asra's Chief Executive, Matt Cooney, recently wrote to MPs
asking them to re-think plans to pay tenants Housing Benefit
directly rather than to their landlords. Read what Matt had to
say:
"I know that you are aware of the "bedroom tax" and the
potential impact on your constituents who rely on benefits to
support their household budgets.
I thought it may be useful to let you know the impact of the
Bedroom Tax on Asra. Asra is a Housing Association that
provides 13,000 homes in the East Midlands and South East with the
biggest concentration in Leicester and Leicestershire. The
impact of the Bedroom Tax will be as follows,
|
|
Total No of HB customers under occupying
|
Average weekly shortfall per customer
|
Total Weekly Shortfall
|
Total Potential Annual Shortfall
|
|
At least one bedroom
|
1230
|
£12.90
|
£15,867
|
£825,084
|
|
2 or more bedrooms
|
270
|
£24.65
|
£6,656
|
£346,112
|
|
Total
|
1500
|
n/a
|
£22,523
|
£1,171,196
|
As you can see, Asra tenants will have to pay almost an
additional £1.2m per annum in additional rent. Housing
Associations like Asra will have to do whatever we can to support
tenants through this change and we have a number of initiatives
planned to help our customers with the change.
Most people appear to support the government's welfare reforms
and I suppose tenants of social landlords need to accept their
share of the pain by helping the country's finances to get back on
track. However I do not think that most people support the
government's intention to pay Housing Benefit direct to tenants
from October of this year.
Approximately 53% of our tenants receive Housing Benefit and
this is currently paid directly to us as the landlord. The
government believe that paying this direct to tenants will help
people to take charge of their own affairs and will encourage less
dependency. However the recent demonstration projects to test
payment direct to tenants have shown that this is not the case and
rent arrears have increased for participating Housing Associations
by an average of 51% (see National Housing Federation website).
Paying Housing Benefit direct to tenants will not achieve the
governments social objectives, but instead, will cause significant
financial damage to Housing Associations and local councils.
In short, it is a thoroughly daft idea and any help you can provide
in getting it stopped would be welcomed."
Matt Cooney - Group Chief Executive
