Benefit Tenants Priced out of All Private Homes

Private tenants on local housing allowance face being unable to afford to rent a property within a decade, the CIH has warned. The government announced in the emergency Budget that local housing allowance, which is only paid to claimants in the private rented sector, will no longer be tied to the retail prices index, which includes housing costs. Instead it will be linked to the consumer prices index, which does not reflect rents and house prices. CPI is almost always lower than RPI and is currently about 1.7 per cent behind it. The CIH says the change will mean benefit increases lag behind inflation in rents so that, by about 2020, there could be no rents cheap enough to be paid for by the benefit. Read the full story on Inside Housing.