For years, YOU'VE paid their £2,000-a-week rents. But the housing benefit gravy train's hit the buffers

By SUE REID

Luxury living: The £1.2million home of the Saiedi family in Acton, London

At the kitchen table, two pretty girls giggle as they draw pictures with crayons. On the wall are posters listing their times-tables, while in the corner, the family’s tropical fish, Bubbles and Tiger, swim in a heated aquarium.
But this happy domestic scene is threatened with upheaval because, in nine days’ time, the Rostant family - two parents, eight children and their pet fish - may be homeless. Until now, the family have been one of four families claiming the highest amount of housing benefit in the country.

State-funded: Toorpalai Saiedi's seven-strong family receives £750 a week from Ealing Council to cover their rent

Their £2,000-a-week rent (more than £103,200 a year, given to the landlord) has been paid by taxpayers. But the money is to be stopped as the result of the Government’s crackdown, which began this week, on the long-running scandal of housing benefit abuse (which costs the working public a staggering £20billion a year).

Hassan Gilani, 58, has received up to £180,000 in housing benefits and disability allowance in the UK on top of £112,000 in benefits from Denmark

The change in the law means that low-income families such as the Rostants will no longer be given huge sums of housing benefit to live in expensive accommodation.
In Central London, where they live, a strict cap of £400 a week for housing benefit pay-outs has been brought in. Andre Rostant said yesterday: ‘It’s a matter of when, not if, we are chucked out by the landlord because we can’t pay the rent.

Staggering: The housing benefit bill costs taxpayers a staggering £20billion-a-year - with some unemployed families 'enjoying levels of luxury that most working people cannot dream of'.

‘There are 40 families at my children’s primary school who also expect to be evicted from their homes for the same reason.’
Many of these families, living in some of the wealthiest parts of London, have had their huge rents paid by the State for many years. But now, the welfare gravy train has halted.

source: dailymail