CML: Could welfare reform restrict housing supply?
Wednesday, 21 September 2011
3:40 PM
As part of its drive to reform welfare, the government is insisting that housing benefit is paid directly to tenants. But tenants, consumer groups, landlords, lenders and providers of social housing are united in opposition, and are urging the government to re-consider.
The impact on housing associations’ income could make it more difficult and expensive to fund social housing. And that would jeopardise another key government objective – to increase the supply of homes.
Today’s issue of CML News & Views also considers an alternative to mortgage possession for borrowers in difficulty.
In cases where home-ownership really is no longer an option, might it be better for borrowers to sell their home voluntarily and be helped into housing in another form of tenure?
To see all the stories in full, go to the latest issue of CML News & Views.
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Opposition is growing from the Labour backbenches towards proposals making claimants work for their benefits contained in the welfare reform bill.
The government's determination to roll out pension credits has been at the expense of other measures that could better tackle pensioner poverty, a new report warns.
Benefit claimants will be subjected to routine lie detector tests in an attempt to reduce fraud, the work and pensions minister John Hutton has announced.
The government must take a "new approach" to people whose addictions or dysfunctional family life mean they will never achieve their potential, Tony Blair has said.
The current row over the housing benefit cap is obscuring the real impact cuts will have on low income people across the country.
New housing minister Caroline Flint today continued to apply her old work and pensions brief to social housing.
A comprehensive shake-up of the welfare system which would see Labour's tax credits potentially replaced by a 'universal benefit' is being outlined today.
The government has confirmed that it is looking at a number of ways to reform the welfare system by encouraging long-term unemployed people to find work.
Genuine under-occupation needs to be tackled - but it has to be done more sensitively than the government is proposing.
Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith has called the disincentives to work in New Labour's welfare state a "tragedy".
