The Greens on the London Assembly have reacted to the Government’s announcement that it plans to cut housing benefit to families living in parts of central and inner London.
Green Party London Assembly Member, Jenny Jones, said:
"The past two decades of decline in the social housing stock, which caused the rise in the housing benefit bill, will compound the impact of the housing benefit cap on families living in parts of central and inner London. Under the Government plans, which also include probable cuts to the housing budgets, families will be forced to move to east and outer London and face even longer waiting lists to access affordable social rented homes.
"The Government has just made the Mayor’s aspirations for affordable rented homes in more socially mixed communities impossible. They are blaming the housing benefit bill on imaginary greedy layabouts instead of building the social rented homes that Londoners so desperately need.
"The result will be poorer families emptying out of central London. "
Notes to editors
The caps on the amount a household can claim in housing benefit will be set at between £280 and £400 per week, or up to £20,800 a year.
In Central London, the Local Housing Allowance gives families in four bed homes up to £1,000 per week to pay their rent. So families in Westminster and parts of boroughs like Camden could be worse off by up to £600 per week, or £31,200 per year. Other values can be found online: https://lha-direct.voa.gov.uk/Secure/Default.aspx
According to the Greater London Authority’s rent map, the median weekly rent for a four bed home in Westminster is £1,100 and in Camden it is £825. Both are in the Central London sub-region. More rents can be found online: http://www.london.gov.uk/rents.
The Mayor of London’s Strategic Housing Market Assessment found that the increase in housing benefit claimants renting privately between 2002 and 2007 (67,000 households) almost exactly matches the shortfall in the provision of social rented homes (66,700 homes).
Jenny Jones’ report on the housing crisis published in January showed that waiting lists grew by 80% in the last decade whilst the social rented housing stock shrank due to Right to Buy sales outstripping new builds: http://legacy.london.gov.uk/assembly/members/jonesj/docs/cominghometoroost.pdf