London housing crisis: benefit bill soars as rents rise and wages lag
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Version 0 of 1. As the boroughs prepare the way for rehousing some of London's poorest larger families to the Home Counties and beyond as the benefit caps bite, new figures released by the government show that the number of working households in the capital - yes, that's London homes where people have jobs - claiming housing benefit in order to make ends meet increased in some boroughs by up to 50% in the first 20 months of the coalition - with the biggest hikes occurring primarily in the less wealthy of the Outer London boroughs where private renting is generally cheaper. The biggest numerical rise was in Brent, where the number of claimant households soared from 5,760 in May 2010 when David Cameron became prime minister to 7,960 in January 2012 - an increase of 2,200, or 38%. Enfield has seen an increase of 2,010 households to 6,540 (44%), Ealing an increase of 1,910 to 6,090 (46%), Newham an increase of 1,690 to 6,560 (35%) and Barnet an increase of 1,570 to 6,300 (33%). The biggest percentage rise was of 50% in Bexley, where the number of claimant households rose from 1,050 in May 2010 to 1,580 in January 2012. What story do these numbers tell us? Can it possibly be other than that the combined impact of rising rents and wages that are failing to rise as fast is obliging more and more Londoners who are holding down jobs to seek welfare support in order to avoid having to go into debt, eat less, buy fewer clothes or move to somewhere smaller or cheaper? And that this is now affecting even some of the capital's less expensive areas? This situation will bring a glow of vindictive pleasure to the hearts of some. But is it helping to reduce the deficit, which is what the housing benefit caps have been advertised as doing? It seems not. The Department for Work and Pensions figures show that expenditure on housing benefit across Great Britain as a whole went above £9 billion in real terms for the first time in 2010/11 and is estimated to be nearly £9.4 billion for 2011/12. It is forecast to fall to just over £8 billion in 2016/17, which would be slightly less than the figure for 2009/10 but much more than 2008/09's £6.2 billion, which at the time was by some distance the largest real term figure ever. Nobody believes that the housing benefit bill or the numbers of London households claiming it are anything to be cheerful about. No one sensible believes that reforming it is going to do much to solve our housing affordability crisis, which is the real culprit here. |