Can letting agents refuse dss?
The government and the courts show that no DSS advertising is unlawful. Landlords and landlords who reject applications from tenants who apply for housing benefit risk claims for damages and damage to reputation. No landlord should discriminate against tenants because they receive benefits. Each tenant’s circumstances are different and so they should be handled on a case-by-case basis based on their ability to maintain a tenancy.
A judge has ruled that blanket bans on renting real estate to people with housing benefits are unlawful and discriminatory. It’s up to a landlord to decide who to rent their property to. We would like to encourage all landlords to review each application for its individual benefits. Landlords don’t reject DSS tenants because they hold personal grudges.
They generally reject DSS tenants because of their undeniable financial situation. No one expects DSS tenants to have financial difficulties. This is exactly why they receive financial support. There are also many crooked LL who pay high interest rates, leave homes in uncertain and appalling conditions, and then refuse to repay bonds for the smallest of things. They are not easy to get away with these things if they accept it, as local councils are involved. You may have seen the phrase “no DSS” in landlords ads that say they don’t rent to those who rely on services.
LL will refuse to accept UC tenants unless they can or want to afford the rent and qualify for RGI or their possible guarantors. If you get the right DSS tenant who can live within their means, you’ll be fine, but universal credit has cut benefits dramatically. Applicants apply for DLA on a completely different basis and pay less, much less. There is also the not insignificant problem that only a few DSS tenants can afford private market rents in the SE. For letting agents, “DSS is supposedly the easiest way to refer to tenants who pay part or all of the rent with benefits payments.
I understand it’s a business, but that’s no excuse for being a sad bunch of human crap, there was no reason to get me and my kids out, and the DSS actually covered my rent. So this isn’t to denigrate a UC tenant, but it’s no longer worth renting it out if a LL I know can charge 150 pcm more than a UC can afford. That’s right and what I meant that any PRS landlord who rents out an understaffed property risks the tenant not receiving the rent as an HB. I don’t know if a tenant would feel better looking through tenant references only to be turned down by a landlord who has no intention of renting to them.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that the political issues that prevent many landlords from renting to DSS don’t need to be addressed. In what was described as a “pioneering” case, District Judge Victoria Elizabeth Mark, who sat in front of York County Court, considered the case of a disabled single parent in which an application for private rental housing was rejected by a letting agent due to her receipt of housing benefits. Remember that all DSS tenants are only allowed to rent at the lowest 30% of rent in an area. If a tenant, even if he is not DSS, has more rooms than they need under Council rules, they will not be paid full rent. The significant court ruling found that a single mother of two had experienced indirect discrimination when a letting agent refused to contact her
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