Prevent evictions. Pay housing benefits to tenants, not landlords.

Paying benefits to landlords and letting agencies can lead to evictions, certainly right now during the pandemic. It also weakens the tenants' positions in other ways.

1. Such tenants lose the overview of how much gets paid when and to whom because they have no access to that information. This means that tenants can be getting into rent arrears without being aware of it. Mistakes are sometimes made without tenants having any knowledge of them.

2. A great deal of postal mail is currently going missing because of the pandemic and many council offices and other offices are closed. Some offices have been closed since the start of the first national lockdown in March 2020. This means that the communication between benefit-paying agencies and tenants can go awry without tenants being aware of it and this can even result in benefits having been cut without tenants being aware.

3. In practice, such tenants have to rely on their landlords and letting agents to learn about any rent arrears and the size of such rent arrears and often will have to take the landlords and letting agencies’ word for it. That is certainly often the case right now, with the pandemic hampering so many councils and other organisations.

Tenants and letting agencies often only let their tenants know that there is a problem after arrears have accrued substantially as this makes it much easier to evict tenants and it makes it possible to overcome coronavirus eviction regulations. (Some landlords even have their own "guy at the council".)

4. Each of these three aforementioned points can lead to eviction notices and eviction proceedings. It is currently much harder for tenants to counter the threat of eviction, because of the pandemic. Even if the tenant is successful and manages to stop an eviction, it takes away resources from various parties including the courts. It is stressful and time-consuming for most tenants. Stress lowers disease resistance.

5. When benefit payments go to landlords and letting agents instead of to tenants, this weakens the tenants’ financial standing as the banks do not see these payments coming in to the tenants' bank accounts, which classifies tenants in a lower income bracket. This can mean that certain options are not available to tenants. It can lead to higher and additional expenses for these tenants as well as to extra paperwork.

6. Not letting tenants handle their own payments weakens their financial skills.

7. Not allowing people with lower incomes to receive their own benefits and pay their own rents is a form of socio-economic discrimination. If there are budgeting concerns, then it would be better to put such tenants in touch with budgeting consultants or pair them up with peers or others who can support such tenants if needed.

All of the above applies equally to housing benefits paid by councils or the DWP and portions of Universal Credit paid by the DWP.

I was evicted in 2010 when I was 50 and I became homeless back then, briefly. I was unaware at the time that my housing benefits were not going to my landlady. I found out a few years later, when I managed to repay my landlady in full. (The latter had no effect at all on my credit score, in spite of having gotten a statement from the court.)

At my current address, a great deal of my postal mail goes missing or is delayed by up to as much as 12 months, sometimes. Last year (2020), one letter from the council took 5 months to arrive and many packages went missing.

I don't know how many letters I have not received, but I recently found out about several important letters from the council that I never got last year. A letter from another council from which I had requested old council tax information went missing as well.

I am not the only one whose mail has gone missing since the start of the pandemic; the BBC has reported on this several times, such as here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55652461

And we all wrestle with the uncertainty that the lockdown brings with regard to what "the new normal" is. We don't know what to expect of various services, we often can't enquire in person as the offices are closed and many of us are probably heeding the request not to burden government agencies too much with our questions right now.

Renewing my driving licence also took four, five months in 2020, after all, because of Covid. This pandemic is affecting us all in many ways, more than most of us are aware of.

Housing benefits should always go to tenants so that when something goes wrong, tenants will be able to notice it right away.