Labour leader Ed Miliband has announced plans for sweeping reforms of the private rented sector, including actual price controls, which the party says "will help millions of households caught in the cost-of-living crisis".
Speaking in Redbridge, London, at the party's campaign launch for local and European elections on 22 May, Miliband set out detailed plans for three-year tenancies and setting rents which preventexcessive rises.
The government has introduced rules meaning that long-term unemployed people will only receive benefits if they visit a job centre every day or take on six months of voluntary work.
Jobseekers that disobey the new rules will have their benefits stopped for four weeks for a first offence and 13 weeks for a second.
The housing benefit bill will reach a new high of £25bn a year by 2017, according to new government estimates.
The bill is estimated to have decreased by £425m last year, during which a number of welfare reforms affecting housing benefit took effect, but is set to increase again before reaching £25.4bn in real terms by 2019.
Benefits claimants in the North-East and North Yorkshire have been hit harder by Government’s ‘bedroom tax’ than any other region, a new study has revealed.
The report, by Oxfam and the New Policy Institute (NPI), warns that wide-ranging cuts are changing the shape of welfare support at a time when rising prices are making it harder for families to make ends meet.
A series of subtle changes to housing benefit mean the safety net for people renting their home is shrinking fast
The necessity of housing makes housing benefit a crucial part of the safety net. It ensures that if someone loses their job, they don't immediately fall behind on their rent and risk losing their home as well. It also allows job-seekers to focus on securing a new job rather than where they are going to sleep that night.
It is more than six months since the government's benefits cap was introduced, with the aim of encouraging people into work. Panorama followed council officers in the London Borough of Brent for seven months to find out how it was affecting families.
"I don't know how anyone can be rich and proud on benefits. For me, it's very shameful. I hate being in this situation. I hate having to rely on the government," said single mother-of-two Tanya Blake.
One in four, or about 843,000, London households currently receive housing benefit to help them pay their rent, says a new London Assembly report.
The housing benefit bill for London in 2012-13 was more than £6bn and claims have risen by over 100,000 since 2008. It’s not surprising the government wants to get a hold of rising costs, but the report describes how nearly half of all households in the UK subject to the overall benefits cap have been in London. This is primarily down to our higher housing costs. Londoners in social housing have also been disproportionately affected by the "Bedroom Tax".
Changes to housing benefit in England, Scotland and Wales are creating "financial hardship and distress" for disabled people, MPs have warned.
The reduction of payments for social tenants deemed to have a larger home than they need have hit vulnerable people not intended as targets, the Work and Pensions Committee said.
About 6% of social housing tenants in Britain affected by changes to benefits partly designed to cut under-occupancy have moved home, BBC research suggests.
Ministers claim the policy - dubbed the bedroom tax by critics - will free up big homes and save taxpayers £1m a day.
The government's huge shake-up of the benefits system is pushing families in social housing into greater levels of debt as they struggle to cope and find work, a major study has revealed.
Tenants have seen the amount they owe increase since October, while almost half report having no money left each week once essential bills have been paid.