Conservatives, Housing, Society, Labour, Housing benefit, Social housing Business | The Guardian
Holding down benefit rates has sent homelessness soaring and led to an exodus of poorer people from our citiesIn this series we look at several Conservative policy decisions since 2010 that may have been forgotten, but which have had a profound effect on life in BritainWhat springs to mind when you think about the damaging legacy of the last 14 years of welfare cuts? Probably policies such as the bedroom tax, the two-child limit or the punitive introduction of universal credit. But one policy is often left out of this reckoning, even though it has arguably had an even greater impact: the repeated capping and freezing of local housing allowance (LHA).This cut is a direct cause of Britain’s soaring homelessness figures, the desperate mothers trapped for years in wholly unsuitable temporary housing, the rapid social cleansing of our major cities and even the financial crisis overwhelming England’s local authorities.Peter Apps is a contributing editor at Inside Housing and the author of Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen Continue reading…
Holding down benefit rates has sent homelessness soaring and led to an exodus of poorer people from our cities
In this series we look at several Conservative policy decisions since 2010 that may have been forgotten, but which have had a profound effect on life in Britain
What springs to mind when you think about the damaging legacy of the last 14 years of welfare cuts? Probably policies such as the bedroom tax, the two-child limit or the punitive introduction of universal credit. But one policy is often left out of this reckoning, even though it has arguably had an even greater impact: the repeated capping and freezing of local housing allowance (LHA).
This cut is a direct cause of Britain’s soaring homelessness figures, the desperate mothers trapped for years in wholly unsuitable temporary housing, the rapid social cleansing of our major cities and even the financial crisis overwhelming England’s local authorities.
Peter Apps is a contributing editor at Inside Housing and the author of Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen
