DSS Applicants Face Homelessness When Landlord’s Refuse Rental Applications

housing benefit

‘No DSS But Small Dogs Considered’

People receiving housing benefits from the Department of Work and Pensions, aka DSS, are facing discrimination. DSS refers to the old Department of Social Security. In the UK, it is impossible for a welfare benefits recipient to get a home in some areas.

The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee interviewed letting agent Helen Buck, Executive Director of Your Move, in a recent hearing:

“MP Chris Stephens: Both your organisations have advertisements that contain the phrase ‘No DSS’. Do you consider that to be legal or illegal?”

“Helen Buck: We don’t have any adverts that say ‘No DSS’.”

“Chris Stephens: It is interesting that you say that, Helen, because Shelter provided us with some adverts from March 2019 that say “No DSS”: a bedroom property to rent in Essex—no DSS; a property to rent in west Yorkshire—no DSS; a property to rent in Romford—no DSS; and my favourite one, a one-bedroom property to rent in Telford: “Sorry no DSS. Small dogs considered.” Presumably the small dog has to provide some form of proof of income.”

“Helen Buck: They are shocking.”

“Chris Stephens: That is just a Google search, Helen, from Your Move, in March 2019.”

You can imagine Buck squirming in her seat!

Buck’s ad harks back to the 1960s when many lettings advertised “No Blacks, Irish or Dogs.” While banning “blacks” or “Irish” is unacceptable, we can apparently refuse those without a job due to disability, low income or other reasons. And, yes, a dog is preferable to someone in that situation!

DSS Tenant Ends Up in Mental Hospital

Shelter, a housing charity, did a mailing last week highlighting the issue. It said, “Yesterday, a powerful group of MPs sat down to examine the discrimination that people receiving housing benefit face when renting. This is a monumental first, and we were front and centre to witness it alongside some passionate Shelter campaigners.”

The Committee also heard from a tenant who narrowly avoided homelessness thanks to no letting agent or landlord in the locality taking anyone in. The stress was so much, she was detained under the Mental Health Act after she had landed her tenancy.

The Committee heard, “Philippa Lalor: I obviously received an eviction notice, which gave me two months to get out of my property. I was lucky that we found one within two months, but we found it literally at the end of two months. We phoned every single letting agent within the Croydon borough … phoned every single Gumtree person within the Croydon borough. We went on every internet site. At the end of this, by the time we had moved in, my mental health had deteriorated so badly that I spent six months in a psychiatric hospital, unable to leave, unable to know my own name and completely psychotic, because that was how much stress I had been under.”

Banks Tell Landlords ‘No DSS’

It appears many banks refuse to lend to landlords who rent out to people receiving benefits.

Major high street bank Natwest (bailed out in the Credit Crunch) had a policy of refusing buy-to-let mortgages to landlords with welfare tenants until recently. The Mortgage Solutions website reports, “Helena McAleer was reduced to tears after NatWest said she had breached her mortgage terms by letting her two-bedroom property in Belfast to a tenant in receipt of support from the state. The 35-year-old was given the stark ultimatum of making her tenant homeless or footing a £2,500 bill to leave the NatWest deal, after asking for a further advance from the lender.”

The House of Commons enquiry asked her about this. The MP asked: “Okay, so you managed to find a new mortgage provider, but at that point NatWest presumably weren’t being very co-operative, and you were in breach because you rented to someone who was paying via housing benefit. Were you told, “We are not letting you remortgage”?

“Helena McAleer: Yes, the choice was evict the tenant—or seek an alternative tenant—or leave them and pay the early repayment charge of about £2,500. There was no alternative.”

“Chair: So they don’t say ‘Evict.’ They just say, ‘Find an alternative tenant’ and then you do the eviction.”

Classism

For a good 20 years, I was on the main state rental support payment Housing Benefit. That was until my family put a home in a trust for my partner Tracee, daughter and me. It baffles me why the agencies above refused people like me.

Unlike my time in work for employment agencies in the 90’s I knew where my rent was coming from. Every two weeks, it would go in my bank, and I would pay monthly ahead of the rent day. The only times it was problematic was when I was investigated in two welfare reviews for suspected cheating. Both times I came up clean, but with no state income in both cases for six weeks. This was all repaid as “back pay” and the landlords had their share.

It is rightly illegal to be racist or sexist in society. The ruling classes therefore needed another way to sow division among those they ruled over in the early 2000s.

The problem it appears is one of class. “Classism” has been actively promoted by current and previous governments. It is used to divert anger away from the ruling class. Under Prime Ministers Blair, Brown and Cameron, the media has focused attention on those who do not work. They blame them for many of the UK’s ills. After bailing the banks out cost 1.162 trillion Pounds ($1.515 trillion) in the Credit Crunch, a diversion was needed. Couldn’t blame “Blacks, Irish,” or dogs for paying out close to 30% of the UK GDP to bankers! Instead the “feckless, workless” seemed to be a legally acceptable target.

Diversionary Tactics

Current editor of the London Evening Standard and 2012 Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme (quoted in the Guardian), “The rich will be asked to pay a greater share. But it is a ‘delusion’ to think that taxes on the rich will solve the problem. It is unfair that people listening to this programme going out to work see the neighbour next door with the blinds down because they are on benefits.”

I remember him saying something similar in the Commons when announcing his budget.

At around the same time as these comments were made, there were plans in place to “crack down on welfare scroungers.” A 2014 Guardian article reported, “previous research shows that the public perception of fraud is 34 times higher than the reality.”

The upshot of such research, according to the same article, was that “As recent research by the Who Benefits? campaign has revealed, 15% of those receiving benefits say they have experienced verbal abuse as a result, while 4% report having been physically abused – this amounts to almost 800,000 and 200,000 people respectively.”

So, the diversionary tactics of those in power seems to have worked rather well. People in wheelchairs got the blame for the world’s ills. They now find it hard to get housing, let alone fair treatment in society. Better break out another bottle of Bollinger, old chap, as that tactic has helped you survive another day. The plebs are hating one another nicely, so there’s not much to worry about for now!


Richard Shrubb

Richard Shrubb

  

With a background as a mental health service user, Richard has been a leading UK social affairs writer in the past. He now focuses this energy in social justice in the most economically deprived town of the UK, Weymouth in Dorset while looking after his wife, daughter and three cats in nearby Prince Charles' housing estate of Poundbury.

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