Proposals to Cut Housing Benefit for Under 25s Condemned

Crisis has condemned proposals by the Prime Minister to remove housing benefit for under 25s as counter-productive, ill-considered and irresponsible. Leslie Morphy Crisis' CEO said: "At a time when youth homelessness is already on the rise it would be deeply irresponsible and would cost the taxpayer more in the long-term. Housing Benefit is rightly claimed by people who are in work but whose pay is too low and local rents are too high - taking housing benefit from them will cause them to have to uproot and most likely lose their job and not be able to find another. And the proposal does not even make sense - single people under 35 are already only entitled to a much lower rate of housing benefit and the Government's previous changes to housing benefit will force families in social housing to downsize so they have no spare rooms and penalise those with adult children living at home, encouraging them to leave.” Read more on the Crisis website.