UK housing benefit gap widens, forcing families to choose between rent, food and heating
A growing gap between UK housing benefit and actual rents is forcing more low-income families to choose between paying rent, eating and staying warm. The food bank charity Trussell is urging the government to reform the benefit ahead of next month's budget.
A widening gap between rents and the local housing allowance (LHA) in the UK is pushing growing numbers of low-income households into impossible trade-offs between paying rent, buying food and heating their homes.
Laura Braddock, a 39-year-old single mother from Wirral, Merseyside, illustrates the strain. She pays £550 a month for a two-bedroom flat but receives only £425 in housing allowance, leaving a £125 monthly shortfall she must cover from her food and heating budget. To cope, she eats cheap pasta and beans, sometimes skips her own meals, and occasionally pays only half her gas bill. In January, when these strategies stopped working, she turned to a food bank for the first time in years.
According to the food bank charity Trussell, hundreds of thousands of households face similar pressures. It estimates that 62% of private renters receiving housing support have gone without food or heating at least once in the past six months because they could not afford both. The Resolution Foundation thinktank projects the gap between rent and LHA for a low-income household renting a two-bedroom private property will average £158 a month this autumn, rising to as much as £324 a month in parts of London.
Trussell is calling on the government to relink LHA to the cheapest 30% of local rents. It estimates this change would lift 105,000 people, including 40,000 children, out of severe hardship by 2028-29. The Resolution Foundation puts the annual cost of such a reform at around £2bn.
Beatrice Orchard, Trussell's head of policy, said increasing numbers of renters are already being forced to choose between rent and food, and blamed the frozen benefit rate amid rising rents. A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said the government is addressing the housing shortage through a commitment to build 1.5m homes, and that LHA rates are reviewed annually in light of the fiscal context.
