Proof of delusional thinking, re: rent supplement

Richard Dower

Read this: "-In order to encourage landlords of existing rent supplement tenants to reduce their rents given the reductions in the market as a whole, the payments currently being made to tenants are being reduced by 8%. While tenants are contractually obliged to pay the rent agreed to in their lease, it is hoped that landlords will decrease the rent in recognition of the fact that rents have fallen generally and that there are now a large number of vacant rental properties nationally"


LOL!!! , what what PLANET are these people on?????????....they state quite clearly tenents are under CONTRACT to pay the agreed rent, yet they "hope" a landlord will exercise good will and humanity????? :P

Right, tell that to the landlord who got hit with huge tax bill hikes, it's outragious what they are saying and asking, i have YET to see one landlord who allows tenents to rent supplement to reduce rent rates out of good will or reflections in the current market.

The reality is the market rent reductions they are talking about is in the private sector, the high end, the niche market that people with good jobs can afford. With the rent caps that exist NONE of these housing stocks who are seeing price reductions are even available to the average person who seeks a rent supplement.

aare

That is the most bizarre decision of the whole budget...

Reducing the rent supplement bill has been a bee in Fianna Fail's bonnet for years...and they tend to get irrational about it...

Even the basis is irrational, because as far as I can see it is based on a genuine inability to grasp the fact that the property bubble sent rents soaring into the stratosphere, along with everything else, even for the most basic accommodation.

The Rental accommodation scheme is an attempt to work around that, which will only lose the bill by diversifying it through the local councils, but will not reduce the actual cost of meeting long term housing needs by a single penny, and may even increase it - UNTIL the government is in a position to purchase properties to rent out to those with long term housing needs at a knock down price (as the NASA is about to do). In principle this could well solve the enormous shortfall in our social housing provision for good, at a very cut rate.

So, they have put the cart before the horse and tried to use the recession as an excuse for demographic manipulation that they fondly hope will force rent supplement recipients onto the rented accommodation scheme...without even pausing to realise that they do not have any housing to offer them yet.

It is a disaster of the first magnitude, waiting to happen, that now means that in effect, whether your welfare is reduced by anything up to e20 a week, or not, depends on whether you are in a position to bully your landlord or not...

...which means that the more vulnerable you are, the more your welfare will be cut...

This is not acceptable, nor is it sane.

It would have been fairer and yielded more to cut the SW base rate by e10 pw across the board...and the most vulnerable would have been far better off...