What Happens If Homeless Families Are Hit By The Benefit Cap?

The number of homeless families is going up and the number of affordable homes is going down. In order to avoid disaster, councils are forced to step in to ensure that Britain’s children don’t sleep on the streets. But as local authority budgets shrink, the task of keeping children out of the cold becomes that much harder. Councils rely on a form of housing benefit to help them house homeless families. And a quirk in the rules means that this funding is also hit by the benefit cap. Because the cap is taking another bite out of the funds available to councils to help families in an emergency, struggling councils are having to resort to more desperate measures to keep children safe – such as moving families across the country or putting more families in B&Bs and other shared accommodation. Read more on the Shelter blog.