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Morning Briefing: MPs call for complete ban of all ‘no DSS’ adverts
MPs have demanded that landlords and letting agents end the practice of screening out people on housing benefits from renting properties, after hearing that it has become the 2019 equivalent of “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish”, and other housing news
The Guardian reports on a select committee meeting yesterday, in which estate agents were grilled on their continuing use of ‘no DSS’ clauses in their adverts.
The MPs discussed an advert published by letting agency Your Move that said: “No DSS. Small dogs considered.” They said that these types of adverts create a hostile environment for tenants on benefits.
Philippa Lalor, a 36-year-old renter from Croydon who has been repeatedly refused a home, told the committee: “In the 1950s it used to be no blacks, no Irish, no dogs. Now we have ‘no DSS’. It is in the shop window.”
Property website Property Industry Eye also reports on a select committee meeting yesterday that saw letting agents defend the use of ‘no DSS’ phrases in property listings.
According to the site, MPs on the Work and Pensions Select Committee were told by directors of OpenRent, LSL and Hunters that it was often landlords requesting the ‘no DSS’ listing, and that these were for contractual reasons such as mortgage providers not covering housing benefit tenants.
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Elsewhere, increasing numbers of desperate parents are turning to food banks to feed their children, as new figures show that a record 1.6 million food packages have been handed out in the past year, the HuffPost reports.
This was a 20% increase on the previous year and the highest recorded number since the charity began 20 years ago.
The figures also recorded that the number of three-day emergency food packages had increased by 73% in the past five years.
An analysis on website CapX assesses Labour’s announcement yesterday that it will scrap laws that allow office blocks to be converted into housing, and says it will do little to solve the problem and could make things worse.
The piece says that while many of the homes may be unpleasant, banning them would not be the solution, and that Labour’s plan would simply reduce supply and drive property prices up.
The Law Society’s magazine Law Gazette has found that more than half the population of England and Wales is living in a local authority with one or no housing legal aid providers.
According to a map produced by the magazine, 184 out of 348 local authorities have no housing provider, while 81 have just one provider.
It found that those living in the South West were the worst hit, with 92% of the region living in an authority with no advice, followed by the East of England, the South East and the East Midlands.
The Andover Advertiser reports on a military veteran who is sleeping outside Aster’s offices in protest after he claimed that the housing association revoked an offer of a flat for him at one day’s notice.
James Trainor, who spent the night on the street outside the office last week, said he was offered the keys to the flat in Tidworth but the offer was withdrawn at short notice.
On social media
There has been reaction to Labour’s decision to scrap permitted development rights for office-to-residential conversions:
We are baffled @RIBA as to how government can be rightly concerned to ‘Build Better, Build Beautiful’ on the one hand, yet support the pernicious Permitted Development Right to convert offices to substandard homes on the other. t.co/ZwIv7JE7Yx
— Ben Derbyshire PRIBA (@ben_derbyshire)We are baffled @RIBA as to how government can be rightly concerned to ‘Build Better, Build Beautiful’ on the one hand, yet support the pernicious Permitted Development Right to convert offices to substandard homes on the other. https://t.co/ZwIv7JE7Yx
— Ben Derbyshire PRIBA (@ben_derbyshire) April 24, 2019
‘Labour’s housing plan is a sledgehammer to crack a nut’@BrianBerryFMB says abolishing permitted development would mean losing quality homes as well as ‘rabbit hutches’t.co/wAkaBD2fdP pic.twitter.com/o0yvqz0kZU
— Victoria Derbyshire (@VictoriaLIVE)‘Labour’s housing plan is a sledgehammer to crack a nut’@BrianBerryFMB says abolishing permitted development would mean losing quality homes as well as ‘rabbit hutches’https://t.co/wAkaBD2fdP pic.twitter.com/o0yvqz0kZU
— Victoria Derbyshire (@VictoriaLIVE) April 24, 2019
