Housing element

bookrabbit

My son and I are trying to find a house to share on a joint tenancy. I am quite shocked by how much rent is these days. We have been living with family but have to move because the house is being sold so that my mother can live somewhere that suits her better.

I want to be certain that I am understanding the rules properly. My reading of the rules is that we will each be able to claim for half of the rent as housing credit on our individual universal credit claims. Currently that would mean that we can get a total of the one bedroom rate plus the shared rate as he is under 35. So if the shared rate is £85 and the one bedroom rate is £125 we would get £210 PW housing credit.

Then if his PIP claim is successful we can each claim the one bedroom rate. So where the lha one bedroom rate is £125 we would get £250 PW towards the rent?

 Can someone please confirm that this is what we would get despite being related and not the two bedroom rate. I just don't want a nasty surprise if I find out that I misinterpreted the rules and find out I have committed us to paying more rent than we can afford.

Thanks 

poppy123456

That's correct. For UC it's known as housing element. However, you can't claim for anymore than what your actual rent it per calendar month. For example, if your rent it £800pcm you would each be liable for £400pcm so that would mean all your rent would be covered. If there's a shortfall of rent you would be responsible for that.

You can check what the LHA rates are here for the area you're thinking of living. https://lha-direct.voa.gov.uk/ you will need to convert it from a weekly amount to a monthly amount because UC is paid monthly.

The only issue you may have is finding a landlord that will accept DSS tenants.

bookrabbit

Thanks for confirming that:) 

I was expecting to have to cover quite a bit of extra rent but it is looking more possible to cover most of it as the area we are looking at has a higher lha than I had expected. 40% higher than where we are now!

I know we can afford it but convincing a landlord that we can is the hard part. Fortunately the person helping me deal with the move, doing phone calls etc with estate agents is also willing to be our guarantor. She also got us through the benefits applications. I really don't know what I would have done without her. 

bookrabbit

I just read a section on entitled to that seems to suggest my previous interpretation of how much housing element we can claim as joint tenants was wrong.
It says we can only get the shared rate each if we are sharing everything except our separate bedrooms.
That would make a huge difference to how much we can claim.
And I finally got a viewing!! Only if we only get the shared rate each we couldn't afford it:( And it would be a waste of my supporters time to take us...
Please can someone tell me whether a joint tenancy means it is only the shared rate that applies.
I might have not have explained the situation properly when Poppy agreed with me before.

poppy123456

You explained it perfectly previously and my advice is correct. I’m not sure what exactly it was that you read or where you read it but you’ve misunderstood it.

For yourself you would be entitled to the 1 bedroom rate of LHA. For your son, if he’s under 35 then he would be entitled to the shared rate, unless he’s claiming either daily living PIP/ADP or mid/high rate care DLA and then he would be entitled to the 1 bedroom rate. 

Please note that as I advised previously, you can’t claim for anymore than what the actual rent is, even if the LHA is higher. (Though, that’s rare) but when sharing like this you may find that more of your rent is covered. 

bookrabbit

Thank you, I got in a proper panic about it today thinking I had made a mistake. 

I think the pages I found were referring to housing benefit rather than the housing element and they were really confusing and worrying for me. Both shelter and entitled to seemed to be saying that and I made a mistake on the benefits calculator too that confused me even further by mentioning the two bedroom rate but I had clicked the wrong thing about my son - relative rather than joint tenant.

poppy123456

Ah now that makes sense. Housing benefit is a completely different benefit to housing element of UC. Some rules for housing benefit are different. 

When you report changes to UC you need to make sure you put joint tenant and not a relative, as doing so could see a different outcome.