[IamSam]

It sounds like the bad guys on both sides of the pond have been exchanging tips. Just a few observations from the American side:

Originally Posted by DanaC

Amongst the many austerity measures brought in by the current government are a raft of changes designed to completely overhaul the benefits system.

Some of the most controversial changes are to housing benefit. These changes are about to bite as the new financial year begins in April.

At least you guys in the UK aren't being presented with potential changes/overhauls every couple of weeks the way the US has lately. The state of low income housing in the US is a national disgrace. Obama had already made cuts to various "entitlement” programs during his first term in office. Housing has been especially hard hit. As it now stands, housing vouchers are scarcer than hens’ teeth and more precious than rubies. Wait lists wind down the halls of time for two, three, five years and more. And that’s before any effects of the sequester, the coming government shut-down, etc., etc.

I’ve read estimates that range from 100,000 to 350,000 households being put out on the streets over the next 10 years or less thanks to cuts in federal housing programs. These household members include the elderly, the disabled, children from low income families, and disabled veterans, etc. The sequester will hit the Department of Housing and Urban Authority (HUD) very hard.

Today I called the local Housing Authority just to find out where we all stand. Looks like we’re OK for March, but come the cruelest month, all bets are off. Well, at least April should be slightly warmer. Maybe.

On face value the changes sound like they are an attempt to make the system fairer. certainly the word fairness gets used an awul lot in the discussions. It is unfair, say ministers, that a family in receipt of benefits should be able to live in a house and area which ordinary working families could not hope to afford. So, a hard cap on total payments for housing benefits has been introduced. Rather than than housing allowances being tagged wholly to the value of rents in the are, theynow take account of that local value but are hardcapped.

One thing about Public Housing in the US, very few people think that those who live there are getting some kind of ace deal. Most Americans do not harbor a desire to move into the so-called projects in our urban areas and a single family voucher is not much envied, either. The system is distinctly unfair to the poor who are forced to make use of it, so no one here is too concerned with fairness. Our poor deserve what they get - very little.

Although the system here uses something called the "fair market value" for setting allowed rental prices, don't let that blatent misnomer mislead you. Fair market value equals a monthly rental payment that will allow you to lease a run down trailer next to a meth lab.

In the South, and particularly in London, this effectively prices housing benefit claimants out of the private rental market entirely and there is a woefully low number of social houses available.

The same thing is true here, and not only in big cities, but in almost any area where jobs are available. For example, the local housing authority will cover the rent for a ramshackle apartment in a town where the unemployment is near 20%, but woe to anyone wishing to move 50 miles down the road to a town where a person just might find a job. THERE the 'fair market" is $650/month against an average real world cost of $1500 or so for a modest two bedroom home. $650 in THAT town might get you a storage shed - if you're lucky.

At the same time, a second limit has been placed on housing benefit, in what has bene termed in the press a 'bedroom tax'. If a house is under occupied housing benefit will be reduced for every unoccupied bedroom...

Nice. Here they go that even one better. If a person moves out of a Section 8 rental, the entire family ends up being displaced. Non family members are not allowed to live together, so you can't just put an ad in the paper to fill your vacancy.

And it's a false economy. It costs us more to engage in this rampant cruelty, than it does to offer genuine and well-funded support. Clever though. As the costs mount the paymasters can say....look, the benefits system is breaking....it is costing too much we must cut. And cut. And reshape. Until it becomes a creaking and broken thing...and they can say again, look it is broken, it costs too much it is inefficient, we must reshape and cut. Rinse and repeat.

Yep, exactly. I don't see how any rational observer in EITHER of our countries view these sorts of policies and attitudes as anything BUT class warfare.

And in the US, there's a big racial component, as well. Here everyone who is on housing assistance or foodstamps is an African American welfare queen who uses her foodstamps for lobster dinners or else to buy meth. If you gave her and her family decent housing, they'd just turn it into yet one more crack house. Oh, and let's not even get started on all those illegals who get on the US gov't tit before the water from the Rio Grande is even dried from their backs. Why should we sacrifice our poor, hard-working millionaires to support people like THAT? Oh, grrr!

I'm with you all the way, girlfriend!