My tenant, already unable to eat as much as is healthy on Universal Credit, has been sanctioned for two months for an administrative error he made. As a landlord, I cannot accept any money from him, so it is me – not he – being sanctioned for a minor error on my tenant’s part.
Jake’s story
Jake, not his real name, had a family breakup and was soon made redundant from his £80,000-a-year job as a regional sales manager. He came to me through my social and family network as he needed to be housed near his family. I had a house available for rent, so I housed him.
Jake has a colourful past and despite his obvious intelligence, he didn’t perform as well as he might at school. Nor did I, so that’s not a problem. He tangled with the police, as did I, and where he has a criminal record, I have other issues that are stigmatised in society. He’s in his mid-20s, and I had my most serious fall in life at around the same age.
One of Jake’s greatest mistakes was being a tit and getting 8 points on his driving license within two years of passing his test, meaning he has to reapply for a driving license and be retested when his ban expires. This hampers him getting a job, perhaps as a delivery driver, or certainly to commute to work.
The tangle with the Jobcentre weenie
During the pandemic my business evaporated overnight, and I had to sign on myself. I’m familiar with the Universal Credit demands. They send you piles of mind-numbing, irrelevant documents and invitations, and every so often (very infrequently) something that you must pay attention to.
Jake was so inured to the inanity of the correspondence – and used to hitting ‘Mark as’ Read’—that in one instance he failed to do as requested. The punishment? Two months’ sanction – no money for food for two months.
I’m a landlord
In theory, I should insist on Jake paying the rent and starving. Actually, I should be applying an arrears account so he would be around £1,000 a month in arrears, dating back to the time he moved in. The HMRC may even insist I do that.
I can’t do that
Why? Decent housing should be a right for all. Living in those awful B&Bs and HMOs in the Park District of Weymouth isn’t a good idea for anyone. I’ve known suicides and drug deaths recently in that area. Few could be seriously called decent housing, but more like big money spinners for slum landlords taking in excess of £3,000 a month from housing benefits for destitute, mentally ill, and chemically dependent people (who also need decent housing to break out of their own cycles of despair – those landlords are doing nothing for their tenants in the living conditions they subject them to).
Jake is having a tough enough time bored out of his skull, worried about how he’s going to eat, and lonely as hell without the stresses of that. He’s also aware that I’m under financial pressure too.
Things aren’t exactly easy for me either
A week after that jumped-up little Jobcentre tool sanctioned Jake for his error, I had bad news from the consultancy I’ve been freelancing for for two years. They cut my workload by 80%. I’ve a few quid in the bank, so I’m OK until I land new work (but I have no idea when that will be). The effect has been that the Jobcentre weenie is not starving the person intended but is hitting me in the wallet just when I could have done with the income. Yes, he’s sanctioning someone in the capitalist landlord class – not the proletariat, to which said Jobcentre weenie belongs.
You can’t starve anyone else in the UK under any other regime
That’s right. The archetypal pedophile in The Verne can’t be put on short rations, no matter how heinous his crimes. No one in the army can be starved. Not even those who have arrived on a rubber boat – another widely and wrongly hated figure in society. I wonder if there’s a clause in Jobcentre weenie’s contracts that states if they fail to meet certain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in their role, they will have a 90% pay cut? I wonder if this should be the case – perhaps then they’d not lord it so much over the desperate and destitute they deal with daily.
To my understanding, capitalism requires a reserve labour force so it can continue to grow unsustainably as per classic economic measures of success. So why starve someone for an administrative error? Isn’t the reserve labour force better fed, clothed, and kept in a state of mental comfort so they can be in a good mental and physical condition when their services are required?
The brutality and lack of humanity in this instance utterly confounds me.
Rant over.
