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| Young people aged 18 to 21 will no longer receive housing benefit towards their rent – but those saving up to buy will get cash from the Treasury. Photograph: Dimitris Legakis/Athena Pictures |
I’ve written about this before. Leaving aside its arbitrary and politically nonsensical rationale, supposedly stopping “dependence on benefits” by starving poor people into economic activity, the costs that the policy incurs will outweigh any potential savings.
Young people will simply not be able to afford their rent, and will turn to loan sharks and the type of high-cost, dodgy credit available to people on low incomes. Or they’ll end up homeless, on the street or relying on the local council to place them in a hostel or temporary accommodation, which invariably costs many times more than the local market rate for a private rented flat.
Now, in addition, the Chartered Institute of Housing has released research which shows that housing is almost totally out of reach for young single people in many areas. Single young people are finding that the gap between how much the cheapest properties in their area are and how much help they get with housing costs through the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) makes housing inaccessible. And a freeze on LHA until 2020 will only make matters worse.
Young tenants can either attempt to find the cash needed to make up their rent from the rest of their budget – skimping on food, fuel and other bills – or will end up in arrears and face potential homelessness. In 50 areas, LHA covers less than a quarter of local rents and, with competition for cheaper properties already high, young people in receipt of benefits often find they aren’t private landlords’ preferred tenants anyway.
So we have very young adults who’ve had housing support completely stripped away, and even on reaching their 21st birthday, there is no relief to be found, only a tough market increasingly squeezing them out. Housing simply isn’t working for millions of young people, and has become a huge source of constant anxiety on a scale it has rarely been in the past.
But it isn’t all bad news for young people. This April the government is also bringing in the “Lifetime ISA”, a tax-free savings account that gives you £1,000 of cash from the government when you save £4,000 a year towards buying your first home. So if you save the maximum for five years, you’ll receive a £5,000 wad from the Treasury. The maximum you can receive is £32,000. This will encourage and help first-time buyers, we’re told.
These policies are completely typical of the Conservative approach, dividing young people and entrenching deep inequality.
The people who need help least, the minted with parental help available for purchasing homes, get a tax-free lump sum to make their lives even easier. The people who need help most are completely cut adrift, and have any hope of becoming solvent and achieving not even comfort but basic shelter destroyed by actively cruel policies.
It’s typical of austerity policies in all its hypocrisy, combined with turbo-charged venom for the poor. After the financial crash, we were repeatedly told that paying wealthy financiers and bankers less, or even scrapping bonuses was out of the question: paying them more would incentivise them to perform far better and benefit everyone. But the poor are a different species to Conservatives: the only way to make them find a home, or a job, or to work harder, is to starve them into action, deny them a roof over their head, and threaten them with sanctions and the withdrawal of subsistence welfare payments.
For years politicians and commentators have argued there is a generational war, shown in the effects of the housing crisis and the erosion of workers’ rights. But old habits die hard. April’s disparate approach to young people over housing shows the Conservative party is still fighting the class war.
https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2017/mar/31/class-war-housing-conservatives-young-people-unaffordable
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