Do We Give £26,000 a Year To The Undeserving Poor?

The Undeserving Poor are work-shy scroungers. They get paid more than the average family income to have dozens of kids and live with them in vast sprawling flats in Chelsea smoking fags and watching Sky on their flat screen tellies.

Or are they?

Yesterday it was decided in the House of Lords that the undeserving poor is anyone who recieves more than £26k in benefits. There are certain exclusions but probably not the ones you'd expect.

Nobody with any bit of humanity in their bones wants the deserving poor to be hurt by benefit cuts. They want the elderly and the disabled, and their carers to be protected. They certainly don't want those who do the right thing and get a job - the working poor to be hurt. At the moment anyone can lose their job without warning and it is taking 12mths or more to get another job, so protection for those recently unemployed and working hard to find work again would be sensible as well.

On the face of it, £26k is a lot of money. A single person with no additional responsibilties or circumstances would have to earn around 34k a year to take home 26k. If you earn less than that - as most of us do, the average individual wage is around £22k before tax, and the average family net income (after tax and plus benefits) is also around £26k.

£26k sounds like a huge amount, are there really people who can't survive on £500 a week and why should a family with nobody working get that much for free?

In the end, it's almost always because of how much rent they have to pay. Even not very nice parts of London and the South East have extremely high rents, more than £1000 per month is the norm. Families with low incomes receive Housing Benefit payments to cover their rent, because wages are so low 1 in 8 recipients of housing benefit IS working, which just shows how much of an impact housing prices are having on everybody living in these areas.

After Rent and Council Tax families in expensive areas are not being given any more to live on pw than families living anywhere else in the country.

If you are unemployed you will be paid a fixed sum based on the number of bedrooms you are calculated to need (how many children and adults are living together - children and couples are expected to share) and then, in the future, given a figure that would completely pay the rent for the cheapest 30% of the available market. If you can't find anything that cheap you will have to top up your rent payments yourself out of your other benefits. This situation is extremely common as this 30% figure includes social housing whose rents are deliberately significantly lower than private market rate, these council flats and houses are usually inaccessible to all but those in the most dire circumstances due to the chronic shortage of stock, a situation set to get worse. Also included but unavailable are the thousands of Buy To Let properties whose owners mortgage agreements exclude Housing Benefit claimants.

A London School of Economics blogger shows how quickly just the rental cost for a cheap property in London can spiral a household's finances towards that magiv £500pm figure.

"£392.31 for rent (the allowable rent for Tolworth, typical of a cheaper property)
£39.06 for council tax (Kingston Council, Band E)
£28.18 for gas and electricity (DECC English average + 20% for large family, in 2011 £s
£7.21 for water (OfWAT UK average + 20% for large family)
£6.00 for telephone/broadband - the cheapest BT anytime package

Starting from £500 means that you have £26.23 per week left over for the family, which is 62p per person per day to the nearest penny.

We can argue over these exact figures. Clearly the family could choose to be cold, or to shower infrequently to save money. But against that, private rented housing is typically less well insulated, the family are at home every day, so energy bills may be larger still. I have not included a mobile phone, or any calls to mobile phones, or to 08 numbers not included in the basic package.

In any case, even after rent and council tax, the family has only £1.64 per person per day to live on. No alternative figures will make any difference: this is simply not a living income for a family with four children in private rented accommodation in a cheap part of outer London"

In a Mumsnet discussion, TheHumanCatapult got curious about what happens to normal working families living in such expensive areas, and what would happen if they were to lose their job:

"Out of curiosity, I did a Turn2Us calculation for a 35-year-old couple with a SAHM and five children (all healthy, no childcare) living somewhere like Wandsworth in a mortgaged home. My fictional man earns £35k and pays £150 a month to his pension plan.

They were entitled to just over £11k in benefits. So, although his take-home pay was slightly over £22k, the state tops him up to £34k net. This is bizarre because it shows the government accepts his family needs £34k but seems to think the same family will need £8k less than that if he loses his job or gets injured - £667 a month less? They'll lose their home."

Now that child Benefit has been excluded from the cap they would have their 26k capped benefits topped up to 31k, but this would still leave them £250 per month less to live on.

But! I hear you say He's only just lost his job, surely they won't have to live with the cap straight away?

Well, actually no. Despite Ian Duncan Smith heavily implying that this would be the case 6 months breathing room to give families a chance to find a job wasn't added to the welfare reform bill. The cap will apply straight away.

Surely they can still move house and go somewhere cheaper though?

Yes, they could. But they probably won't.

Moving house will solve the immediate problem (not having enough money to eat) but could lead to a life on benefits, and this is just not something most people want to risk. the vast majority of people in the UK realise that they are better off working, not just for the cash in hand now but for their potential to earn more in the future and don't want to do anything that would risk them becoming long-term unemployed.

At the moment when most people become redundant and jobs are scarce they will look for jobs in a wide area, and if they have to move to wherever they get offered a job. Moving BEFORE you have been offered a job is extremely risky, what if in the cheaper places the reason the rent is cheap is because there are no jobs? Even in reasonably affluent areas like mine 4 pages of job ads in the local paper have become half a page, most either highly specified or potentially dodgy work from home adverts.

According to nomis there are 1.4 million people claiming unemployment benefits, at last count there were 269,089 unfilled job vacancies at the job centre, leaving more than a million people without a chance of finding a job at all.

And that figure doesn't include the several million more people looking to return to work but not claiming benefits, or those already working part time but looking for more hours or a full-time job.

Job seekers would be wise to do whatever they can to make them as attractive as possible to employers, and staying local to high employment areas is a good idea. It's not just that you won't have to delay starting at your new job while you move house (and potentially children's schools etc) but also that jobs are often claimed before they are even advertised, through getting to know local employers, letting them know your skills and that you are available now.

Equally what if you move from area A to area B because it's cheaper, then get a job in area C - moving twice (or more if you are unfortunate enough to be employed by several struggling businesses in a row) in quick succession is extremely expensive, disruptive and potentially impossible if you don't have savings or a kind friend or relative who can loan you money to move house.

To many, getting into debt may seem like a better option than risking moving somewhere new and becoming the long-term unemployed.

Finally - some people really can't move. Just 2 examples:

If you're caring for an elderly relative who lives nearby and couldn't afford to pay for someone to replace you would you want to leave them behind?

Some single parents are subject to court orders that state which school their children can attend, break it and go to jail. Effectively this limits the parents to living in fairly small areas.

Okay, it will be tough for some people, but at least vulnerable people are being protected.

Maybe.

Remeber that list of the deserving poor? You may be interested to learn who hasn't won exemptions to the benefits cap:

Kinship carers: those who foster family members, they save the government huge sums of money by keeping vulnerable children out of care and recieve very little in return - may well be forced to move away from support networks and the Social Services departments supporting the arrangements. Without this help many kinship relationships are at risk of breaking down under both financial and emotional strain. Not protected

Carers for the disabled and elderly: for the princely sum of £55pw, carers save the tax payer thousands of pounds per week by providing the specialist care their relatives need in their own homes 24hrs a day 365 days a year. Not protected

Disabled people who recieve ESA but not DLA: ESA means too disabled too work, DLA is an in and out of work benefit, paid to those with both care and mobility needs at different levels depending on severity. DLA is protected, but those few people in the (admittedly fairly unusual) position of recieving ESA but not DLA not protected

Potentially all disabled people: You see, DLA is excluded, but over the next few years DLA is being replaces with PIP and it hasn't been decided if PIP will be made exempt or not. Disability is expensive - not all treatments and equipment is provided by the NHS, even wheelchairs have to be saved up for and paid for out of personal finances. Adaptions sometimes have to be made to homes, transport is more expensive for those unable to drive or use public transport, this has not been recognised in the plans. Not protected

The working poor: Anyone who recieves Working Tax Credit is exempt from the cap - those already netting £26k in take home pay will still recieve any additional benefits they are entitled to. However, in order to qualify for working tax credit and be considered working you MUST work a minimum number of hours. Currently that figure is 16. It is moving up to 24. That means anyone working part time, at say 20 hours a week is suddenly going to be treated as though they are unemployed even though they ARE working. There are a lot of reasons why someone might only work part time: caring commitments, prohibitive childcare costs, minor disabilities or having your hours cut by an employer in economic trouble. Not protected

Those who have just lost their job but have worked all their lives: could you live on 62p a day? Not protected

What Can I Do?

These agreements have already been passed in the House of Lords, however one amendment was made - that Child Benefit be excluded from the cap. It's not much, but it's an attempt to save tens if not hundreds of thousands of children being pushed into poverty and 20,00 families from becoming homeless

Please Write to your MP and tell them why you support the exclusion of Child Benefit in the cap and if you are unhappy with the Cap in general.

At the moment the government believes that the public supports them, if you don't, let them know!

Don't forget you can tweet many MPs. hashtags #frothers #wrb

The Hidden Housing Crisis - an impending disaster

There is a crisis in the UK. Not one that the media pays enough attention to but it’s a shocker. Here are the statistics:

Picture: Shelter

1.8 million households on local authority registers
70,000 children spent this Christmas homeless
1.6 million children live in overcrowded, temporary or run down housing.

Consecutive governments have failed to build enough social housing to meet needs. Instead people on low incomes, who should have qualified for social housing, are encouraged to rent privately. They then get housing benefit to meet their private rents.

Claimants are not just layabouts: Shelter's chief executive Campbell Robb explains:

“The vast majority of housing benefit claimants are either pensioners, disabled people, those caring for a relative or hard-working people on low incomes, and only 1 in 8 people who receive housing benefit is unemployed”

The much-publicised £400pw cap - which mainly affects large families or renters in expensive areas - is not all that is happening. The housing benefit rates have changed from being calculated on the bottom 50% of rents in a given area to the bottom 30%. This means that all across the UK, in all sized households, tenants face a shortfall between their rent and housing benefit.

rentaflat.co.uk

Housing benefit is calculated within the Local Housing Allowance rules. Local housing allowance (LHA) rates are used to calculate housing benefit for tenants renting from private landlords. The rates depend on the area in which you are making a claim and are calculated each month. For example, the entitlement on a two bedroom property in Central London will be £290 per week; in Merthyr Cynon it will be a maximum of £80 a week for a two-bed home.

Last year I rented a two bedroom flat in Plymouth. The rent was £550 per month and met by housing benefit.

Now the maximum I would get would be £520 per month - leaving me with a £30 shortfall. A shortfall: when I have 2 kids in a small 2 bed flat a long, long way from London. Believe me, I wasn't living in an exclusive area!

Amidst rising food and fuel prices and other welfare cuts, even a small shortfall can be disastrous to a stretched budget.

The shortfall will vary across the country, if it is large it may mean moving or homelessness.

It is very likely to cause homelessness. Here's why:

• Their landlord may not drop their rent and they also may not be able to afford the move to somewhere cheaper.
• Usually renters need to give two months’ notice. Properties let very quickly and landlords won't wait two months, so this entails paying overlapping rents.
• Also the landlord can legally withhold the deposit until after the tenant has left.

So tenants will have to pay overlapping rents, deposit plus one month’s rent in advance and removal costs. Inevitably this will lead to debt and, eventually, homelessness.

It  has already been estimated that 40,000 families could be made homeless by welfare changes: see this article from Shelter.
If Shelter's right, the changes will cost the nation more.
Temporary accommodation is expensive; it cost £400pw when I was in a council-funded B&B.

Picture: BBC

Many are hoping that the Housing Benefit cuts will be matched with rent cuts. This is unlikely: rents across the nation have been rising due to a high demand for homes – explained here. Landlords won't drop rents if others will be able to afford them. In many towns and cities there will be more claimants than affordable homes. Randeep Ramesh explains in The Guardian:

“It is unlikely that the poor will be able migrate to cheaper parts of the capital: in Newham, east London, there will be twice as many claimants as there are low-cost homes. In Croydon, 17,000 people will be chasing 10,000 properties.

“The effect will be felt not just in south-east England. Before today, Birmingham had more than 37,000 homes with rents affordable on welfare. Now 34,500 housing benefit claimants will be chasing 23,000 low-cost houses, according to the analysis, carried out for the Guardian. On the Mersey, 21,000 people collecting local housing allowance will only be able to afford 12,000 homes in Liverpool.

“Because welfare is set at Westminster, the cuts will also be felt in Scotland. In Glasgow there will be a thousand more benefit recipients than there are properties which can be rented with the government's reduced housing subsidy.”

There has also been a change to the shared room entitlement. Previously if you were under 25 you would only get enough for a bedsit or room in a shared house.  This has changed to under 35. It also applies to people currently living in one bedroom flats.

Using my home town of Plymouth again, just to prove this isn't a London centric issue, I'll examine how this would affect a newly-redundant 30-year-old with no kids, living in a rented one bedroom flat:

Job seeker's allowance is £67.50.

He would have also previously got £92.31 housing benefit for his one bedroom flat but now is only entitled to the £67 sharer's rate.

Total: down from £159.81 to £134.50 a week.

After making up his rent shortfall, he'll have just £42.19 left for food, bills and transport to interviews.

And that's only if he's in a cheap flat, with rent in the bottom 30% of the market ...

Find A Property put an average 1 bed in Plymouth at £109 per week.

Paying average rent, then, he would have £25.50 a week to live on.

He could move to a bedsit if he could find one cheap enough, and afford the move.

I hope this example demonstrates how this reform ruins the safety net for the average working person. If you are young and can afford a one bed flat with your wages, but then need temporary support due to redundancy or sickness, you may not get it. You may be faced with poverty or homelessness or get into massive debt funding a move you can't afford - when all you really needed was a short-term benefit until you find something else.

We all appreciate the peace of mind that an adequate welfare safety net provides. To know if sickness or redundancy hit us we will have a decent home and enough for life's essentials.

These housing benefit reforms, are therefore, an attack on all of us.


By Opinionated Mum.

On The Fourth Day of Xmas, My True Love Gave to Me... Four Grades of Unemployment

The unemployment statistics show a rise of 128,000, in the three months to October, meaning a total of 2.51 million people are officially unemployed in this country. 


That is 8.3%, with dramatically bigger rises in London and the North East.  But do people know what the statistics actually mean?  




Employment and Support Allowance is the controversial replacement for Incapacity benefit, brought in by the Labour government in 2008 for new claimants, and gradually extended to all Incapacity Benefit claimants.  



After the first 13 weeks of the claim, the claimant is reassessed,  then put in one of three categories - fit for work (at which point they must find a job or migrate to jobseekers allowance), Work Related Activity group (or WRA) and support group.  Only 7% of claims are awarded support group status - ie judged completely incapable of work (although, as we have seen on Frothers, many of these decisions are reversed on appeal).


 17% of ESA claimants are placed in the WRA group.  This amounts to over 400,000 people who are judged to be fit for work if appropriate adjustments are made, or in the near future.  These people are required to attend work focused interviews where they will discuss how they will get back into work, and can have their benefits docked if they fail to attend. 


These are the people who were described as “work-shy scroungers” in certain papers when the latest set of ESA claimant data was released.  Yet they are not included in the latest unemployment statistics.

“Unemployed” people are jobless, have been actively seeking work in the past four weeks and are available to start work in the next two weeks; or they are out of work, have found a job, and are waiting to start it in the next two weeks. 

As ESA claimants in the work related activity group are not required to actively seek work, only prepare to seek work, they are not counted.  Yet they are legally required to prepare for work.  So, which are they?  


Are they incapable of work, and so not included in unemployment statistics, just the“economically inactive” group (more on which later), or are they able to prepare for work, as they are legally required to do?  This may sound like a dry statistical question, but those 400,000 people in the WRA group are facing uncertainty about their lives - the status is causing confusion and anger amongst some of the most vulnerable sectors of society.



The Economically Inactive group is, by the most up to date statistics, 23% of the population.  These are people who are without paid work, but are not classed as unemployed.  They may be sick or disabled, carers or not seeking work for some other reason.  This does not mean that they don’t wish to work, only that they are not counted as seeking work.  They may in fact be looking for a job, but unable to start in the next two weeks due to other responsibilities.  They may wish to work, but are prevented by disability or high costs of childcare.  Or they may be stay at home parents or carers.  Of course, some will be rich kids living off trust finds, but somehow I doubt that counts for 23% of the population.



Another group to consider is those who are in part time work, but are looking for full time work.  This figure increased by 70,000 in three months to reach 1.28 million, the highest figure since comparable records began in 1992.  Here are more people who are looking for work, but unable to find it, and are not included on the unemployment statistics.  Workers on low wages are still entitled to many income related benefits, and can even sometimes receive more in welfare benefits than someone out of work.  Many part time jobs are unreliable and low paid, yet the workers are not counted in the unemployment statistics. 


In many ways, these can be the most exposed to the twists and turns of the economy, as they face placing new or changed claims if they lose the jobs they do have, but are without the small security that having an established claim can provide.  They find themselves without enough work, but not “unemployed enough” to become a target for the limited amount of work finding schemes that are available.



The unemployment statistics may be awful, but they hide an even more shocking truth.  There are simply not enough jobs in this country, and the statistics show more than we are being led to believe.


We have four groups not included in unemployment statistics:

- the unemployed (about 2.64 million)
- those in Work Related Activity schemes (400,000 people)
- economically inactive (9.33 million)
- part-time workers, looking for full-time work (1.28 million) 

Of those four groups, only the first - the 8.3% of the population (or 2.64 million) are reflected in government unemployment figures. And that figure is estimated to rise in the next year, peaking at an estimated 2.85 million in 2013.

120,000 jobs lost in the public sector, and too few jobs in the private sector. Yet the government still insists that their plan is working, that the employment market is stabilising.

More annoying than that is the comment by Shadow Work and Pensions Minister, Ian Austin who stated that it was, "crystal clear that this government is failing to get people off benefits and into work".

That was a cheap shot, Mr Austin. Try bashing the ConDem government for their policies, instead of the benefit claimants, many of whom would dearly love to have a job.

In some sectors there are over 40 applicants for every job. The politicians on both sides of the spectrum need to accept that most people want to work, there are simply not enough jobs out there.



By Alicia Duffy and MmeLindor

Under Six And Homeless

Play a game of word association with homeless and which words spring to mind? Probably words like alcoholic, addict, mentally ill and tramp. To be honest that’s what jumps into my mind, even now. Not that I judge. Mental heath is the Cinderella service of the NHS and it's shameful  that these people are allowed fall through the cracks to become homeless. This is not the issue I want to talk about.

There is another group of homeless. Average families whose homelessness is not of their doing, who are homeless through repossession or an  eviction from their private rental. Not that you would notice them, they are hidden in temporary accommodation. Many are unlikely to discuss it beyond their closest family and friends due to the stigma. They are the hidden homeless. I was one of them.

The tenancy on my privately rented flat had been renewed every six months for the past two years. I moved there after my marriage broke down. The area was close to family support, much needed family support- I was eight months pregnant. My daughter settled in well at the local school, my son and I made good friends at local playgroups.

In the early stages of the tenancy I opened every letter from the letting agent with trepidation, well aware that the landlord could give me two months notice to quit without  a reason. This is a totally legal part of any assured short hold tenancy, the standard type of tenancy in the private rented sector. I had never met my landlord, it was a faceless arrangement via a letting agency. As time went on, I stopped thinking about it and assumed the landlord was in it for the long term. So last July it was a shock to receive a notice to quit.

A frantic search for local properties threw up few affordable ones, those that were wouldn't take housing benefit, children or both. I had little in the way of savings.  For the working poor and benefit claimants, saving is an unaffordable luxury. What comes in each month goes out each month on essentials. The landlord refused to return the deposit until I vacated the flat, as he was legally entitled to do. However, it was infuriating because I was a good tenant, the place was always immaculate on inspection and he never missed a month’s rent. I needed to magic two grand from nowhere to meet the cost of moving to a new private rental.

I went to the local council for help. They told me I was low priority for a council place as I still had a roof. I was advised to look for a private rental and to negotiate with local landlords about deferring the deposit and rent in advance. Futile, as understandably they wanted it all in advance. The few who accepted HB wanted a guarantor. It is worth noting that housing benefit is not just an out of work benefit, it also is available to working people who cannot afford their rent. The rate is set locally and is known as the local housing allowance.

In the last week of the tenancy, I made a homelessness application to the local council. I was told to put my furniture into storage and turn up the day I moved out to be allocated temporary accommodation. It could be an empty council house where furniture would be needed, or a hostel or B&B where there would be no room for furniture.  They wouldn't or couldn't tell me.  It could be anywhere in the city, they were not obliged to take proximity to my daughters school into consideration.

The uncertainty was impossible to bear. Medication for a pre-existing mental health condition had to be resumed due to a stress induced relapse. Not that my mental state was of any concern to the council. When I was asked in the homelessness application if I or anyone in my family had health problems, I mentioned   the children had asthma and I suffered from a severe mood disorder. It was dismissed with "We all have that, dear"

Well, I turned up on the day I moved out. The local hostel for families was full,as were the temporary houses, so they sent me to a B&B. My daughter 5, my son 2 and I were allocated a family room. It contained three beds a, a TV and a kettle. The bathrooms and toilets were shared with other 'guests'. There were no laundry facilities. I was shown to my room and promptly informed of the house rules: No cooking or electrical appliances in the room, no alcohol or drugs and  the premises should be vacated between nine and five.

I managed to maintain my daughter’s school attendance. It wasn't easy, the extra costs of the laundrette and take away meals left me with no money for bus fares. We had a three quarters of an hour walk, a long way for a child her age. The cost of everything has left me in debt. This is one of many situations that leave people below the poverty line. It isn't all booze, fags and fecklessness.

Anyhow, we all lived happily ever after. The council gave me a two bedroom flat complete with a garden. I felt like I’d won the lottery.

I am frothing though, I have real hatred for the current government. Why? Because changes to welfare benefits could make an estimated 40,000 families homeless. It could also result in fewer homes being built, as the housing benefit cap will prevent developers recouping the costs through rent, giving them no incentive to build new properties. There will also be strain on public services in areas with a large influx of the evicted.

The cost to the taxpayer will be immense, it cost the council £400 per week to keep us in the bed and breakfast. It's a totally counterproductive false economy. Many, if not most of these families will end up in temporary accommodation. Temporary can mean being shunted around for months, even years. There is no surplus of affordable housing anywhere in the country. For more facts and information look at Shelter

The highest cost will be the human cost. Housing benefit is claimed by the working poor, the unemployed, pensioners, and those too sick/disabled to work. People will have to leave their low paid jobs when they can't afford the commute. How counter-productive is that! Lone parents will be housed far away from their families. As a lone parent myself I know how important it is to be supported. It takes a village to raise a child. Torn from their support networks their emotional well-being will be jeopardised. Any psychologist will tell you the healthy emotional and cognitive development of a child is linked very closely to the psychological health of the mother.

These reforms are an act of violence against the next generation.

By OpinionatedMum, Guest Blogger 

What You Can Do:

See the WriteToThem box on the right, or visit WriteToThem.com to find and email your representatives. Use the Too Many Cuts petitions page to find issues that directly concern you.

The charity Empty Homes is campaigning on the issue of thousands of empty homes not being used to rehome families in need. 

Read more about the Empty Homes Scandal campaign on Channel 4.

Information on how to rescue a Empty Home

The Housing Disaster Set for January 2012 - A Ticking Timebomb

The Housing Disaster set for January 2012

Housing benefit is set to be cut and capped in January 2012. The original plans were delayed by nine months to allow councils to prepare for an exodus of tenants from affluent, to less affluent areas. How likely is it really that Landlords will reduce their rents to meet the new LHA (Local Housing Allowance) caps? This is what the coalition government think will happen, and are in fact depending on.

The much more likely scenario, in this strange thing we know as The Real World, is that landlords still have mortgages to pay on their buy to let properties, and will not be financially able to implement such a thing, even if they wanted to. Those few landlords who would be in a position to reduce rents, won't because the market rate will not see a general drop. Landlords who so readily put up their rents to meet the LHA rates, will never be just as ready to cut them.

So where does that leave the tenants - of whom a staggering 388,000 (August 2011 government figures) in London alone are the working poor, settled in their homes and having lived in those areas for years, with jobs there and their children at local schools. There are some relative newcomers to these areas, but they are only there due to a lack of affordable, local authority or housing association homes, and/or migration for a job. There are many reasons why a person may have chosen or been forced to rent in an expensive area; some of these people would have started renting their homes in better times, when they had a well paying job, and have since been made redundant and had to claim housing benefit. Some will have been there a long time, but become entitled to housing benefit over the years as their rent increased. Some will have lived there for years due to family connections, and some will have had little choice due to other circumstances.

I, for example am one of those types - when I left my abusive marriage, the only choice available to me was to rent privately, in a home far more expensive than one with a housing association - there simply wasn't enough social, affordble housing to give me any choice in the matter. The only way I could leave and be put into emergency (B&B) accomodation was to get my ex to agree to officially evict me - he refused, because he refused to believe the relationship was over, and put every obstacle possible in my way. I was offered a place at a refuge, but it was over 20 miles away and to go there would have meant leaving my job and uprooting my child, who had already had a difficult year. So, no choice for me - it had to be private rental.

Thankfully, although the rent was more expensive than LA or HA housing, I was able to meet it with the aid of housing benefit, keep my job, keep my child settled with her long established friendships and keep the support of friends in the area. I fear for other people who are faced with a similar choice - if they happen to be settled in an affluent area, they will face having to move potentially very far away from family, schools, jobs, support - just to find somewhere where the newly capped LHA will actually go some way to meeting the cost of market rents.

The capping won't affect me directly - my place, although reasonably expensive for the area, will still fall under the capped rate, and I won't therefore find it impossible to meet the new shortfall between benefit and rent, so won't have to move out of the area. It's how easily this could have been me, or anyone - that strikes a chord.

So, the answer to the question of "where does this leave the tenants?" is this:

They will need to find the shortfall or increased shortfall between the capped LHA and their rent themselves. In times already so squeezed, this will be impossible for many.

So the next option is to move away, potentially making a commute to their jobs impossible to afford.

The option of moving away presents many other problems. If a tenant is lucky enough to be offered social housing, they will still have the cost of removals and making the home suitable to be lived in - social housing properties are let unfurnished and not carpeted and often in a poor state of decoration.

Local authorities and housing associations do not have enough properties for everyone this will affect, so many will need to find a private rental, and so will need to stump up the cash in advance for the deposit and first months rent, while awaiting their deposit back from their previous landlord, and awaiting the rent in advance or a portion of it back from their new LHA claim - something that could take up to six weeks to be granted, meaning on top of that they may also have to find another months rent themselves in the meantime.

They may also need to pass a credit check or find a guarantor to be allowed to privately rent a property - these hurdles combined will mean for some that moving just isn't possible and they will have to sit it out and wait to be evicted and housed in emergency accomodation - again most likely very far away from their jobs, childcare, and support networks.

For some of these people, (the single working and unemployed poor) - sadly the local authority will not have a duty to house them and they could face homelessness. Some will be classed as having made themselves intentionally homeless, and those forced to leave jobs to claim benefits may have their claims refused, as it will appear they have simply walked out of a job.

Some of these people will be elderly, disabled or otherwise vulnerable, unaware of their rights and unable to seek help.

This situation awaits them in just under a months time - a ticking time bomb of personal disaster for many, and collective shame for the coalition.

These measures will save just 50 million pounds. It may sound a lot, but in the grand scheme of things where the UK budget deficit is one TRILLION pounds, and tax evasion costs the UK 15.2 BILLION in lost revenue, and 11 Billion may be spent on the HS2 Birmingham to London high speed rail line, the human cost of this measure is appalling and unjustifiable.