NO DSS – YOU’RE NOT GETTIN’ A FLAT INNIT MATE!
Too bad if you are in receipt of benefits for any reason
at all and want to move into private rented accommodation, ie need a permanent
weather shield against the elements, which is known as an “apartment” or a “flat”
or maybe even a “house”.
Despite such blatant discrimination in the past such as
signs declaring that “no blacks”, “no Irish” etc will be considered being now
quite rightly illegal, you still see “No DSS” quite routinely in estate
agent/letting agent windows and advertisements, it’s all now also quite
conveniently aided and abetted by the current mainstream media and political
climate against benefit claimants in general.
No “DSS” itself as a term is not only blatantly
discriminatory it is also blatantly ignorant, not least because the once named
government deparment the “Department for
Social Security” which was the source for this infamous acronym has long since
been rebranded and rebadged as several different names. The most recent one as most benefit claimants
are quite painfully aware is the rather austere sounding Department for Work
& Pensions, so the signs should at least read “No DWP”.
If we are to believe that landlords and estate agents
have not even heard of the DWP and still think that benefits come under the DSS
then they really are showing themselves up somehow as being quite ignorant and
apathetic about the world in which benefit claimants have to live, but why
would they give a toss as they quite happily exclude them from their
properties.
Benefit claimants are a whole section of society and as such it cannot be fair to generalise, even though that’s what the Daily Mail and Express do most days when they can’t think of a headline. Benefit claimants supposedly suffer “No DSS” because they might wreck the place, not bother to pay the rent on time or just generally be an anti-social neighbour, the only problem with these crude stereotypes is that it rather forces people “In work” to be seen in an angelic light as if they could never do these things, to use receipt of benefits alone as a judge of character when considering a prospective tenant is about as crude as reckoning that someone with a scouse accent is more likely to nick something.
This “benefit prejudice” breaks down very quickly because
it is wholly ridiculous, benefits are everything from Jobseekers Allowance to
Disability Living Allowance and they get paid to all sorts of people in all
sorts of circumstances especially when you take the payment of Local Housing
Allowance which forms Housing Benefit needed to afford rents into account, all
sorts of people depend on that allowance from people who are self-employed who
just can’t earn enough to pay ridiculous rents to people that are on DLA
(Disability Living Allowance) and depend on Local Housing Allowance for their accommodation,
to anyone that’s simply unemployed or who is a stay at home mum looking after
children, you name it, a lot of people can’t afford stupid rent prices in this
country, it doesn’t say much more about them as people than that. To say “No
DSS” at a whole class of people really does make you look like a self-righteous
prejudicial prick.
For my rent, you could buy a new Playstation 4 games
console with a copy of a latest game along with it every month, how many people
especially in abysmally low paid work, could afford that, it’s no wonder we
need housing benefit as rather an essential thing, and why it particularly
sucks that people who are for some reason in the position of being landlords in
their life are quite legally allowed to judge on that criteria alone.
And I say this as someone who did manage to get a private
rent, in my “DSS”ecial situation. As long as the landlord gets the money for
the rent, they really shouldn’t have anything else to consider. Forget the fact
that a housing benefit claimant might have their money stopped or develop a
benefit problem, this is no different from a worker losing their job.
Written by Asterick Jones, who else?
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