I have inherited social problems, tenants who were seamingly fine with references, after one month the job they said they had seems to have gone..they then get the Housing Benefit paid to them..fail to pay it to me, I go seem them and they say tough..it will take six months to get us out, which it does and and with court order and costs. They do not turn up,, leave flat a mess- its a bit like the field invasion by the travellers- seems its a game..

next time its Different.

re k g

It could be that the one tenth of Landlords not reconsidering letting to LHA tenants are Landlords with the worst housing to offer in ghetto areas, as they are expecting increased business.

re Single mother problems and Anonymous 3 problemand similar.

It seems that Landlords at present are the second most hated group after bankers, without any justification, as they are probaly the most regulated group of people in our society. Whilst the least regulated group are the tenants. How about a Register of Bad Tenants?

-so that the bad tenants/abusers end up sleeping in the streets.

That might teach them manners, and how to behave as good tenants.

Why just discriminate against Landlords with Registers?

Question - if i lost my income after paying taxes for 20 years the government would only pay the interest on my mortgage after 13 weeks of unemployment but will happily fork out to the private landlord and pay his full mortgage for any tenant who might have paid nothing into the system from day 1. Why? . If I rent for say £1500 a month they pay it all but wont pay £1000 a month for a mortgage. It just don't make sense to me it is so so crazy. Do the politicians who make these decisions actually have any common sense.

re Jon Gallagher

Here are some thoughts on the matters raised.

Tenants have legally binding agreements which state how and what rent is to be paid. Just because some-one loses income does not change the terms of the Agreement.

If full rent was not paid court action would follow and the tenant would be evicted. Then the Local Authority would have to treat the person as homeless, at cost to Ratepayers and Government.

Homelessness, similarly as repossessions, is not desirable and not cheap to deal with.

To cheapest option for Government/local Government is to pay the rent, or at least a substantial part of it.

On mortgages there is an option to just pay the interest, and in the current deficit climate considered the best and cheapest most cost effective option.

I hope this helps.

With regard to the kg's suggestion that the one in ten landlords not letting to LHA recipients own poor-quality properties, this is surely likely to the opposite of the truth. In any case the figure was nine-tenths of landlords, not one tenth. In practice, the scope for letting to LHA tenants is severely restricted by the terms of almost all BTL mortgages, which prohibit letting to benefit recipients. I agree the will cause some difficulty finding tenants if unemployment rises greatly and some landlords may be tempted to turn a blind eye, which will put them at risk of falling foul of their mortgage providers.

There is HUGE demand for rented properties from tenants at the moment in London and the South East. LHA is a disaster - you cannot get paid as the tenants treat their local pub / betting office / drug dealer as a higher priority than paying their rent. Social tenants will get crowded out and pushed to the back of the queue as tenants now have to compete for the available rental stock - and rents are going up fast.

I simply fail to see why taxpayers' money has been used to finance people on benefits to live in expensive areas that even high earners in the private sector cannot afford to rent or buy in. This massive distortion of the housing market will now come to an end and those on benefits will have to find cheaper accommodation in low cost areas.

As a landlord I have never taken and will not accept LHA tenants as they are too high risk and there are major issues with tenants defaulting on the rent. Plenty of demand from private tenants anyway.

Plenty of empty houses up North - or in East Germany - put 'em there...