“[Dispatches] airing on Channel 4, investigates how private landlords are now the fastest growing provider of accommodation for housing benefit tenants, receiving £9 billion a year from public funds.
…the programme also reveals how private landlords now own 40 per cent of all former council houses, leading to fears of a shortage in social housing.
Dr Victoria Cooper, lecturer in Social Policy at the Open University, tells the programme: ‘Approximately 40 per cent of the housing benefit budget is spent on the private rented sector.
‘What we’re seeing is a redistribution of wealth and while public funds were previously spent within social housing and then used to reinvest to expand that social housing, this is no longer the case.
‘With the private rented sector the money isn’t redistributed and it simply goes into the pockets of private landlords.’
East Devon Watch 