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Temporal Aspects of Claiming Behaviour: Renewal of Rent Allowances*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Robert L. Walker
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Abstract

The dimension of time has been relatively neglected in studies of means-tested benefits. This article explores some of the issues which arise when time is considered explicitly. It is based on housing department records for 205 rent allowance claimants in Bristol which were monitored over a twenty-seven- to thirty-two-month period between November 1974 and June 1977. All the claimants had initially applied for rent allowances in response to a one-off promotion undertaken by the local authority and so they do not constitute a representative sample. Nevertheless mathematical controls indicate that the findings are fairly robust. Only a third of the claimants studied were continuously in receipt of rent allowances during the monitoring period and most claimants who dropped out of the scheme did so as a consequence of changes in their circumstances rather than because they failed to reapply. For most claimants, therefore, the rent allowance scheme provided temporary assistance rather than continuing financial support. The implications of the marked fluctuations in the financial circumstances of the observed claimants are discussed in relation to the administration of means-tested schemes.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 1980 , pp. 207 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 Throughout this article ‘take-up’ is defined as the percentage of an eligible population taking a benefit.

2 Exceptions include Smart, S. E., ‘The Take-Up and Renewal of Rent Rebates by GLC Tenants’, Housing Monthly, 11:7 (1975), 25–7Google Scholar; Knight, I., Two-Parent Families Receiving Family Income Supplement in 1972: A Follow-Up Survey a Year Later, Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS), Statistics and Research Report Series 13, HMSO, London, 1976Google Scholar; and Greater London Council (GLC), Rent Rebate Scheme: Survey on Non-Renewal of Rebates, mimeograph, 1977Google Scholar. In addition the DHSS is undertaking two projects concerning the unemployed. The first is a one-year cohort study and the other is a follow-up of supplementary benefit recipients over a two-year period based on case records. A little work has also been done in the United States; see for example Rein, M. and Rainwater, L., ‘Patterns of Welfare Use’, Social Service Review, 12 1978, 511–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See for example Gray, A., ‘Family Budgeting Systems’, in Newman, N. (ed.), In Cash or in Kind, Department of Social Administration, University of Edinburgh, 1976, pp. 83–94Google Scholar; North Tyneside Community Development Project, In and Out of Work, Home Office, London, 1978Google Scholar; Clark, M., ‘The Unemployed on Supplementary Benefit: Living Standards and Making Ends Meet on a Low Income’, Journal of Social Policy, 7:4 (1978), 385–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Walker, R. L., ‘Rent Arrears Recovery’, Housing, 14:7 (1978), 13–15.Google Scholar

4 One study has concluded that a considerable amount of unclaimed supplementary benefit may be accounted for by delays in application – see Richardson, A., The Take-Up of Supplementary Benefits: A Report on a Survey of Claimants, DHSS, London, 1978.Google Scholar

5 This argument seems to hold with respect to the differential between ordinary and long-term rates of supplementary benefit. The latter are intended ‘to give [recipients] a higher standard of living [and] to enable household equipment to be replaced’ – see DHSS, Social Assistance: A Review of the Supplementary Benefits Scheme in Great Britain, London, 1978, p. 46.Google Scholar

6 This results from the exclusion of claimants who were once eligible for benefit and who, had they applied, would still be entitled to benefit, regardless of their current financial circumstances. This phenomenon of ‘benefit drag’ is exacerbated by the inclusion, in the numerator of the take-up fraction, of claimants who are in receipt of allowances but who are technically no longer eligible. Certain official statistics are adjusted to take account of benefit drag; see for example Report of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth, Report No. 6, Lower Incomes, Cmnd 7175, Appendix I, HMSO, London, 1978.Google Scholar

7 See, however, Smart, op. cit.; and GLC, op. cit.

8 I will discuss several of the broader topics in an article on the poverty process which is in preparation.

9 In accordance with the Housing Finance Act 1972, the Furnished Lettings (Rent Allowances) Act 1973 and the Rent Act 1974 respectively. For a full account of the rent allowance scheme see Report of the Advisory Committee on Rent Rebates and Rent Allowances, Second Report, HMSO, London, 1977.Google Scholar

10 These figures are taken from DOE estimates based on local authority returns and Family Expenditure Survey data.

11 DOE estimate for 1978.Google Scholar

12 DOE estimate for 1978.Google Scholar

13 These findings are taken from an unpublished analysis of Family Expenditure Survey data undertaken by the DOE.

14 See Walker, R. L., Canvassing Rent Allowances in Bristol and Westminster, Housing Development Directorate, DOE, London, 1978.Google Scholar

15 DOE, National Movers Survey, London, 1974.Google Scholar

16 Loss of rent allowances due to increases in index-linked superannuation provides an interesting variant of the poverty trap which warrants further study. In this case the poverty trap results from interaction between public and private systems of income support.

17 See Walker, Canvassing Rent Allowances in Bristol and Westminster, for a description of the canvassing undertaken in Westminster.

18 Three other cases were referred to the housing department during the monitoring period, two by the DHSS and one by a firm of estate agents acting on behalf of a landlord. The estate agents had failed to persuade an elderly widowed tenant to apply for a rent allowance (following a rent increase), but had gained her permission to write to the local authority.

19 GLC, op. cit.

20 See Elks, L., ‘How Rent Rebates Fail to Protect Tenants’, Roof, 01 1976, 16–19.Google Scholar

21 This phenomenon may explain the similarity between the characteristics of claimants in receipt of allowances before the canvassing campaign and those of canvassed applicants who were still in receipt of allowances at the end of the monitoring period (see Table 1).

22 See Report of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth (Report No. 6, Appendix I), pp. 93–7Google Scholar; and Richardson, op. cit.

23 Small samples which I took from two estates in London in 1977 indicate that overpayment of rebates was a factor in 7 per cent and 34 per cent respectively of new cases of rent arrears.

24 In Bristol, staff instructions for the administration of rent allowances runs to thirty-nine closely typed pages.