Rent Allowance Recipients Turning Down Council Houses?

I was talking to a lady at work today whose daughter is in receipt of rent allowance. The daughter is renting in a well to do suburb in Dublin. The house is beautifully furnished with all the modern trappings.

The daughter has been on the Council waiting list for some time but is now in receipt of a letter from the Council offering her a house. She is not willing to accept this offer, as the property is in an area were crime is high etc.

To cut the story short, I foolishly had been under the illusion that if the Council found you a home you were obliged to accept it. Hence the TAX payer would no longer be forking out money for rent allowance.

Apparently not – if she does not accept the house she will continue to be in receipt of rent allowance and get to stay at the property of her choice.

If this is accurate than I find it absurd.

Could somebody please confirm?

If its a 'well-to-do' area, then I'd suggest that it's unlikely that rent allowance covers the full cost of her rent, there's a good chance some additional top up is being paid.

To the best of my knowledge (and I'm not very au fait with social housing provision) council houses rent for a standard rent; it may not be much less than what she is paying already in terms of the 'top up'.

I also believe (and again open to being corrected) that those on a council list have a certain number of 'refusals' available to them.

I believe you get two refusals and then you go back to end of the list.

You pay rent to the council and maybe the council rent is higher then what she pays for her part for rent allowance

Pat Kenny show covered all this before.
And you brought up Dublin so people in areas try to stay in the same area. A young girl in Ballyfermot was offered a house in Finglas and rejected it as it was far away.
Someone in Dublin Eight made Tallaght sound like the west of Ireland that it was so distant.

Maybe it's inertia or maybe living by their family is very important to them

But for sure there is picking and choosing going on.
And for sure there are people in cities that seem horrified at moving to another area.
Probably happens in rural areas too before posters focus in on that point

If a person in receipt of Rent Supplement refuses 2 offers of local authority housing in a 12 month period, they are debarred from Rent Supplement for 12 months.

Depending on income, some tenants would pay more in differential rent on a local authority house than they pay as their contribution towards the rent of the private property. The minimum contributions have recently been increased to align them more closely with differential rent levels.

Considering that fit and healthy people can sponge off society for ever and considering that civil servants and council officials don't really crack down too much on the these spongers, then it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that said sponger can pick and choose where to live at our expence.

Thirsty said:

If its a 'well-to-do' area, then I'd suggest that it's unlikely that rent allowance covers the full cost of her rent, there's a good chance some additional top up is being paid.

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Relative of mine rents a four bed semi in a middle class suburb. Rent allowance for a family of four is in excess of the rent she is currently receiving - she got new tenants recently and when she advertised, most of the replies to the advert were from rent allowance people telling her how they can pay her more than the asking price because RA was higher (rates on SW site confirm this, so these people were not paying any top up above the norm). She took a lower amount from a working family as has had bad experienced from RA tenants in the past.

Kerrigan said:

She is not willing to accept this offer, as the property is in an area were crime is high etc.

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so would you be happy to accept a property in an area where crime is high!

blueband said:

so would you be happy to accept a property in an area where crime is high!

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There's a world of a difference between someone who's paying their own way and someone who's getting things free.

There's a world of a difference between someone who's paying their own way and someone who's getting things free.

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Not really these days! I am sure a lot of the people newly reliant on mortgage interest supplement and rent relief never imagined they would end up where they are now.

From what I gather the serial scroungers tend to look for accommodation on the same street as their parents so are probably less likely to be in 'better' areas

csirl said:

There's a world of a difference between someone who's paying their own way and someone who's getting things free.

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i think you will find that the saying 'beggars cant be choosers' is not as applicable as it was in the bad old days.