Half of landlords have no mortgage. If tenants can't pay the rent, landlords' incomes suffer but that doesn't = forced sales

Increasing Local Housing Allowance to make sure it covers the real costs of private renting is a good thing to do to prevent homelessness, BUT

1. Don't forget to remove the Benefit Cap too, otherwise increases to LHA won't reach many of the families at greatest risk of homelessness

2. Increasing LHA rates now, while private rents are falling in many local markets, will allow landlords to keep rents steady or increase them. It will allow the PRS to persist in the fantasy that demand for housing is still at 2019 levels / Coronavirus hasn't happened

(So at the VERY least, let's please pass legislation to prevent any rent INCREASES off the back of an increase in housing benefits)

3. The effect of increasing LHA is to protect landlords' incomes - including those who own investment properties outright - at a time when almost everybody and everything else is feeling some pain. This cannot possibly be right.

I'm OK with this if it's the price we have to pay to prevent a spike in #homelessness and all the misery that would entail. HOWEVER. Let's demand something for our precious public money. My price is reform to wealth taxation, esp. that pertaining to investment properties

That feels like a fair deal to me. We'll protect landlords' incomes in return for them playing their part in paying down the debt and funding social improvements at the other end of this.