Blatant discrimination against tenants on housing benefit is being replaced by more subtle bias in rental adverts, Shelter has claimed.
Where ‘No DSS’ has disappeared, terms such as “working households preferred” and “professional tenants only” are appearing instead.
Writing in social housing publication Inside Housing, Shelter’s director of communications Greg Beales said that the campaign against ‘No DSS’ adverts will continue.
He said: “Our services are also hearing about the more ridiculous demands placed on prospective tenants simply because they receive housing benefit – including asking for a huge amount of rent upfront or proof of thousands of pounds in savings.
“The irony here is that if you had thousands of pounds in savings, it would make you ineligible for housing benefit in the first place.
“This sort of discriminatory behaviour shows precisely why we must not give up.
“So, what’s next for ‘No DSS’?
“We want the rest of the lettings industry to follow in the footsteps of the letting agents, landlords and mortgage providers who have already started putting an end to such discrimination.
“As the campaign continues to grow, we hope that ‘No DSS’ will soon find it is as unwelcome as past forms of discrimination.”
Beales said that there are plenty of housing benefit tenants who can afford their rent, pay on time and take care of the properties they live in: “But sadly a lot of prejudice still exists.”
He said: “Almost a third of people receiving housing benefit have been locked out of renting a home because of ‘no DSS’ discrimination in the past five years.
“At Shelter, there is no doubt in our minds that this is not only grossly unfair, in most cases it is also likely to be unlawful under the Equality Act – meaning estate agents and landlords are breaking the law.
“That’s because it overwhelmingly impacts women and people with disabilities – groups more likely to need help with their rent, who the Equality Act protects against this kind of discrimination.
“For over a year we’ve been working hard to stamp out ‘no DSS’ across the entire lettings industry. This is from landlords and letting agents, to property portals and mortgage lenders – and with the help of thousands of activists around the country, change is coming thick and fast.”
Beales picked out property portals Zoopla and Rightmove for removing ‘No DSS” phrases from adverts; buy-to-let lenders who had removed restrictions; and the Competition and Markets Authority which has recently clarified that there is no excuse for a blanket ban on people receiving housing benefit.
He also cited a landlord who stood up for a tenant on housing benefits and her right to remain in situ.
However, he said: “Our fight for fairness is far from over.”
Comments (31)
Shelter says that “ just 6% of two-bedroom properties across the whole country were both available and affordable to LHA rate claimants”
https://blog.shelter.org.uk/2019/10/no-budget-means-no-help-for-those-facing-homelessness/
It gives a link to the source:
“In a new and extensive piece of research, the Bureau captured the details of more than 62,000 two-bed rental properties across England, Wales and Scotland that were advertised on a single day. By mapping these against the LHA rates in each area, we found just 5.6% are actually affordable on benefits.”
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2019-10-04/locked-out-how-britain-keeps-people-homeless
So those on benefits could not afford 94% of the advertised properties anyway. But Greg Beales wants to dictate how they should be advertised.
Beales is making a mountain out of a molehill, and a laughing stock of himself.
“The irony here is that if you had thousands of pounds in savings, it would make you ineligible for housing benefit in the first place”.
No problem then, they aren’t being discriminated against!
Well done Shelter, this is all of your making. Often operating as an advice centre of how to keep unrully tenants in properties for as long as possible to the detriment and considerable loss for landlords.
Blimey – Shelter has a “Director of Communications”!!
That should warrant an article in itself.
Let’s uncover some of the other high-falutin titles these drains on the coffers of this “charity” award themselves.
So you expect landlords to pay extra stamp duty, make changes to their tax liabilities, introduce costly yet compulsory property licensing in many areas but YET you still want to dictate who landlords are allowed to put into their properties!!!
Dear Shelter,
Finding a tenant who can afford to pay the rent is not ‘discrimination’.
Housing Benefit/Local Housing Allowance/Housing portion of Universal Credit is not guaranteed money.
Lenders in general do not accept HB/LHA/UC for mortgages/loans, especially not without a suitable guarantor. They all have far greater financial reserves than your typical landlord. If they do not, why should we?
Your opinion as to what the Equality Act means does not count for squat – that is for the courts to decide, so stop telling Agents & Landlords that they ARE breaking the law.
When I receive applications from individuals who are in receipt of Benefits I tell them that they should approach Shelter to act as a guarantor and give them a guarantor form for Shelter to complete. Surprisingly they do not come back but perhaps one day they will, one can always live in hope if not expectation.
How about it’s the landlords property let them choose their tenant with their own judgment
Here is how this can be sorted;
1)Shelter agree to be guarantors for all DSS Tenants.
2)Councils etc stop this daft ‘every 4 weeks’ payment thing that virtually NO accounting system uses, and pays the rent direct to the Landlord/Agent on the agreed upon date every month.
3)If there has been an overpayment then they go after the person that made the claim, accidentally or other wise.
4)If there is the intent to stop or decrease payments then this must be communicated to the Landlord/Agent as well as the Tenant at least 2 months in advance of the first date of the change.
I think we can all agree that we would be happy with at least 3 of these 4 being put into place? I mean, we all know that #1 isn’t going to happen…
Shelter does not house the homeless or provide temporary accommodation.. It has charitable status, which means it does not pay tax on the profits from its contracts with central and local government. However, despite its heart-rending adverts asking the unaware public for donations, Shelter is not a charity in the sense of doing charitable deeds like housing the homeless. It stopped raising money for housing over 40 years ago. It does not house anyone. All it does for the homeless is give advice. In that respect it is just like a small version of the Citizens Advice Bureau, which could take over that role.
But Shelter spends millions every year from donations on lobbying against landlords and letting agents, and now it has started to bully them using rentamobs. It recently declared that it wants to become a mass movement half a million strong. Who does it plan to bully with them?
Last year its senior members made a series of false claims on TV programmes. To see how Shelter has lost its moral compass, google Boycott Shelter.
https://www.property118.com/boycott-shelter/
Greg Beales continues to misrepresent the law, as he did a year ago.
https://www.property118.com/shelters-campaigns-director-misrepresented-law-agent-harassed/
In today’s article he claims “in most cases it is also likely to be unlawful under the Equality Act – meaning estate agents and landlords are breaking the law.”
A child could see that claiming something might be unlawful does not make it so.
When Beales did the same in an article for the ”i” in March, its editor added “This piece has been updated on 4/3 and paragraph six has been edited to remove the statement that these practices are ‘unlawful’ .
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/comment/housing-benefit-renting-no-dss-shelter-91810
PIE’s editor should do the same.
Shelter should build social housing and act like a real charity rather than attack the PRS and tell other people who they should or should not let their housing to. The constant landlord bashing in recent years makes it clear housing is not the place to invest as investors are treated as criminals by everyone.
Shelter is not a ‘real’ charity. The veneer is there to dupe the British public into donating £m’s every year, but they house no-one and pay their Execs fat-cat salaries.
We can be all politically correct and we can warn shelter and others of risks but it boils down to one main thing for me which I know will probably be unpopular.
Most landlords have one or two properties they are not big businesses, they are looking to help boost their retirement as they may not have a government or old style final salary pension.
And for that reason they should be allowed to choose or reject any potential tenant.
And if the government have an issue with it build more social housing and stop right to buy!
Most landlords have one or two properties they are not big businesses, they are looking to help boost their retirement …….
Which is what the government of the early 1990s was encouraging us all to do: Buy-to-let. They couldn’t get enough of it.
here, here
Good old Shelter, never looking at the bigger picture only at there small narrow minded view! They will assist the government in destroying the PRS soon enough. Pity, when there is so much good they could do.
Our job is to find the best tenant for the Landlords, and HB tenants are “financially weak” – without including the potential baggage that may arise during the tenancy. Shelter need to dip into their large bank account and build some houses themselves.
I just received a letter from Benefits agency (Addressed to our agency not the client) to say they have paid too much in benefits to a client and are seeking to recover several thousand of £’s from rent payments with immediate effect.
on their letter it says “by law we can use this tenants benefit payment to recover overpaid housing Benefit you owe us for other tenants. You must credit this tenants rent account with their full entitlement. You can’t ask them to make up the short fall”
We’ve never received anything other than the basic amount due for this or any other tenants rent so I have no idea even what this means.
The letter ( addressed to us) – goes on to say “Your repayment will be accepted without prejudice to any further action the DWP may wish to take against you in this case.”
I wonder why agents are reluctant to get involved with tenants on benefits.
In all likelihood, it means that the Tenant has been claiming a greater amount for housing benefit than they are rightfully due, and the DWP have now cottoned on. It’s always an attractive proposition accepting HB payments directly, however the risk is; where Tenants are found to be ‘fiddling’ the system…it is the recipient of the payments who is liable for the recovery of any overpayments.
We’ve been caught with this – and it can run into serious money. The biggest cause in our case(s) is single parent benefit being claimed when the tenants are actually living as a family – and we’ve all got those tenants. I don’t accept direct HB payment on new tenancies any more. It’s a desperation measure for us when there are 8 weeks arrears.
We were caught with this too – more than 20 years ago. £6k they wanted (they didn’t get it). Have never accepted direct payments since then.
Unbelievable.. shelter won’t want to know about this though … nothing negative please as DSS tenants are all whiter than white
you cant say that Jamie some snowflake may take that as a racist comment ( gasps with exacerbation )
That would make sense. We agents, would dutifully put NO DSS in adverts (or any other subtle wording), we could then reference the person and as suspected would come back as ‘accept with guarantor’ because the referencing companies don’t count housing benefits. The likelihood is they don’t have a friend or family member who annually earns 36 times the monthly rent, so good old Shelter could then be their guarantor! – perfect. Shelter would then genuinely be making a difference to help homelessness. We don’t discriminate for fun – we do it because we follow referencing procedures to protect our landlord clients. How can they not understand this.
Bridget…you might want to sit down for this one;
Shelter doesn’t exist to offer genuine “help” for anyone (other than themselves and those on Shelter’s payroll)… Shelter is, to all intents and purposes, the Government’s anti-PRS propaganda ‘arm’.
They provide the fallacious justifications for punitive measures against the PRS as a whole.
Indeed, were it their aim to genuinely help/support those in need, they would be petitioning the Government to build social housing…not attacking a completely separate (and private) facet of the housing sector.
Dear Mr Beales,
If Shelter promise to cover the damage deposit, any further damages that are caused that the damage deposit doesn’t cover, legal fees, rent not paid, and fees to cover a new tenant, I for one will be more than happy to take on a DSS tenant.
Time for shelter to put their (read millions in grants and donations ) money where their mouths are and provide financial guarantees. If they are right and taking tenants claiming benefits is so “risk free” they should jump at the chance for some good publicity and of course, will never lose any money.
Shelter will not because they know the realities of benefit tenants, besides they need every penny to ensure they can pay their Execs their fat-cat salaries.
Yip they can’t do that as Polly might not be able to trouser her £10k pcm
There is a very good reason landlords generally do not want DSS. The reason behind this is being completely ignored as normal. A bit of honestly in self-reflection would help. Let Shelter or the politicians personally guarantee vs any damages. They’ll soon change their tune.
1TB
That’s an awfully big bucket of tar you’ve just spread with a chuffin’ huge brush.
Most people are (usually through no fault of their own) one paycheck away from being on benefits.
The majority of those having to claim for day-to-day living assistance do so out of necessity and genuine reason. Good people in every respect of the phrase.
It’s a pity you clearly can’t see them that way.