housing benefit

This article explains the potentially huge impact (significant for rural areas) that changes to housing benefit in 2013 will have on the physical and social mobility of people in the rented sector.

Shelter and CIH warn that this means that, in places where rents rise faster than inflation, housing benefit will increasingly fail to cover housing costs.

Their report claims that by 2023, 34% of local authorities outside London will be unaffordable for people claiming local housing allowance, including those in working households on low incomes or unable to work such as pensioners, carers and people with disabilities.

Earlier research carried out for Shelter by Cambridge University has already predicted that many on housing benefit in London will have to move out of their homes to areas where rents are lower.

But suggestions that those outside the capital will also be affected is likely to revive concerns that the changes will contribute to a form of social engineering that will have consequences for much of the country.