Housing benefit must be extended to homeowners, according to research that revealed half of owner-occupiers are in poverty.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders called for tax credits to cover rents and mortgages. The Citizens Advice Bureau backed this idea and pressed for an overhaul of income support for mortgage interest payments.

The calls followed a study for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that found that 18% of outright owners and 32% of people with mortgages were poor, compared with 61% of social housing tenants – but only 8% of state help went to homeowners. Owner-occupiers are not eligible for housing benefit and only receive income support for mortgage interest payments if the mortgage is less than £100,000. Those who took out a mortgage after October 1995 only get help nine months after applying for it.

The report's author, Professor Roger Burrows of York University, said: "Despite the rhetoric of house price gains, they are not a reality for people where the value of their house is negligible."

A spokeswoman for the Department for Work and Pensions said there were no plans to change benefits for homeowners.

Source

Housing Today

Postscript

Get the report from www.jrf.org.uk