“He said tenants who were no longer able to pay their rent as a result of a shortfall in their housing benefit ‘will be found intentionally homeless and therefore not eligible for assistance from the local authority’.”

I have some experience of this area, and this cannot be legally correct. One of the first rules of homelessness law is that any blanket policy is unlawful. The individual circumstances must be taken into account. This isn’t to say councils might not try it on, but without an act of parliament they wouldn’t get very far.

Intentional homelessness is defined in s. 191 of the Housing Act 1996:

“191 Becoming homeless intentionally.

(1)A person becomes homeless intentionally if he deliberately does or fails to do anything in consequence of which he ceases to occupy accommodation which is available for his occupation and which it would have been reasonable for him to continue to occupy.”

While non-payment of rent can in some circumstances come under this rule, it would not if the non-payment is not intentional.

Does Andrew George know what he’s on about?

It looks to me like the same logic that would call not paying your rent because you’ve lost housing benefit “intentional” would also call not paying your rent because you’ve lost your job intentional. I can’t believe that’d stand. It’s a bit like calling death by gunshot death by natural causes (because you were shot, so naturally you died).

Sunny your headline does sort of report this as fact.

2 – it’s a sidebar story. Remember Sunny’s constitutional duty in this regard – it’s a grand old tradition by now.

Tom, is actually true. Rent arrears and eviction resulting from rent arrears is viewed as making self intentionally homeless. Housing legislation is a very weak, and this is very commonly used as a get out to rehousing someone. Rent arrears also bars you from many housing associations, and other providers of social housing.

Lisa

I’m stunned. If not being able to pay your rent is considered intentional, how does somebody become unintentionally homeless?

If not being able to pay your rent is considered intentional, how does somebody become unintentionally homeless?

Well, your house could burn down, or your private landlord could decide not to renew your lease.

I wish I could say I was surprised by this. What the hell are we going to do with all these people?

Lisa.

is there no conditionality? I mean, doesn’t losing your job make a difference? I can see that not paying your rent when in receipt of housing benefit might be considered intentional, but I am amazed not paying your rent when quite obviously unable to pay it does.

I mean, doesn’t losing your job make a difference?

If you lose your job, you’re supposed to apply for HB. If it takes 3 months to process your claim (dunno if this still happens, but it was the norm the last time I claimed) that’s just your tough shit. You don’t have enough savings to cover three months rent? Should’ve thought of that before you lost your job, moocher.

Have you ever actually been on the sharp end of the benefit system? It’s a Kafkaesque nightmare.

Dunc,

sure, I can think of possibilities like that. But those cases are surely relatively rare, compared to being evicted through not paying rent. What I was getting at is that if they’ve really defined not being able to pay rent even when you cannot pay it as intentional, they’ve turned unintentional homelessness something of a freak occurrence (i.e. house burning down, landlord ending your tenancy whilst you are still paying rent yet you are unable for some reason simply to move to another rental property).

I could understand it if they treated some cases of rent arrears as intentional, I’m just amazed to learn that all cases of rent arrears can be classified intentional.

“I’m just amazed to learn that all cases of rent arrears can be classified intentional.”

Luis, the welfare system in the UK contains all manner of irrationalities and bullying of people (and thats before Osbourne’s changes). If your job involves something related to the system, then nothing would suprise you. I’ve come accross a case where somebody had JSA stopped because they didn’t turn up to sign on – because they were at a job interview. They informed the job centre on the morning of the interview and were told tough shit, they should have arranged the interview at another time. Thankfully she got the job, otherwise she would have been destitute while the appeal went through.

Planeshift

Amazing. Is this stuff encoded in the rules or is that example you have really down to some overzealous, stupid and cruel individual, and in most cases a sensible DWP staffer would have used discretion or perhaps would even have realized the rules don’t even say that? I suppose it’s one thing to say that individuals often do stupid things, another to say the system has no mechanism for correcting those errors.

(Careful or we’ll get Worstall on here telling us about this being an inevitable feature of bureaucracies. Tim – I still haven’t read that book you recommended – Parkinson?)

a sensible DWP staffer

Oh, Luis, you are such a wag! The DWP gets stuck with the most useless, hidebound jobsworths in existence, because anybody who could would work somewhere else. It’s no fun dealing with pissed-off unemployed people all day and figuring out ways to make their lives worse.

I suppose it’s one thing to say that individuals often do stupid things, another to say the system has no mechanism for correcting those errors.

These are not “errors”. This is exactly how the system is designed to operate.

Luis, There are 2 issues:

1. Gatekeeping. Basically you get some staff who are little Hitlers and try every known way of denying people their entitlements under law, and you get other staff who are helpful and have the intelligence to use their own judgement. It is a matter of luck which type you get. The rules do allow appeals, and many people win on appeal against the gatekeepers. But appeals take time and mean people often have nothing to live on during this time (even though they get backdated if you win). They also require the confidence and initiative for somebody to do so. Which means vulnerable people are…erm vulnerable.

2. the actual rules. Whilst no sane person (and the system wasn’t designed by sane people) would design rules that have explicit absurdities, there are number of rules that lead to situations where the DWP/authority behaves in a absurd manner but is legally correct. For example; intentional homelessness situations as described above, people with cancer being classed as fit to work, people doing voluntary work being only allowed to volunteer 2 days a week etc.

Expect both 1 and 2 to get far worse when run by the conservatives as well – as they will enact incremental reforms aimed at penalising people on benefits, and their heart really isn’t in the idea of a welfare state at all.

Here’s an example: one of my mates was booked in for a Restart interview, but got himself a job before the interview was actually scheduled. He turned up wanting to sign off, but they wouldn’t let him until after he’d had the Restart interview. The interview consisted of the following exchange:

“So, Mr [redacted], what have you been doing to find a job?”

“I’ve found a job.”

“So why are you here?”

“They wouldn’t let me sign off until I’d seen you.”

“Oh. Well, good luck in your new job.”

“Thanks. I’m late for my first day already.”

Dunc

if you don’t watch out, your radical critique of the possibility of a functioning benign state organization is going to lead you down the road to libertarianism.

oh I suppose I need one of those ghastly ;(

My own example; signed on. 2 weeks later went to sign on again, this time with a new job to go to. Explained new job was starting in 3 weeks. Told by jobsworth staff that I would still have to demonstrate I was looking for work during those 3 weeks.

buffoon. I mean of course

if you don’t watch out, your radical critique of the possibility of a functioning benign state organization is going to lead you down the road to libertarianism.

No need to worry there. I’m not asserting that it’s impossible for a supposedly-benign state organization to function properly, I’m arguing that the DWP is not actually benign and that this is largely deliberate. There was a persistent rumour circulating for many years that they specifically trained their front-line staff in the art of not volunteering useful information, and everybody I ever met who had had to deal with them believed it.

The benefits system in this country is run on the principle that it’s better to deny benefits to ten or twenty genuine claimants than to pay them to one false one. Within that principle it’s entirely successful and logical.

let’s assume the DWP is as bad as you say it is for sake of argument.

What explains why the democratically elected legislature and accompanying state bureaucracy notionally given the task between them of designing and administering benefits to help the unemployed and poor, has produced such a malevolent outcome?

Are you really sure that the answer to the above question does not amount to a serious challenge to the possibility of a benign and competent state organization in the real world we find ourselves in, not in the one where we each get a magic pony?

[of course, if the DWP isn't so bad, well things aren't so bad]

What explains why the democratically elected legislature and accompanying state bureaucracy notionally given the task between them of designing and administering benefits to help the unemployed and poor, has produced such a malevolent outcome?

Short answer: wider social attitudes to poverty, as routinely displayed in the tabloid press.

A significant plurality (if not an outright majority) of people in this country believe that poverty is a moral failing which should be punished (perhaps not explicitly, but that’s the subtext), and they’re very noisy about it. (There is an argument that this is largely the result of displaced anxiety, but it doesn’t really make any difference what the reasons are.) Therefore, the democratically elected legislature has constructed a basically punitive system to administer benefits in order to satisfy the desires and prejudices of this constituency (or at least attempt to). Whilst those on the sharp end know exactly what the score is, the more moderate and humane members of those classes with sufficient clout to change things can’t believe that things could really be that bad (never having had direct experience of it) – as you yourself are demonstrating here. So on the one hand we have a baying mob, and on the other, polite but mystified hand-wringing. The unemployed themselves are not sufficiently numerous and politically engaged to make any difference.

The fundamental problem is that we live in a society full of cunts. Not that everybody’s a cunt, of course, but those that are are very good at getting their way, because they’re cunts. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Libertarianism is obviously not a solution to this problem. I’m not at all convinced that there is a solution to this problem.

Luis, I think the main reasons are largely down to political culture. The short answer if that we have a system that has been incrementally changed over the years by a series of ministers of all parties who have made changes with one eye on achieving favourable coverage in the tabloids by being seen to be tough on scroungers. They have failed to adopt any ‘big picture’ thinking about what kind of welfare system we need for the 21st century, and at least one particular party regards any kind of welfare system at all as an impediment to labour markets clearing, and has made policy with this in mind (knowing that full scale abolition is a big political risk).

As a result we have ended up with a hugely complex system of numerous benefits each with their own means testing, criteria for recieving it and own taper rates. We also have a climate where one off cases of families that have been good at gaming the system have ended up recieving massive amounts of benefits and been easy stories for the tabloids. These forces have combined to create a system that is extremely messy and clearly creates a disincentive to work, whilst providing an incentive for politicans, DWP staff and contractors to demonise and deny support to people who need it whether through policy, legislation or simply the attitude taken to people.

What has been interesting is that IDS has been one of the few conservatives in history to actually take an interest in learning about poverty, and in particular the way welfare has worked on the ground. The stuff his centre for social justice has produced indicated some thought had gone into producing a new system that was far simpler and more rational. Unfortuantly once in power he has clashed with Osbourne – one of the nastiest pieces of work in the cabinet – and the treasury over his plans. Osbourne wants a series of incremental reforms aimed at making a miserly system even more miserly and thus won’t fund the investment needed to turn IDS’s ideas into reality. This means IDS has had to compromise and has gone down the road of announcing reforms to make him look tough in the tabloids, but has yet to actually do anything approaching a big picture style reform. Maybe he will later this week, but the odds are against him.

Does the above mean “serious challenge to the possibility of a benign and competent state organization in the real world”?

I don’t think it does. But it does mean we need a party in power that actually believes in welfare as a principle, and a political climate that doesn’t reward irrationalism and bullying of vulnerable people.

Thanks for your responses.

Well it still looks to me like you are both perilously close to arguing for the impossibility of competent benign state bureaucracies in this country, even if you don’t see it that way, which I’d have thought ought to have some implications for those who recommend curing society’s ills via competent benign state bureaucracies.

I think you are too quick to decide that Labour was not really interested in trying to do good but were just about appeasing this desire in voters to give welfare claimants hell – something that I’m also less sure exists that you are. I wonder whether Chris Dillowesque points about managerialism aren’t relevant here.

Dunc I know you think I am a clueless naif – and you’re right I have had very little direct experience of the DWP – but I still suspect you’re exaggerating the malevolence of the system.

Just to chime in and say my own recent experiences of the DWP are pretty much exactly the same as commentators have said here.

“you’re exaggerating the malevolence of the system.”

Virtually every decent sized charity that deals with clients likely be dealing with the system has numerous reports on the issue that would indicate not.And these are organisations with legal contraints on what they can publish (i.e not party political).

Well it still looks to me like you are both perilously close to arguing for the impossibility of competent benign state bureaucracies in this country, even if you don’t see it that way, which I’d have thought ought to have some implications for those who recommend curing society’s ills via competent benign state bureaucracies.

I think you might have me confused with somebody else, since I don’t recall recommending that at all. However, I’m certainly not a libertarian, in that I don’t believe that a laissez-faire battle of Randian supermen will improve matters any (quite the contrary, in fact). I just think the entire human race is fundamentally fucked and there’s really sod all we can do about it other than try to struggle through as best we can. Organised politics is at best a stalling tactic.

Oh, and “in this country” makes a big difference. I’m perfectly willing to concede the possibility of functioning, benign state organisations in some abstract, theoretical sense, but here and now? No danger. The best we can hope for is to fight a holding action against the worst aspects of humanity until the wheels of history grind us all into the dust of ages.

I’m afraid I’ve crossed the event horizon of cynicism.

I still suspect you’re exaggerating the malevolence of the system.

Of course you do – that’s what makes you so adorable. Such charming naiveté!

Dunc,

sorry I didn’t mean to imply you suggested curing ills via government bureaucracy – when I wrote “those who recommend” I meant those who do. It’s common enough.

Planeshift

I appreciate that.

Tim J – you really look like a prat everytime you come here repeating that same comment.

28 – aww Sunny, where’s your sense of humour?

My experience at an interview with Job Centre staff (as they were then): ‘so, how many interviews have you got lined up?’. Because of course that’s something that’s completely within my control, isn’t it. As if I’d just phone up a company and tell them ‘Hi what time would you like me to come along for a job interview? What? You don’t have any vacancies? Well, anyway, what time can I come along?!’

I know this still goes on, that job-seekers have to apply for a stated number of jobs each week even if there aren’t that many vacancies – in which case they have to send out CVs to all & sundry without bearing in mind whether the employer is in a position to take on staff. With the result that (very) small organisations such as the three I work for, regularly gets unsolicited job applications, which wastes the applicant’s time and money and would waste mine if I answer them.

“that job-seekers have to apply for a stated number of jobs each week”

You soon work out that it is easy to lie about this. The DWP doesn’t have enough staff to check.

The type of problems which changes to HB will cause has been experienced by battered women who flee to refuges with children.
Instead of re-housing them, councils have argued that they have deliberately made themselves homeless and, in any case, the children could go back and live with their fathers, as the violence was not directed towards the children.
This has led to a number of violent men taking the mother to court, arguing that, refuges are not suitable places for children and they should be returned to their own home, several have been successfull.

“(Careful or we’ll get Worstall on here telling us about this being an inevitable feature of bureaucracies. Tim – I still haven’t read that book you recommended – Parkinson?)”

C. Northcote Parkinson. “Parkinson’s Law”. It’s actually very funny and only takes 90 minutes to read.

His research starting point was to look at the Navy, compare the number of Admirals to ships over time and thus predict (he was writing in the 50s) that at some point the number of Adminrals would be greater than the number of ships.

Something which has actually happened.

Parkinson’s Law itself is that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

Derived from his time in the Civil Service.

“Oh, and “in this country” makes a big difference. I’m perfectly willing to concede the possibility of functioning, benign state organisations in some abstract, theoretical sense, but here and now? No danger.”

Better stop trying to use the State to do these things then.

“Better stop trying to use the State to do these things then.”

In which country does the market provide a functioning welfare state?

Those countries which do have a functioning welfare state seem to use quite a lot of market mechanisms….the Danes use private companies to provide much of the fire and ambulance service, Sweden let’s anyone open a school, just about everyone has competing providers of medical care….

Sounds like scare tactics. I remember the 80′s when you had folk sleeping on the street. Whole families in fact. Do people want to go back to those days? If people are turfed out they will resort to begging or crime and possibly both. We will be back with the aggressive beggars. The police wont be able to handle the pressure as they are being cut to the bone also. If all of these threatened proposal go through then Britain is gonna be one scary place to live and it aint exactly paradise now.

@ 21

Fuck me, Dunc, that was one of the most convincing things I’ve ever read on this site. Even if it turns out you’re wrong, bloody good delivery.

@ 35

“Those countries which do have a functioning welfare state seem to use quite a lot of market mechanisms….the Danes use private companies to provide much of the fire and ambulance service, Sweden let’s anyone open a school, just about everyone has competing providers of medical care….”

Do they do these things out of the kindness of their hearts? Or is this just outsourced state interventionism?

@38.

They tend to do them this way because this way they get more services for less tax money.

Odd but true: competitive markets get you more consumption for less input.

One of my major complaints about the “British left” is the refusal to understand this.

Public services: hell yeah! But let’s do it for the least we have to, eh?

@ 39

I agree with you on principle, but I’m not convinced that private is any better than public in this area. With public employees, you do seem to get that “sod it, my job’s safe” kind of apathy, which is obviously a problem, but the moment the private sector’s involved they’re following very different motivations. Complacency is replaced with callous ruthlessness.

I’m not saying that public is better than private, just that bringing in the private sector is not a panacea. They can both produce good and bad results. My suspicion is that the best solution is to use competing private firms under strict regulation, with the public sector there to deal with the people who slip through the cracks.

Just learned today that IDS is a Catholic and has commented on the importance of his faith to his approach to his ‘work.’ Charles I was Catholic. He made radical cuts to disable the ‘Commonwealth’ state so they cut his head off.

Next year promises to bring a storm of civil unrest. It is a stark choice between IDS’s balding head or civil war, which will it be?