{"id":1713,"date":"2014-10-03T12:17:40","date_gmt":"2014-10-03T11:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=1713"},"modified":"2014-10-03T12:22:30","modified_gmt":"2014-10-03T11:22:30","slug":"crisis-squeezed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=1713","title":{"rendered":"Crisis of the squeezed"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

The housing benefit was meant to be for, as the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own website states, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bthose on low income.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 But as the housing crisis reaches a tipping point, new research shows that middle-income earners are turning to the housing benefit in droves in order to afford a roof over their heads.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The National Housing Federation released a report last month<\/a> that paints a bleak picture of the nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s housing crunch. Middle-income earners, making between \u00c2\u014120,000 and \u00c2\u014130,000 a year accounted for a full two-thirds of housing benefit claims. Since 2008, the number of middle income earners claiming the benefit rose by 350,000, which amounts to 58,000 every year in the past six years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The number of working people who claim housing benefit is now a staggering one in five. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worse, the trend is predicted to continue. The Federation estimates that in five years, the rate of in-work housing benefit claimants will rise to one in three.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Why are so many hard-working families struggling to afford a home? The Federation believes the culprit is a convergence of many factors \u00e2\u20ac\u201c astronomically increasing housing costs; the impact of not enough houses being built; stagnating wages that are expected to continue to flat line; and the growing number of people renting privately.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Housing benefit represents the single most costly benefit to the taxpayer, amounting to \u00c2\u014123.8bn in 2013-2014 and accounting for 30 per cent of the welfare bill.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While the Tory-led government loves to blame poor \u00e2\u20ac\u015bbenefits scroungers\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 who milk off the public purse, the truth in the Federation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s report is clear \u00e2\u20ac\u201c those who claim benefits work \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and many of them fall in the middle of the income distribution.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The blame for the benefits bill thus falls squarely on the shoulders of those at the top;\u00c2\u00a0 greedy developers and landlords pricing out honest working people from the housing market, and corporate fat cats who choose to keep wages low to line their pockets. It then falls to the state to bridge the gap.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bOur shortage of affordable housing is now leaving families on a decent wage unable to cover the cost of their homes. This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sustainable or right.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIn the 1970s around 80 per cent of government housing spend went on building homes with about 20 per cent on housing benefits, but today it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the other way round,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he added.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Prime minister David Cameron\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent promises of tax cuts for the rich, with an additional \u00c2\u0141500 a year squeeze on benefits claimants, is not only further proof that the Tories hold no quarter for low-income workers. As the Federation report has shown, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve chosen to abandon those in the middle, too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe Tory party that has done more to make working people impoverished and insecure than any government since Margaret Thatcher,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 said Unite general secretary Len McCluskey. \u00e2\u20ac\u015b It cosies up to the hedge funds and tax avoiders that take from our nation while robbing \u00c2\u0141500 a year from the hardest working people in the country.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The housing benefit was meant to be for, as the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own website states, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bthose on low income.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 But as the housing crisis reaches a tipping point, new research shows that middle-income earners are turning to the housing benefit in droves in order to afford a roof over their heads.   The National Housing Federation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[109,76,44],"wps_subtitle":"Record numbers of middle-incomed claim housing benefit ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1713"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1716,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713\/revisions\/1716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}