The welfare cuts announced this week and confirmed in today’s Spring Statement risk pushing thousands of people into poverty, and toward homelessness.
Duncan Shrubsole, our Chief Executive, told Inside Housing that tightening eligibility for personal independence payment (PIP) could cause “massive issues” for housing and housing benefit “which haven’t necessarily been clocked”. Read excerpts from the piece below:
“What hasn’t been appreciated is the way PIP is a passport to other benefits,” he said, which has two implications for housing.
First, if someone, their partner, or any children living with them get PIP they are currently exempt from the benefit cap. The cap ranges from £284 a week for a single adult outside London to £487 a week for a couple or single parent in the capital.
Having their housing benefit capped could make accommodation unaffordable for large families, Mr Shrubsole said. In addition, given Local Housing Allowance (LHA) and housing benefit rates are usually too low to cover rents, many people already draw on other benefits to cover their rents.
“People could face a real double whammy – less housing benefit, meaning an even bigger gap between rents and benefit levels, plus significantly less benefits to make up that housing benefit shortfall,” he said.
Large families “may well lose accommodation they have been moved into or no longer be able to move into it”, he added.
Second, if someone is under 35 and claiming PIP then they can also claim the LHA one-bed rate, rather than the shared accommodation rate, which can be more than £100 a week lower.
Young single people who are seeking rehousing could therefore be pushed into shared accommodation, which can be “incredibly challenging” for them, Mr Shrubsole said.
Under the government’s reforms, people aged under 22 could also lose any ability to access PIP. “There is a group of particularly vulnerable young people who can’t live at home,” he said. “That will raise youth homelessness.”
Read the full piece in Inside Housing here.
