According to another article, “Just 250 people control wealth of £710.723bn, but 16.65 million people live in poverty”.
That could be the reason for the following:
Half of tenants are worried that they won’t be able to afford their rent next year, as 58 per cent have seen it rise this year amid the cost of living crisis.
Research from specialist lender Market Financial Solutions found that 49 per cent of renters were worried they would not be able to pay their rent in 2023.
At the same time, 48 per cent of landlords said they had increased rents on their properties due to rising interest rates and higher mortgage repayments.
In fairness, 56 per cent of landlords said they would allow their tenants some degree of flexibility when it came to making payments. Shame on the other 44 per cent!
The reason for the increases is higher interest rates from the Bank of England, meaning mortgage repayments have increased as well.
Economists have, of course, criticised the Bank for hiking the rates, because the ostensible reason – cutting inflation – is nonsense.
So why do it?
Why push up the level of anxiety in the UK when it is already critically high?
Is it some sort of co-ordinated effort to bankrupt the people of the nation and overload our already-under-resourced mental health services?
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The rise in interest rates means people with mortgages are having to pay more to keep their homes than at any time since the late 1980s.
Many of them won’t be able to sustain the payments at a time when the cost of living is rising across the board. That means people are going to lose their homes.
Here’s a video to explain it:
The issue was also discussed on the BBC’s Any Questions – with politicians predictably disagreeing wildly about the solution (I’ve had to split the audio file into three for upload purposes:
So we can have cheap, new housing – but it will be built on our valuable Green Belt land.
Or we can have cheap, new housing – but in unregulated zones created by the Tory government, and therefore probably won’t be worth having.
Whatever housing is offered to us, it probably won’t have the social infrastructure surrounding it that people actually need in order to live there.
Let’s be honest: This Writer can’t see any of the above as being a solution.
This Tory-created nightmare is just creating problem after problem.
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Hot on the heels of the energy prices crisis comes the revelation that a growing number of people aged below 30 are being forced to pay unaffordable amounts in rent.
40 per cent of them are now paying more than 30 per cent of their income on rent – a five-year high, according to figures by property market consultancy Dataloft.
The data suggests under-30s are now paying more of their earnings on rent than any other working-age groups.
It seems rents are increasing because fewer houses are on the market after landlords decided to sell properties because of rising taxes, charges and maintenance costs.
As a result, people are offering more than the asking price to landlords, just to secure a property.
The government reckons it has taken action via a £37 billion support package to help households with rising costs.
It also says plans announced in June would ban landlords from evicting tenants in England without giving them a reason, and give renters more power to challenge unjustified rent increases and poor conditions, providing renters with a “fairer deal”.
But you’ll notice there’s no effort to provide more rented housing to lower the costs.
And this leads us to a vital question: are the Tories poisoning their own future?
I was listening to the A World To Win podcast in which author Phil Burton-Cartledge suggested that the Tories are in decline because they rely on older people voting for them – but this isn’t a consequence of age but of the social circumstances surrounding age.
Older people vote Tory because they have accumulated property – but property acquisition is starting to break down: “If you can’t get younger people onto the housing ladder, then the Conservatising effects of property will not have the same consequences.”
Host Grace Blakeley added: “The housing crisis, combined with issues around employment, progression and wages, the cost of childcare, have forcibly extended a lot of people’s youth such that, whilst you can say there’s always going to be plenty of old people, actually a lot of Gen Xers and Millennials will be young in attitudes as well as in living standards for much longer.”
And here, it seems, younger people can’t even think of buying a home because they can’t even afford to rent.
How are the Tories ever going to get these people to vote for them, when the Tories have taken away all their hopes of social status?
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Rent: are the Tories really going to reverse the hated changes imposed by Margaret Thatcher, that made tenants practically powerless to stop landlords walking all over them?
The instant This Writer saw that the Conservative government is planning to allow tenants to reclaim their rent from “dodgy” landlords, I questioned it.
There has to be a catch, right? This is the Tory Party – the party that puts landlords over tenants and would return us to Rackmanism and rack-renting at the flip of a coin.
Maybe Michael Gove is trying to make himself look good ahead of the now-inevitable Conservative leadership contest…
Whatever the reasons, I remain staggered to be able to relay to you a decent policy from the Conservative government:
Tenants will be given new powers to claim refunds on their rent from landlords if their homes fall below standard in the biggest shake-up of the private rented sector since the 1990s.
The Government published it’s long-awaited ‘Fairer Private Rented Sector’ White Paper with reforms which are set to be brought into law under the Renters Reform Bill.
If they become law, experts say the White Paper’s proposals will directly improve the lives of millions of people and become the most radical thing to happen to the private rented sector since Thatcher’s deregulation and the introduction of Buy to Let mortgages in the early 1990s.
Measures include:
Abolishing “no fault” Section 21 evictions: S.21 allows a landlord to evict their tenant with just two months’ notice without having to give them a reason. In recent years this sort of eviction has become a leading cause of homelessness and there have been reports of renters being evicted when they ask for basic repairs.
Overhauling tenancy agreements: The Government is proposing a shift from assured shorthold tenancy agreements (ASTs) that generally run for six or 12 months to open-ended tenancies.
No more rent hike clauses: The Government wants to end arbitrary rent review clauses which allow landlords to hike up rents without justifying them.
Improving basic standards of rented homes: According to the government, 21 per cent of private renters are living in “unfit” homes which means they are damp, mouldy and contain electrical hazards. The White paper proposes to make the Decent Homes standard law in the private rented sector, which means homes must be free from serious health and safety hazards, and landlords must keep homes in a good state of repair, so renters have clean, appropriate and useable facilities. But how will cash-strapped local authorities enforce this?
New housing ombudsman to make landlords accountable: the aim is to enable disputes between private renters and landlords to be settled quickly, at low cost, and without going to court, with powers to compel landlords to issue an apology, take remedial action, and/or pay compensation of up to £25,000 in the form of refunds on rent.
Ban on landlords refusing to rent to benefit claimants: Landlords are not supposed to discriminate against people receiving benefits (known as No DSS) or families but they do. The white paper promises to make it illegal for landlords or agents to have blanket bans on renting to these people.
The right to keep pets: Private renters the right to have a pet and say that landlords cannot “unreasonably deny” them this.
The big irony of all these reforms is that landlords (or alleged landlords) like Philip Davies and Christopher Chope have filibustered (talked out) attempts at rent reform in Private Members’ Bills – but will probably support this.
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Extra cash for MPs who rent: it’s not exactly a backhander because it’s in line with Parliamentary rules – but the practice certainly shouldn’t be.
Do Tory MPs receive a manual on election, entitled Tories On The Take: How To Do It?
Here’s the latest:
17 MPs claim rent on a London home they own while renting another in London to live in, analysis by Indy shows https://t.co/GhFR00cK5C This is not against the rules and IPSA, which makes them, was warned it would happen says Times which counts 14 https://t.co/1JqA4uGq6l
The Independent, which lists 16 of the accused MPs, states:
Over the past five years, 16 MPs have claimed over £1.3m in taxpayer-funded rent while collecting thousands rent letting out properties in the capital, according to submissions published by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) and the register of members’ interests.
Claims for rent are permitted under Ipsa rules, which state that MPs can receive taxpayer funding for “rental payments and associated costs”. An Ipsa document in 2017 conceded that some arrangements could be controversial – but advised against any change to the rules.
“We recognise that there can be a perception of personal gain if an MP receives rental income from their own property while living in an Ipsa-funded flat,” it said. “However … We do not want to judge an MP’s private arrangements and whether or not they should live in a property they own.”
That may be about to change.
If a member of Parliament is able to carry out their work from their own home, but rent accommodation and charge it to the public purse while taking rent income from their own property – and the rental income means they profit from the arrangement, then they are running an expenses scam and it should stop.
That’s how members of the public are likely to see it.
They may have a good point, I think.
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Stop evictions: this was a protest in 2016 – before Covid, furloughs, and eviction bans. The question is: will the Tories do anything to stop evictions in 2021? My guess is they won’t.
The short-sightedness of the voting public can be astonishing.
As a result of the Covid-19 furlough scheme that asked people to live on 80 per cent of their normal income, families – that’s right, families – are facing eviction from their private-sector rented homes when the eviction ban ends at the end of this month.
According to Citizens Advice, half a million private renters were behind with their rent in January. That figure is only likely to have increased.
Average debt is £730, but the total amount of arrears is said to be £370 million, and around 150,000 people are likely to face eviction after the end of the month.
More than 2,000 possession orders were made between October and December last year – and those tenants are likely to be forced out of their homes in June.
They had a stay of execution (of those orders) because of the eviction ban that stops landlords from sending in the bailiffs and obliges them to give six months’ notice of court action.
Of course, all that ends on May 31, meaning hundreds of thousands of people could be homeless by June 2.
They are typically in insecure jobs, often on zero-hours contracts, and in industries that have suffered disproportionately over the past year.
Strange, isn’t it? Back in, say, the 1970s, an entire family could afford to mortgage a house, cover their living expenses and enjoy a decent holiday, all on the earnings of just one parent.
Now, most people can’t afford to rent a home, even with both parents and all the children (who can legally do so) working.
That’s 40 years of Tory – or fake-Tory – government for you.
And last week, I’m willing to bet, a significant proportion of those facing eviction voted for the party that put them in danger of it – the Tories.
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“Can I hide in your fridge”? At the rate he’s going, Boris Johnson (who once, infamously, did hide in a fridge to avoid scrutiny) will soon be living in one.
It’s a valid question.
In the midst of a huge controversy over the way Boris Johnson has funded changes to the Downing Street flat, he suddenly announces this:
Boris Johnson is preparing to rent out his £1.2 million townhouse to raise cash following his second divorce and the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat, it is reported.
Property experts told the Times that Mr Johnson, 56, and Ms Symonds, 33, could let the house for up to £4,000 a month.
The Prime Minister recently put his £1.2 million house near Thame in Oxfordshire up for rent. It was listed at £4,250 a month in April, and a lease was agreed this week, it was reported.
Johnson insists that he paid for the Downing Street renovations himself – but won’t say whether the money was given to him by one or more donors before.
The Electoral Commission has launched an inquiry into whether any loans or donations made in connection with the refurbishment work had been properly declared.
And it is with officials examining his finances that Johnson has started renting out not one but two buildings he owns.
I think it’s reasonable to conclude that he has suddenly run into cashflow problems – and we may reasonably question the reasons for them.
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Rent strike: students are permanently penniless. When you see how much this year’s alumni have had to pay – for NOTHING – you’ll understand why they’re raging.
Those Tories really are selective about who they help with the costs of Covid-19, aren’t they?
I remember being a student. Most of the time, I hardly had two pennies to rub together. The rented accommodation available to us was – mostly – diabolical. And expensive.
One place was damp. It gave me bronchitis.
But at least I got to live in it!
Since the Covid crisis started, according to a survey, the
average student has so far paid £1,621 in rent for unrefunded empty rooms.
In total, according to advice website Save the Student,
university students have wasted nearly £1bn on empty rooms in flat shares and halls of residence that they have been unable to use because of coronavirus restrictions this academic year.
The website estimates rents are so high that they take up three-quarters of their maintenance loans at an average of £146 per week, so it’s no wonder that
Students’ anger with high rents… boiled over on UK campuses this term as students launched the largest rent strike in 40 years.
There has been a patchy response from universities, private halls of residence and landlords, with some refusing discounts while others have offered full rebates.
I have a lot of sympathy for the universities, and for the landlords – as well as for the students themselves.
It is unfair for the accommodation providers to foot the bill for thousands of empty rooms when the situation was thrust on them by the government – albeit admittedly in response to a nationwide pandemic.
It just happens to be even more unfair for them to demand that students pay the bill, rather than the government. This is loaned money, remember – they have to pay it back, plus interest, over a period of decades to come.
Businesses – especially the bigger ones – have received huge subsidies, and employees have had 80 per cent of their wages paid by a government “furlough” scheme. Why weren’t students added to that, at the very least?
The Guardian story tells us the government has provided students with £70 million in hardship funding, which seems to fall quite a long way short of what they’ve had to shell out.
Considering the billions given to Tory cronies and their – let’s be honest – fake firms for nonexistent or inadequate Covid-related services, this is an insult to the next generation of the UK’s movers and shakers.
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Homeless: this man was photographed living on the streets in Birmingham before Covid-19. Who knows how many more will be living there – prey to the virus – after August 23?
The government’s moratorium on evictions ends this week, putting tens of thousands of people in danger of eviction – in the middle of the biggest recession the UK has ever experienced.
The Tories have been urged to safeguard the people under threat – but they are strangely silent. One wonders whether they would be so quiet if their fellow Conservatives were being turfed out of their stately homes for any reason.
So when the ban on evictions in England and Wales ends on August 23, it seems likely to signal a wave of homelessness, with people forced onto the streets to face joblessness (as a result of the Tory recession), illness (because of the Tory failure to fight Covid-19) and the cold (because winter is coming).
Landlords in England have been able to issue notices of eviction three months in advance of taking possession; in Wales, the Labour government has ordered that they cannot take possession before six months have elapsed.
No reason need be given for them to take possession. Boris Johnson has promised to end “no-fault” evictions in a new “Renter’s Reform Bill” – but he has shown no inclination to bring such legislation to Parliament.
Previous prime minister Theresa May had made the same promise, but she never brought such a Bill to Parliament either.
And there really are a lot of private landlords stuffing the Tory benches in the House of Commons.
Of course, evictions and homelessness will have a knock-on effect on the economy – at a time of recession – as it costs the government and the emergency services more to help homeless people than it does to keep them housed.
The Tories know this because they’ve seen the same evidence I have.
And yet they are silent.
It seems they are more keen to inflict cruelty on others than to do their job – which is to run the country efficiently. Wasn’t that always the way with the toffs?
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Let’s answer the question in the headline straight away: it seems 85,000 people may be able to claim compensation because the government deliberately failed to stop people getting less Universal Credit if their payday comes early because of a weekend or bank holiday.
Judges at the Court of Appeal have ruled that it was “irrational” for the Department for Work and Pensions – and the Secretary of State in particular – to ignore the fact that computer systems would assume that claimant had received double the money expected and cancel their payments.
The Conservative government has spent two years fighting this court case – indicating that, despite being well aware of the issue, Tories were determined to continue depriving some of the poorest workers in the UK of vital benefits.
Are they sadists? Or perverts?
Certainly perverts, it seems. In her judgment, Lady Justice Rose described the situation as “perverse”.
But decide for yourself.
The three judges at the Court of Appeal unanimously ruled that the Work and Pensions Secretary acted irrationally and unlawfully by making Universal Credit regulations which fail to take into account that the date monthly salaries are paid can vary because of weekends and bank holidays.
Government loses its test case appeal against 4 working mothers re how Universal Credit treats their earned income.
Irrational – decides CA today – for regs not to solve issue of people getting less UC where regular payday comes early because of a weekend. @rightsnetpic.twitter.com/2gc722Ql6M
The Government had taken the case to the Court of Appeal after single mother Danielle Johnson, along with three other mothers supported by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), won a High Court legal challenge.
They said the Government’s interpretation of regulation 54 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 meant some months she would receive much less in universal credit than in others.
Ms Johnson is paid on the last working day of each month and her benefit assessment period runs from the last day of the month to the penultimate day of the following month. When a weekend is at the end of a month, this means her wages go into her bank account earlier than in other months.
The Universal Credit computer system interpreted this as Ms Johnson having earned twice as much in one month and none in others, so her payment would be calculated accordingly.
It resulted in extreme fluctuations in her income and – in several months – she lost the work allowance part of the UC payment, meaning she was around £500 per year worse off.
If 85,000 people lost the same amount, that means the government was stopping them from receiving £42.5 million a year – not a lot in terms of a national government’s budget.
So why did the Tories create a system that forced this hardship on vulnerable women (among others)?
Why spend more money defending this irrational persecution of vulnerable women?
We can only conclude that this is yet more evidence that the Tories simply enjoy making poor people suffer.
And it worked: Ms Johnson suffered severe cash flow problems and between them, the four mothers fell into rent arrears, defaulted on council tax, incurred bank overdraft charges, borrowed money and even become reliant on food banks to make ends meet.
Lady Justice Rose commented that Ms Johnson “expresses her doubts whether she will ever be able to get back on top of her finances and worries that cash flow problems will mean she is unable to pay her rent, jeopardising her tenancy”.
We should also discuss the Tory government’s defence, which seems to be that changing the system would cost too much. It’s always about money with this mob, isn’t it?
So the court was told that any change to the computer system would cost at least £7.35 million – a fraction of what the government has saved each year by withholding money from 85,000 claimants.
And the Tories said there would need to be a wholesale move away from automation back to manual calculation in order to accommodate the changes demanded by the judges.
This would be an admission that the whole Universal Credit project – that was intended to be “digital by default” – is a failure.
And it’s doubtful that there’s any truth in the claim. Computer programs can be quite adaptable – or at least, they can in the hands of people who don’t have an agenda that involves the persecution of the vulnerable.
Of course the question arising from this is: what happens next?
Will the government automatically calculate the back payments owed to many tens of thousands of UC claimants and pay them?
I think we all know the answer to that!
Will the Tories change the law to ensure that this situation is not allowed to arise in the future?
Or will they try to find another way to contest the ruling? Delay any payments resulting from it? Otherwise try to ignore the decision of the court?
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