THE CITY'S most senior housing councillor says tenants struggling to pay their rent will only face eviction in exceptional circumstances.
From this week, just over 4,450 council tenants face having to find an extra £14 to £25 per week to pay towards their rent after reductions in housing benefit linked to the number of spare bedrooms in a property.
In addition, about 24,800 households in Hull are now having to pay council tax for the first time, under a separate welfare reform.
Councillor John Black, portfolio holder for housing, said: "Make no mistake, it is going to be a very difficult time for some people.
"It's a whole new ball game and I just hope people will not be tempted to miss the odd rent payment, because it can quickly add up.
"As a council, our approach has always been that evictions for rent arrears are only considered as a last resort.
"That isn't going to change because, as an authority, we are also going to have weigh up the cost of going through the courts to secure evictions.
"We don't want to end up taking lots of people to court – it's the last thing anyone wants to see happening."
Cllr Black urged tenants to contact the council for help if they were worried about their new rent payments.
He said: "We can arrange for rent arrears to be paid in instalments and there is specific discretionary funding available for people who are in particular hardship because of these changes.
"The worst thing is for people to bury their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is happening."
He said the council was also continuing to help tenants move into small properties to avoid being penalised for having spare bedrooms.
"We are doing our best but it is well documented that we have a very limited number of smaller properties available.
"We do have a mismatch of housing stock, which is really the result of our recent history.
"The council built lots of three-bed properties in the 1950s and 1960s to house people coming from the slum clearance areas. Back then, people also had much bigger families than they do today.
"Because of the 'bedroom tax', there is a massive demand from people in these three-bed houses, who no longer need the extra bedrooms, to move into two-bed properties but we just don't have them to move into."
He said he was working with council officials on a bid to secure borrowing approval from the Government to build a new generation of council homes in the city.
He said: "There is a cap on what we can borrow at the moment and the only way we can raise income is by putting the rent up or using funding from the New Homes Bonus, which is not really enough.
"By allowing us to borrow an extra £50m over four years, we could build 500 new energy-efficient properties and the majority of them would be one and two-bed properties on sites already identified for housing."
