Tenants on benefits still facing rental discrimination – claim

It’s not discrimination it’s business sense and landlords take the best tenant. Why is it this awful government and it’s supporters think they can force landlords and agents to accept what does not make financial sense.

Reply to the comment left by David at 12/11/2026 – 10:32
A car hire company is told who they must rent a car to..communism.

There’s also the issue of getting insurance against non-payment of rent as the only policies I have seen do not cover tenants on benefits. Am I correct?

I do let to claimants and families but not all are created equal.
Firstly families often don’t understand bedroom entitlement and over crowding rules. On many occassions families apply for 2 bedroom properties when they clearly have a 3 bedroom entitlement. We aren’t discriminating when we say “No”. We are adhering to the law.

A single person with a one bedroom or shared house entitlement has very little opportunity to bridge the gap between LHA and reality. Are we discriminating when we don’t offer them a viewing or are we helping them by not wasting their time and money attending a viewing for a property they have approximately zero chance of passing affordability checks for? Especially when we have 20 other applicants who don’t have affordability issues. If LHA wasn’t repeatedly frozen we may be more willing to house single claimants but right now it is genuinely a case of not being able to offer rents that are low enough for them to have sufficient money left over for food or any kind of lifestyle. None of us want to feel responsible for deteriorating mental health or malnutrition in our tenants, so until LHA is linked to reality single claimants are going to find it incredibly hard to secure a tenancy, especially now we can’t take a lump sum up front.

Families are different and need careful examination of their financial circumstances. An unemployed family is likely to have affordability issues whereas a working family could have multiple income disregards. The first £427 per month of earnings is usually totally disregarded before the UC taper kicks in. Child support is disregarded and any lodger income is disregarded. This could easily amount to well over £1000 per month of disregarded income which will bridge any shortfall in LHA. In many cases we wouldn’t actually know a family was receiving UC as their earnings would be sufficient to pass affordability checks without mentioning the UC top up.

Consideration has to be given as to whether the rent together with other living costs is affordable for the applicant. If it isn’t then Landlord can turn them down. Sadly, experience has proved to a lot of landlords that even if someone is claiming Housing allowance/housing benefit in respect of rental expense they do not always use it to pay the rent! Other expenses take priority with some.

Given the continual reports of DWP rogue decisions and incompetence in regard to housing allowance payments this is hardly surprising.

They proper thick aren’t they.
We told em this would still happen.
I’ll say it out loud, I’m not taking Benefit tenants any more & I was the biggest Benefit Landlord in Nottingham.
The Letting agents aren’t taking Benefit tenants unless the Landlord says They seem good.
Letting agents just do it on affordability secretly.

Acorn would be better off coming to ask WHY we ain’t taking em any more. And then channel their efforts in that.

Reply to the comment left by John MacAlevey at 12/11/2026 – 10:51
It’s all about affordability referencing and guarantors. That’s not discrimination, its the world the government have created

And why wouldn’t we filter out the dross ? My house means it’s ME who decides who enters my house and ME who decides who stays in it. When I book a hotel I ask if they take immigrants because I don’t want to be pestered by them. My money my choice.

Because of this discrimination nonsense, we now offer everyone e viewing and everyone gets to fill out a tenancy application. This is as far as my non-discrimination goes.
I get 30-40 applicants per house – of course I am going to pick the best one, that is going to give me least hassle, and pay the rent.

Since the abolition of S21 (not the landlords’ fault), it is near impossible to evict anyone. So no more taking a chance on someone.
I used to ask benefit claimants for HB to be paid direct to me. Since UC it is now quite hard to achieve this (not the landlords’ fault), and I have been caught out with tenants not passing on their Housing element of the UC.
On top of that, if the claimant is claiming UC fraudulently (not the landlords’ fault), DWP tries to claw it back from the landlord.
If I need to do a CCJ for arrears and damage, I cannot apply an Attachment of Earnings and get my money back, unlike a working tenant.
There are so many ifs, it is just not worth it.
If this government thinks we are a charity, then they should tax us accordingly. But you can’t have your cake and …..