Whether you're paying rent...

WITH reference to Rachel Ayuba’s comments regarding the “slashed housing benefits” (Letters, May 2), I very much understand her concerns.

Just bear in mind that, for a single person on minimum wage in full-time employment, £143.03 a week in rent would most likely be far out of reach.

Also, as someone unemployed, one does not have to pay council tax.

I believe it is far less fair that someone in employment on a low wage should have to be worse off than an unemployed person, or even have to “downsize” accommodation due to finding employment.

Do some simple calculations and see how the working poor have to survive.

J Halford, Lynton Road, Brighton

REGARDING the letter from Rachel Ayuba, I should point out (as a recipient of housing benefit) that the rate quoted by her of £79.85 is the applicable rate for a single room – call it a bedsit, if you like – with an occupant who must share toilet and bathroom facilities.

This benefit is not related, in any way, to the age of the occupant – the 25–34 age range quoted in the original letter appears to be arbitrary.

If, as your correspondent claims, people were claiming in excess of £140 a week, they must, at the very least, have been saying in their claim that they lived in one-bedroom accommodation – ie; with separate sleeping space from their main room and, possibly, an unshared toilet and bathroom.

Tommy Coyne, Seafield Road, Hove

...on the move,

A BIG well done to Brighton Green MP Caroline Lucas and Worthing Conservative MP Peter Bottomley for both signing House of Commons Early Day Motion 1729, which opposes the forced eviction of gypsies and travellers where no alternative site is available (The Argus, May 3).

No one should have to suffer the misery of homelessness or the humiliation of bailiffs and police evicting them.

Thousands of adults are scared by unhappy childhood memories of family evictions or moonlight flits to avoid the landlord or their bailiffs.

Housing should be guaranteed for everyone, either single people or families, young people or elderly, asylum seekers or travelling people.

We live in a city and county which is stuffed with sprawling millionaire’s mansions, posh hotels, second homes and holiday homes.

It is a scandal that anyone who travels because it is their way of life, or because they have no alternative, should be forced from pillar to post by the eradication of traditional roadside and common sites.

All the main local parties have avoided facing up to their responsibility to put decent, low-rent, secure and appropriate public housing for all at the heart of their politics.

Dave Bangs, Trade Unionists and Socialists Coalition, city council election candidate for Moulsecoomb and Bevendean

...or just sitting

MIKE WEATHERLEY is right when he says that owners of buildings should be protected against invasion by squatters when their property is being refurbished or waiting for new occupants to move in (The Argus, comment, April 30).

But that is not the whole story. The rash of empty property in Brighton is due to landlords’ refusals to accept realistic current market rents.

Not only is this a blight; it is prolonging the recession as it prevents new businesses from setting up in affordable accommodation.

There is worse. Valuable city-centre sites have been vacant for decades despite having planning permission for development. The Mound, in Church Street, is an example of this from the mid-1980s.

Yet, when a group of people move in and make use of it, the sleeping owners suddenly wake up and apply for an eviction order. This is the unacceptable face of British property ownership.

Squatting should not be happening, but it is a symptom of the failure of the market.

As a Conservative who presumably believes in free markets, Mike Weatherly must surely understand this.

If there was less property left empty, nobody would need to squat and the opportunity would not be there.

No property owner would leave land and buildings vacant unless there was a profit in it, but there is, and that is the root of the trouble.

The way to stop this is to re-structure the tax system to remove the opportunity to profit in this way.

Henry Law, Queen’s Gardens, Brighton