Call to pay Rent Asistance to Landlords

[Bargain Hunter]

A politician given time off from the frontline has had a chance to think.

Craig Emerson, a former frontbencher, has made the call for Rent Assistance payments made to low income families to be paid directly to their landlords. This he says will avoid the money being misspent. Well, dur.

"He said the current system whereby rent assistance goes direct to low income renters, without any obligation to pass it on, made little sense."

Read more here http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=115772

 

[Kristine..]

When the Child Care Fee Relief Scheme was broadened to include (ooo-er) Private Child Care Centres, giving parents the choice of where they placed their children (not to mention that there were simply not enough Government funded long day care centre places available to meet demand) the Government subsidy was paid directly to the Centre, which then had to account for every cent at the end of each quarter.

The catch was, that the Centre could not draw on the subsidy for any specific family until that family had paid it's share and signed the payment register.

I had a (very small) number of families over the years who simply stopped coming to the Centre, leaving unpaid bills which meant I couldn't claim the subsidy for them, either.

So all these plans work fine in theory, but if the rent subsidy can only be paid if the tenant has also paid then the landlord will still be the one carrying the shortfall.

Cheers

Kristine

 

[Bargain Hunter]

Kristine,

That is scary. The government will give private individuals money however if they don't use it for the purpose which it was provided no questions are asked.

On the other hand if the money goes directly to a business then they have to account for every cent and if the person benefitting from the funding doesn't pay their way the business gets nothing.

That stinks... you could imagine the savings the government would make if they had the same approach to rent assistance.

Maybe I was rejoicing too soon.

Regards

Andrew