MPs urged to let benefit tenants choose how to pay their rents

One area not mention above is the fact that since the change in the payment system a lot of landlords will no longer rent there properties to DSS Tenants, myself included.

This leads to a limited choice of property forcing tenants to choose a less value for money accommodation option.

I used to love renting good property to DSS Tenants and getting my rent throug every 4 weeks now I wont rent to people on benefit.

Until my company is paid direct from the Government I will not be renting any of my stock to DSS tenants.

if you have a tenant in arrears of two months you can get paid direct to the landlord ok but big problem if found they not entitled to the benefit or a mistake by the benefit office they can claim back up to six years rent and if you have more than one they can take other tenants benefits to get the money back you rent houses to and they will still be classed as paying there rent also if you are in hull be aware i when to court with a benefit tenant owed over thousand pounds and yes he gets legal aid and said defective did not have time on notice and the judge said did not matter he did not pass on the rent it may be fraud but of little money and did not matter and let him of did not have any money to pay back and still allowed to stay in the house but on the judgement did not say that says nobody turn up at court so when you get judges doing that what hope is there

just wanted to let you guys know that i agree with the first coment on here and we do not take DSS Tenants anymore . we use to like to have the Dss Tenants as the payments were on time all the time We went to a Council Meeting when this {became Law} and a lot of tenants turned up ALL IN SUPPORT OF THE LANDLORDS but to no avail we made the Council aware of what would happen and it has .

In some instances the falling in arrears is deliberately engineered by the tenant as a short cut to the council housing list at the Landlord's expense. With the threat of eviction due to rent arrears the council is then forced into housing the tenants. Even when this is pointed out to the council they have said that they are fully aware of this strategy and I quote " - it is not illegal !!"

Unfortunately as the comments show there is a large gap between how the system is meant to work and how it works in reality.
The bottom line as a first step is reasonably simple and straight forward, have the rent paid to the landlord.
This then at least gives us a fighting chance so that when the cheque does not turn up we can take action of some description.
The second logical step would be to allow the housing benefit office to answer one simple question "Is there a valid claim in for rent on my property".
As we will all be aware not only do we get the tenant saying there has been a cock up we then get the benefit office saying we cannot tell u anything.
If you ran a company like they run the benefit system you would soon be bankrupt.

I,m considering pulling out of the rental business, going on benefit and putting my feet up and live a lot longer! Trouble is, I'll be hammered for capital gains tax. I think we know who the winners are!