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**Hugh** · 27-10-2010, 10:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

if its what you say that makes no sense.

so if the average rent for an area is eg. £400 a month they would only get about £133 a month in rent support?

no one is going to find a property for rent £133 a month in an area with an average of £400.

I am fairly sure its the average of the lowest 30%, and that is bad enough on its own as it is also not realistic.

local housing allowance itself I think hasnt suffered from this abuse, its only the old housing benefit system, so they have no real reason to reduce local housing allowance. I looked for my sister and found out the LHA rate for an area she wanted to move to, the LHA rate for a 2 bed house (on current benefits before this kicks in) was way too low for 'anything' on the market. The LHA rate was £520 a month, the cheapest property we found was £590 a month and the average I would say was about £650 a month. The reason been is they include housing association properties which moves it down a lot.

No - if the median (please see below for the difference between median and average, which are different even though some papers use them interchangeably) rent is £400 per month, that is the median (it is halfway along the line of values); you don't then take 30% of that to get the 30th percentile.

The Guardian explains it much better than I could

Quote:

The median is sometimes referred to as the 50th percentile (ie, it's 50% of the way along your line of values). What the government proposes to do is to reduce that to the 30th percentile - 30% of the way along the line. The bottom line is that housing benefit will pay less out for the same accommodation - and the difference will have to be paid by tenants, many of whom live entirely on benefits (although Housing Benefit is payable for people in work – as well as the unemployed).

The CiH have worked out exactly what this means across the country - and this is the data we're bringing you today.

So, for a couple with three children in Grant Shapps constituency of Welwyn Hatfield, on the average gross salary for constituency (in 2009) of £575.60. Their income right now splits like this:

• take home earnings £438.25 (based on new increased tax allowance)
• Child benefit £47.10
• Child Tax Credit £55.15
• Total income £540.50

Their weekly outgoings look like this:

• Rent (at 50th Percentile) £212.88
• £28.73 need to pay in council tax (amount for Band D in Welwyn Hatfield)
• Housing Benefit before change £111.37
• Housing Benefit after change £82.61

They will have lost £28.76 in housing benefit a week - that's £1,495 a year. Their total disposable income after paying rent is £381.50 a month

*Average: add up all the numbers and divide by the number of numbers. example: 1-3-8-10-19; add them up equals 41. Divide 41 by 5 and the answer is 8.2.

Median: is the middle number or the average of the two middle numbers if there is no exact middle number. Example: 1-3-8-10-19; the middle number is the third number which is "8" which is the median. In this case the median has exactly two numbers on each side of it. Now if there is no middle number, such as 1-3-8-9-10-19 then average the two middle numbers, which would be an average of 8 and 9 which is 8.5.