THE welfare system has become a major supporter of private landlords, according to figures from the Economic and Social Research Institute.
One third of all households in private rented accommodation receive a rent supplement under the Supplementary Welfare Allowance scheme, according to the ESRI report, An Analysis of Social Housing Need.
The typical rent supplement is £123 a month and represents just over 70 per cent of total rent it says.
The welfare system also helps with mortgage interest repayments. According to the report, the typical mortgage supplement is £82 a month for people paying local authority mortgages and £134 a month for people on private mortgages. Mortgage supplements in general meet less than half the householder's total monthly mortgage repayment.
Of the more than 28,000 households on the local authority waiting list in 1993, 30 per cent were living in accommodation that was unfit and 35 per cent were in overcrowded circumstances, says the report.
It cites a survey of about 700 housing applicants in which the interviewers were later asked to say what proportion of applicants actually were in need of housing. They estimated that 45 per cent of applicants definitely needed housing and 13 per cent probably did not.
New local authority rental housing tends to concentrate social disadvantage in new housing estates, say the authors, Mr Tony Fahey and Ms Dorothy Watson of the ESRI.
To counteract this tendency, they suggest, local authorities should consider keeping some of their existing housing stock for letting to new tenants rather than selling it to sitting tenants.