THE Tory/LibDem coalition cuts to housing benefit come into effect today with devastating consequences for all unemployed or low paid workers who rely on benefits to keep a roof over their heads and the heads of their families.
The changes to the housing benefit scheme involve capping the amount payable for rent and cutting benefit by pegging it to 80% of private sector rents.
This means, in effect, that rents for unemployed and low paid workers for so-called ‘social housing’ will be fixed at 80% of the going rate in an area charged by private landlords, while housing benefit will be capped to a maximum depending on the size of the house being rented.
A report from the respected Chartered Institute of Housing reveals that a further 800,000 homes will be priced out of the reach of workers as a direct result of these cuts.
In central London, they estimate that 35,000 homes will be priced out of the reach of those relying on housing benefit with immediate effect.
Transferring to areas in London that have lower private rents will not be an option either.
In East London boroughs there are twice as many people claiming housing benefit as there is low-cost housing, while in Croydon 17,000 claimants are competing for just 10,000 affordable properties.
Nor is this crisis confined just to London and the south-east. Similar situations exist in cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow.
The prospect in the coming months is for literally hundreds of thousands of low paid and unemployed workers being forced out of their homes either onto the streets or into what the Institute refers to as ‘benefit ghettos’ – that is run down old seaside towns where rents are cheapest – where, they warn, there will be ‘increased social problems and a breakdown in community cohesion.’
Just to turn the screw even tighter on working class families struggling to feed and house their families, the coalition are now proposing to make it a criminal offence for council tenants to rent out a room in their council house instead of a civil matter between tenant and local council.
Poverty is a crime under modern capitalism.
The real crime, however, has been the all-out assault and destruction of council housing carried out first by the Thatcher government in the 1980s and enthusiastically continued by the Blair/Brown Labour governments who fully endorsed and pursued the policy of selling off council housing and transferring vast stocks of social housing to the speculators of the private sector.
Today the Labour leadership are equally right behind slashing benefits to make workers pay for the crisis caused by the capitalist banks stating that they support the principle of the benefit cap.
Their only quibble is over ‘getting the details right’ according to shadow welfare secretary Liam Byrne.
Council housing, affordable decent housing for workers, was one of the central tenets of the welfare state established in the 1940s as a concession to a powerful working class determined not to go back to the poverty and destitution it had previously lived in under capitalism.
The Labour reformists claimed it as a shining example of how the evils of capitalism could be overcome without the need to overthrow capitalism itself.
This boast today has turned to ashes in their mouths as it becomes clear to every worker that every basic right from food to housing is under attack from this bankrupt system as it seeks to drive the working class back to conditions not seen since the 19th century.
Only through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the advance to socialism can even the most basic requirements for life be met today.
