Millions At Risk Of Losing Their Home

Soaring rents and a post-Brexit rise in unemployment could create a ‘toxic cocktail’ for millions of working renters because of large gaps in the housing benefit ‘safety net’, according to ‘Renters At Risk’, a new report by Royal London. The report found millions of workers renters could find that housing benefit would not cover the full cost of their rent in the event of losing their job. Based on the Government’s 2013/14 Family Resources Survey, the report found 5.5 million working renters would be at risk of losing their home due to gaps in the housing benefit ‘safety net’, up from 2 million in 2003/04. Download the report from the Royal London website.

Renters Pay £30 a Week for Government Housing Failure

Inflation is one of those annoying things that you just have to accept and deal with - the official target is, after all, 2%. But that gives the government no excuse to allow rents to go up the way they have. Since 1998-99, when the government started collecting data on housing costs in the Family Resources Survey, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the measure they currently use for inflation, has risen by 38%. In the same period, the median weekly rent (according to the FRS) has gone up by 80%. If rents had just matched inflation, renters would be an average of £30 better off a week. That adds up to £1546 a year. Once you take into account the tax and national insurance on earning that extra money, the typical private renter household, which earns £26,052 per annum, could get away with working 8.7% less – 3.3 hours of a 37.5 hour working week. Read more on the Generation Rent website.

Social Rented Housing – Parliamentary Written Answer

Hilary Benn: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what the evidential basis is for his Department's finding that 34,000 households with incomes of over £60,000 are living in social housing; and if he will make a statement.

Grant Shapps [holding answer 28 June 2012]: The estimated number of social tenants with incomes over £60,000 is based on two surveys, the English Housing Survey (data for 2008-09 and 2009-10) and the Department for Work and Pensions' Family Resources Survey 2008-09. Almost 10,000 households living in the social rented sector were sampled in total. Incomes over £60,000 are relatively uncommon in the social sector so comparatively few respondents met these criteria. The range of households with incomes above this level, between 12,000 and 34,000, is therefore our best estimate of the actual number of high income tenants.  Datasets from both surveys are deposited at the UK Data Archive and are available to external users.

Social Rented Housing – Parliamentary Written Answer

Jonathan Reynolds: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what estimate he has made of the number of people with household earnings over £100,000 who are living in council or social housing; and on what evidential basis this estimate was reached.

Grant Shapps: The estimated number of social tenants with incomes over £100,000 is based on two surveys, the English Housing Survey (data for 2008-09 and 2009-10) and the Department for Work and Pensions' Family Resources Survey 2008-09. Almost 10,000 households living in the social rented sector were sampled in total. Incomes over £100,000 are relatively uncommon in the social sector so comparatively few respondents met these criteria. The range of households with incomes above this level, between 1,000 and 6,000, is therefore our best estimate of the actual number of high income tenants. Datasets from both surveys are deposited at the UK Data Archive and are available to external users.