Private landlords are turning down younger tenants ahead of cuts | Mail Online

Private landlords are turning down younger tenants ahead of cuts | Mail Online

Landlords are increasingly refusing younger tenants on housing benefit as they prepare for the Government’s cuts to social housing funds.

One of the key changes planned for next January will be to encourage younger tenants to live together in shared properties rather than more expensive one-bedroom flats.

The ‘shared accommodation rate’ currently limits the benefit a single person under 25 can receive to the average rent charged for a room in a shared house. This will be extended to the age of 35. But housing charities Crisis and Shelter have warned as many as 88,000 people will lose £47 a week each, triggering a surge in homelessness.

Private landlords claim they will be forced to stop taking social tenants – many are already doing so.

The National Landlords Association surveyed a third of its members who let to tenants on housing benefit. Of this group, 31 per cent said they ‘would reduce such tenancies now’. Less than one per cent said they planned to increase such tenancies during 2011.