We are in the midst of not just one housing crisis, but multiple overlapping crises. As interest rates have soared, attention has understandably focused on the explosion of the mortgage “timebomb”; the 4.2m households in Britain who have had their mortgage rates change and face sharp increases to their repayments, as well as the 3.3m households yet to do so. But another of our housing crises – that faced by low-income private renters – also made a rare foray into the limelight this week.
While the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has uprated other forms of social security with inflation, housing benefit for private renters – through a mechanism called local housing allowance (LHA) – remains frozen at 2020 levels. As a result, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that LHA covers only 5% of private rentals.
