Over 8000 Children Face Homelessness Due To Benefit Cap … And It’s Barely Even Begun

Last Updated: August 9, 2013By

Today a Vox Political commenter, praising me for what I do, went on to add that it won’t make a scrap of difference while people have distractions like new mobile phones to buy (or, coming closer to home for me as a TV science fiction fan, the announcement of a new Doctor Who actor). They just won’t care, as long as it isn’t happening to them. Well, here’s a story about it happening to 8,000 children in the London boroughs piloting the benefit cap. The mobile phone lovers will no doubt find an excuse to blame the parents involved for being irresponsible – but who are these parents? It turns out they are “widows, disabled people, women fleeing domestic violence and parents unable to find a full-time job that also allows them to adequately care for young children or even new born babies.”

11 Comments

  1. Thomas M August 9, 2013 at 6:54 pm - Reply

    What sort of government goes after small children and babies? They are the voters of the future. If nothing else the Government in power now should think of the future Tory Party and what will happen to it when these people vote 18 years later.

    • Mike Sivier August 9, 2013 at 8:02 pm - Reply

      What about the CURRENT Tory Party? My understanding is membership is at rock bottom.

  2. Amanda Robinson August 9, 2013 at 7:13 pm - Reply

    It is truly horrifying how people care more about the depresing plot developments on Eastenders, than the misery of thousands in their own backyard. Thanks to Thatchers asset stripping of social housing where houses were sold and almost none of the proceeds put into building more, countless people are trapped in over crowded, ill maintained, unsuitable housing that they can’t even afford because of greedy landlords/letting agents.
    I agree that a cap on housing benefit has some merrit, but when many landlords have deliberately set their rents at the most they know they can get from housing benefit, surely we need a reasonable cap on rent!?
    Housing is a basic human need and the banks/governments/finance industry have traded it like a commodity for too long! As always it is the people at the bottom who really suffer!

  3. Gail Finney August 9, 2013 at 8:31 pm - Reply

    Do they care..do they hell..let them eat cake comes to mind !!!!!

  4. Samwise Gamgee August 10, 2013 at 12:03 am - Reply

    Not only homelessness, but hunger too. Demand for emergency food provision via food banks has doubled in some areas since the beginning of the school holidays. Poverty, homelessness and hunger, things we thought we had seen the worst of in this country, are bouncing back big time in Tory led Britain. One only wonders what other examples of the progress we have seen since the end of the war will be reversed.

    “Summer of hunger: Huge rise in food bank use as demand linked to ‘welfare reform'”

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/summer-of-hunger-huge-rise-in-food-bank-use-as-demand-linked-to-welfare-reform-8755101.html

  5. Tom Wolf Connors August 10, 2013 at 12:14 am - Reply

    I am at my wits end as I am 52 years of age, disabled and have 3 children scared of the near future is an understatement .

  6. fuckthetories August 10, 2013 at 3:00 pm - Reply

    DWP Spokesperson says that, “The IT system in place to deal with the benefit cap is working well (Aug 9th). I thought it was scrapped last month?

    http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/department_for_work_and_pensions_group/dwp-news.cfm/id/1045A33E-F525-4430-859337F812AF362D

  7. Anon August 10, 2013 at 3:18 pm - Reply

    up to £50 a week in London? my friend here in the south west has lost £128 a week HB, and now has to pay council tax on top! She is a single mother renting. Disgusting, crime will pay.

  8. […] Reblogged from the void: Over 8000 children are staring homelessness in the face this Summer due to the vicious benefit cap which punishes parents for the astronomical rents charged by landlords.  […]

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