Government policy on housing disastrous

'Tory Housing policy disastrous' says the National Housing Federation along with their backdoor bedroom tax on pensioners reported in a recent issue of the ARMs Newsletter 'Up in ARMs'. The Independent recently reported that:

"From April 2019, housing benefit in all social housing will be capped at the level of the Local Housing Allowance (LHA), used in the private rented sector.

"Crucially, the LHA is calculated – like the removal of the 'spare-room subsidy' – on the basis of household size, rather than the size of the property.

"That means a single person, or a couple, living in a two-bedroom home will have their housing benefit capped at the one-bedroom LHA rate.

"The impact will be severe across the Midlands and the North, where lower private rents will mean a lower one-bedroom LHA rate, threatening tenants with huge benefit cuts."

Full article here.

Housing Associations are reluctant to commission the building of new houses because their income from rent is under threat. The consequence of a doctrinaire decision by the Tories, little noticed at the time, will almost certainly deepen the social housing crisis even further.