Updated
Ammended Thursday, 9 December, 2010 by the editor

“NO DSS makes no economic sense - hence the only reason for its imposition can be prejudice based on uninformed stereotyping of a DSS tenant. It is not just landlords & letting agents that have to be taken to task over this - but mortgage lenders.” Reader’s comment View poll, poll results and comments

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“Nice room to let in quiet secluded house. Use of all mod cons. Free radio broadband & unlimited telephone calls. Parking. No DSS.”

The above advertisement was taken from an Internet letting agency website. Similarly worded advertisements—No DSS (Department of Social Security claimants–recipients of state welfare)—appear daily in regional and national newspapers. If they are considered ‘legal’, then the author of this item considers this is contrary to established law relating to discrimination.

If a similar advertisement appeared in print stating ‘No Blacks’ or ‘No Pakistani’s, or ‘no single parents’ or even ‘no gays’ then the publisher would most certainly be faced with prosecution for permitting the publication of discriminatory advertisements.

To see how common this discriminate form of advertising and rental is, Google search the term ‘no dss’.

Some landlord’s refuse to accept recipients of DSS because they do not wish to disclose that they are letting properties on the rental market. Whenever a DSS claimant makes an application for housing benefit (social welfare rent payments), the landlord is registered on the local council’s records and as a result also with the Inland Revenue services.

However, many people in receipt of DSS allowances are not simply just out of work, they are in receipt of disability and incapacity allowances. And in their cases, advertisements that state ‘no DSS’ are actively discriminating against their status as disabled people. I am one of them. And what about people in receipt of state pensions?

Importantly, many people struggling to make a living receive (in the UK) Family Tax Credits—an income supplement, which also entitles them to housing benefit and council tax benefits. These people are all too often tarred with the brush of receiving DSS. Is this a just and fair system?

In 1988 I had parted from my wife and two daughters and although we attempted a reconciliation, in 1989 we agreed to divorce and go our separate ways, our daughters remaining with my wife. In 1990, I moved away to another location in the UK and started a new job.

In 1995, following my return from a charity trip into central Bosnia, I went through a very difficult personal crisis and quit my job and home in Hampshire and went to Ireland, and on to the USA for 12 months before returning to Ireland and settling in Limerick City in Ireland.

Health issues began to trouble me and in 1998 I was registered as disabled by the Irish health services. Unable to properly continue in my profession as a qualified staff journalist, I set up this news-based website. I was also able to continue working as a freelance journalist and over the years I spent in Ireland my work appeared in all of the daily national newspapers and most of the Sunday national papers. As a freelance writer/editor I was also asked to review and comment on new books due to go into print and my comments have been published in them.

I lost contact with my daughters after traveling to the USA and although I attempted to re-establish contact, I was unable to secure any replies from them or their mother and believed they had moved to another location. Extensive searches via the Internet failed to produce any results. Then, in December 2005, I located a reference on the Internet to my brother-in-law in Sussex. There was no contact information in the item but a letter to the Sussex Evening Argus produced an almost immediate response from someone who knew him.

Through this contact I was able to learn that my daughters and former wife in fact still lived at the same address and we re-established contact with each other. After six months of communicating with my former wife, who traveled to Ireland to visit me, she invited me to return to the family home in the UK.

Little did I realise just what indifference I would be returning when I decided to return to my home country in June, 2005.

I returned with nothing more than a few bags of clothing and my computer equipment and set about the business of applying for my disability allowance—in my case in the UK its equivalent being an incapacity allowance. European (EU) legislation means that any EU citizen in now entitled to receive an allowance awarded to him or her by an EU member country in any other EU member country. It is now November 2006 as I update this article, some 17 months since my return to the UK, and my allowance has still not been cleared or settled.

It took until November 2005 until the UK department dealing with it decided that my ‘claim’ had to be sent to Ireland as the ‘qualifying authority’—meaning the authority who had granted the allowance to begin. The idiotic and indifferent bureaucracy is absolutely beyond belief.

The attempted reunion with my former wife did not work and within six weeks of my having quit the life I had built for myself in Ireland, I found myself homeless in the UK. A good friend who I had first met in Ireland, a German man with a family, heard of my desperate situation and immediately offered his help, stating that I should come and stay with them until I was able to sort something else out.

That was in July 2005. Lacking any deposit money for a down payment on a place to live, I was unable to secure anywhere to live. Requests to Basildon council in whose region I had become homeless and where my family still lived fell on deaf ears. ‘We cannot help’ was the only response I received.

Likewise requests to the council in the area in which I was staying with my friends brought the same dismal lack of assistance. Despite living with a family of four, which includes two school-aged boys, and having to sleep in a makeshift bed in the family’s living room with my clothes still in a traveling bag, I was, the council said, not considered as a priority.

They could, a housing advisor said, point me towards a private landlord as the council maintained a list of such. When I explained that it was pointless me approaching a private landlord as I lacked the money for a deposit and monthly rental in advance, the only advice I was given was to approach the local JobCentre and request a community care grant or a budgeting loan. This I did, with the request for £750 to cover one month rental and deposit. The loan they granted was £420—useless to all intent and purpose.

Aside from my personal experiences related to this article — all events have a personal connection or they become meaningless — I return to the title of this article—No DSS here. A good friend in Ireland, aware of my predicament, came into some money and kindly offered to make available to me sufficient cash to cover a rental deposit for a place to stay and one month’s rental in advance.

Armed with this possibility, I began a search for available properties to rent and came across advertisements stating that the landlord would not accept any tenants who were in receipt of State welfare. True figures of claimant numbers are vey difficult to obtain from the UK Government to any degree of real accuracy. Statistics to measure those in receipt of unemployment or other state benefits have been manipulated to such a degree as to have become all but meaningless.

According to the UK Government's national statistics office website, the number claiming unemployment benefit, i.e., JobSeekers Allowance, stood at 919,700 in February 2006. It is unclear if these figures include all claimants, those on sick-related benefits such as disability and incapacity allowances.

What is clear is that if all landlords operated a policy of refusing to house DSS claimants, then in February 2006 there would have been 919,700 people, and their families where applicable, homeless. Is this an acceptable state of affairs?

It would surely be prejudicial discrimination if any landlord revoked a tenancy because a particular existing tenant became either unemployed or ill and as a result started to receive state benefits, including housing benefit. Why then are landlords—and more importantly publishers—able to publish advertisements that discriminate against people who have done nothing wrong?

Despite repeated requests for a comment from the Advertising Standards Authority with regard to their stance on this issue, no reponse has been received from them since this article was published.

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