Care leavers could receive extra housing support
Thousands of vulnerable people, including care leavers, will get more cash to pay their rent, thanks to changes to housing benefits.
These changes came into force on 31 May 2021 – two years earlier than scheduled.
This offers £10 million of additional housing support, bringing the total projected government spend on housing support to £30 billion this year. Increases to the Shared Accommodation Rate (SAR) are expected to benefit thousands of Universal Credit and Housing Benefit claimants, and have been introduced more than two years earlier than the original implementation date of October 2023.
The SAR is applied to renters aged under 35 claiming support through Local Housing Allowance (LHA). It adjusts their benefit to the cost of renting a room in shared accommodation, but there is a higher, one-bedroom rate for people who need to rent solo housing.
There are two key changes to LHA:
- • Care leavers can now claim the higher one-bedroom LHA rate for longer, as the maximum age limit has been raised to 25, from 22.
- Anyone who has lived in a homeless hostel for 3 months or more, regardless of age, will also now be able to claim the higher rate, as the age limit has been removed.
For more details, click here.
4/6/21