David Cameron has stoked the ire of young people’s charities by announcing that if his party comes to power again this May, then they’ll stop housing benefit for anyone aged 18-21 who’s out of work.
This means that all sorts of young people – the entirely financially destitute who’ve never had a job in their lives and were hoping to move out despite not earning any money, to those who hose who land a job a little too far away from home to commute and haven’t started earning yet, students looking to go to university in a different part of the country where they’ve got to rent, and those whose parents are abusive or unaccepting of them – won’t get government assistance to do what they want. And so they'll pretty much have to live with their parents until they can afford to move out.
The pledge – along with Cameron’s decision to cap household benefits to £23,000 a year – is to get people off of treating benefits as a ‘lifestyle choice’ and to create a ‘stampede to the job centre’. It has been criticised by various charities. Shelter told The Mirror**: ‘We need a welfare system that’s fair, but taking away the safety net that stands between some young people and homelessness would be a disaster.’
READ MORE: Young Women Don't Like Unemployed People. Apparently.
Crisis said: ‘We know half of all homeless people become homeless aged under 21. Without benefits, many more will end up on the streets.’
According to research done by Homeless Link in 2013, 37% of young homeless people say they’re in their situation because their parents are no longer willing to accommodate them. How much is that figure going to rise when there’s no other safety net for young people?
Cameron told The Telegraph: ‘This tells you everything you need to know about our values. Conservatives believe we should be giving people the chance of a better future while encouraging people on benefits back into work.’
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.