Guardian writer nearly gets it right

From an article about the Housing Benefit cap:

A point well made at last week's launch of Trust for London's new poverty profile [which is worth a quick read in its own right] is that housing benefit doesn't, in the end, increase a household's spending power... Recipients might be seen as essentially intermediaries between their local authority and whoever they rent their accommodation from... They are given the money, but in an important sense it isn't really theirs. (1)

Private renters in London who don't receive benefit and think those who do should have to move, might not have anticipated the impact of low-income, often large families, currently renting with the help of housing benefit in Inner London having to re-locate to the generally more moderately-priced Outer London (2) - perhaps leaving roots, friends, jobs and schools in Islington, Camden or the smarter parts of Hackney (3) and starting over in Redbridge, Hillingdon or Bromley (4). Along with placing extra demands on education, health and other local services, (5) their presence might also exert upward pressure on local rents. (6)

How come? The government insists that capping housing benefit levels will cause landlords to reduce what they charge. But most landlords say otherwise. Indeed, as a council survey of those in Barking and Dagenham found, some in the cheaper areas are anticipating the housing benefit changes creating greater demand on their patches, as hard-up, capped households and others (7), struggling to cope with rising rents who don't receive housing benefit, head their way. (8) They sense an opportunity to put their rents up, rather than down - and that includes those of people already renting in the area, some of them perhaps thinking that those who get housing benefit to help them live in expensive areas should be made to move...

The steady, heavy hike in the huge housing benefit bill across London fills nobody with joy... (9)

1) Correct, that's a very good place to start the debate. HB payments mainly benefit 'private' landlords and hurt non-claimants by pushing up rents. Suitably heartened I read on...

2) "More moderately priced"? Ha! "Slightly less insanely high" is more like it.

3) This is just the Leftie version of The Poor Widow Bogey. Duck's back, water.

4) Those are three perfectly nice areas of Outer London, what's his problem?

5) Another rallying cry of the NIMBYs. The amount of money spent on these things is broadly proportional to the population, if there were a mass exodus from Inner to Outer London (with a corresponding exodus in the other direction) then it may be that funding has to be re-tweaked slightly, so what?

6) OK, so we have this bedraggled army "placing extra demands on local services" and that's going to drive up rents in Outer London, how so..?

7) Fair enough, as a slightly brighter example of the Leftie or Home-Owner-Ist caucus, he realises that there are some dynamic effects when you reduce massive state interference, but as usual he only looks at possible losers and ignores the winners.

Simple fact is, the whole housing market in the UK is distorted beyond belief, removing all the subsidies can overall only lead to a better outcome. It must be clear that overall rent levels will fall, and that Inner London rents will always be higher than Outer London; there will be some people moving out of Inner London, but it's not as if Inner London landlords will leave all their buildings vacant, they will just have to drop their rents to balance out the equation. Therefore, the really big groups of winners will be potential first time buyers; non-claimant tenants in Inner London and non-claimant tenants in Outer London who can now upgrade to the suitably "ethnically cleansed" parts of Inner London for a much smaller premium.

What's not to like?

8) Wot? If you are a non-claimant private renter in Barking and Dagenham, and rents really did go up in that area, which they wouldn't, see (6), why would they "head their way" to Barking and Dagenham - they're already there, aren't they?

9) Yes it does, and he explained exactly whom in his first paragraph, see (1).