Welfare Cuts: Housing Benefit Claimants Not Welcome Here

Only a fraction of private rented homes in the London borough of Hackney are affordable under welfare reforms, and many landlords are actively refusing to let to housing benefit recipients.  Hackney Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) put together a team of five volunteers on 15 June to carry out a "mystery shopping" exercise to see what the private rental market looked like for people on housing benefit in the east London borough.  The findings are remarkable and depressing. They found 1,585 properties for rent in Hackney on that day. Of these, only 143 were affordable within housing benefit limits. But they also found that of these properties just 14 - or under 1% of the available pool of homes - had landlords who were willing to rent to people on housing benefit.  But that was not all. As the CAB explains:    When we looked at just the family-sized properties (properties with two bedrooms or more), the picture was even worse. Out of 1,090 family-sized properties (from two to five bedrooms), there were just 36 properties (3%) within the limits and five of those (0.5%) with landlords willing to rent to someone on housing benefit.  Read more on the Guardian website.