Government urged to prevent rent arrears – not let them grow

At last, the NRLA talks some sense. Extending credit to people that are struggling financially rarely helps the situation.

However, not all landlords have the necessary skills to act as debt managers. Nor are they suitably qualified to provide impartial advice.

Perhaps Labour could use some funds from their magic money tree to help struggling tenants.

Tenants struggling with bills should make a list of their expenditure and assign a priority to each item. Negotiate cheaper payments where possible and stop spending on the least important items.

A step in the right direction for NRLA.

However, if Housing Benefit was paid direct to the landlord as a default, like in the golden days of the noughties, the tenants would not get into arrears in the first place.

The tenant knows they have a roof over their head, the courts will get fewer S8 and Landlord gets paid. Win-win.

At which point did we lose all common sense and direction in this country?

Does a mortgage lender give you another month to pay up if you miss a payment ? No.
Do they then increase the time to get further into arrears ? No.
Why encourage anyone to sink deeper & deeper into debt ? Only this idiotic government think it’s a good idea .Nuff said.

Certainty for tenants and landlords by keeping housing benefit rates linked to market rents for the duration of this Parliament.

YES YES YES!

Campaigning Against the Rent Arrears changes, – Yes, BUT
The ‘ golden rules ‘ are just signposting Tenants to the avenues that will help them, to the disadvantage of Landlords by various means such as Debt respite, and IVA !!!

I was going to put my penny’s worth down here but it’s just pointless. I’m looking now to sell all my portfolio. It’ll impact good tenants but I have to look after me and quite frankly it’s just not worth it anymore My sanity comes first.

The UC 5 week wait causes huge problems and embarrassment for first time claimants. Suddenly someone who has been weekly paid for years is dumped into the UC nightmare and expected to survive on fresh air for weeks. Then only receive a fraction of the amount they had earned while working.
I’ve had a couple of tenants who have delayed claiming until they have completely run out of money purely because they have never previously needed to claim and don’t know how the system works or what help is available. One of them was suffering from depression and struggled to get out of bed, never mind learn how to claim benefits. When he eventually did claim it was processed wrongly so he didn’t get half of what he should have. Then his bank took all the money to cover his overdraft charges (because he was too embarrassed to tell them he had lost his job). By the time he owed over 4 months rent I started giving him Section 21 notices to wave at anyone he could. Debt advisors, benefit staff, his bank, other creditors. I didn’t especially want to evict him but I did want him to prioritise paying his rent. All credit to him, he fully cleared the arrears before he moved out but it was a massive struggle that shouldn’t have happened. Far more help should have been available when he first claimed and it would help if errors with benefit claims could be backdated and corrected.

Whether the landlord should be paid direct is a whole topic on its own. As a landlord I prefer the money to come from my tenants. I tried dealing with direct payment from DWP about 3 years ago and it was horrendous. Maybe if the tenant was long term unemployed it might work OK but for tenants with erratic earnings only receiving a UC top up it’s too stressful for everyone concerned to have an additional person in the mix.

Arrears need to be kept to a minimum so the tenant has a reasonable chance of clearing them in a timely fashion. In this day and age of computers and Open Banking there really shouldn’t be any need for the 5 week wait. Surely the HMRC system is linked to the DWP system