Just 5% of private rentals affordable on housing benefit

theguardian.com:

Families on housing benefit are being driven to live in areas of high crime and low employment because only one in 20 private rented homes are now affordable – the lowest level on record, new analysis reveals.

A freeze on housing benefit rates since April 2020 and waves of rent hikes have pushed the number of homes on the market that can be paid for through welfare down from 23% in April 2020 to 5%, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. Around 2 million households in England and Wales receive housing benefit.

Dave Lockyer, who is disabled with a 16-year-old son, told the Guardian it recently took him six months to find a flat in Woking that was within his welfare budget. The process was “insane”, he said, and left him facing homelessness or being moved to emergency accommodation in Essex, hours from his son’s school.

The problem represents a new front in an increasingly urgent housing crisis that is already seeing mortgage holders facing a huge financial squeeze from soaring interest rates and private landlords threatening to sell up. Meanwhile, social housebuilding remains modest; just one in five of all new homes are built by housing associations or councils. On Tuesday, the latest annual rough sleeping figures for London are set to be published amid fears that the problem is again getting worse.

The freeze in housing benefits also means renters are being forced into homes that are less well-insulated. The IFS found that affordable properties had heating and hot water costs that were 19% higher.

Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, the housing charity, said: “We have families coming to us who are forced to put up with disrepair like mould and damp because they can’t move anywhere else that’s covered by housing