Pay To Stay Should Be Slowed Down

Many questions remain about how the policy will work in practice. Will social tenants face a sudden, steep rise in rent when they reach the top of the income thresholds? Will Pay to Stay bring people into eligibility for housing benefit, who wouldn’t have been before? Will local councils have to charge tenants full market rent if tenants have not been able to prove their incomes? Perhaps the most pressing of them all is how councils can be ready in time for an April 2017 start. We expect draft regulations to come into force in the autumn. This means that from around Christmas, councils will have to start sending people letters to inform them that their rents will rise the following April. The number of households affected, at first, will be small. But to implement the policy, councils will need to verify the income details of many thousands more of their tenants – or charge them the full market rent. Read more on the Shelter blog.