Tue 27 Feb 2018, 03:39 AM | Posted by Mark Langabeer
Sarah, from Andover, wrote the following: “I am a mum of 3 children, ages 3, 7 and11. I have had to private rent for the last 8 years due to the lack of council properties available. I have moved 7 times within those 8 years and each time to a completely different area because of a lack of estate agents and landlords no longer wanting us after the benefit cuts. Due to be refused a tenancy over and over again so many times due to being on housing benefit, we have had to look further afield.
“We have moved from Southampton to Eastleigh to Gosport to Andover. My daughter, who is aged 11, has been affected by this after now being in her 8th school. This is all because there are so many landlords who will not accept housing benefit, even though we always paid our rent on time. This needs to come to a stop. We do not feel safe in any property. We have been faced with homelessness previously, due to not finding anywhere and even when we have, the estate agents feel they can charge hundreds of pounds more due to our circumstances which does not make any sense as we have a low income, so we are forced to be homeless if we can’t pay or find a suitable guarantor. These guarantors that they want have to be very specific and earning so much money but unfortunately not everyone knows someone that is employed and earning so much money”.
Sarah’s story is an indictment of the Tory policy of austerity and the “wonders of the so-called free market”. Only a Labour Government, committed to a socialist housing programme, can solve the problems that Sarah many others are having to endure. Labour must restore housing benefit, secure tenancies and a crash programme of council house building in order to end the nightmare of homelessness.
