Family on £1,460 weekly housing benefit are moved out of East End

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Tim Archer... "£20,000 for a family is more than enough."

The father arrived as a political refugee from Ethiopia who was granted asylum, it is understood.
His family then arrived unexpectedly and Tower Hamlets Council was obliged to give them accommodation, the East London Advertiser has learned.
The family of 12—a couple with 10 children—are being supported by social services.
They have since been found accommodation in Redbridge, further out in the suburbs, according to one Town Hall source.
The controversy has now drawn comment from leading Government figures at the Department of Work & Pensions since it broke on the Advertiser website last night.
A statement to the paper tonight says: “This case demonstrates exactly why we are reforming Housing Benefit and ending the absurdity of people living in the sort of housing that an average working family could never afford.
“On April 1 we introduced caps to Local Housing Allowance and reduced the maximum rate at which it could be paid. The sooner we can return fairness to a system that is out of control the better.”
Families already getting above £20,000 are being given up to nine months to adjust to the new reality.
Welfare payments in Tower Hamlets alone have reached £223 million in one year in Britain’s poorest borough—even before the family claiming £1,460 a week housing benefit, along with another nine families listed last month getting around £600 each.
“This shows the ludicrous public money being paid to put people into expensive housing,” said Tower Hamlets Opposition leader Peter Golds. “It is utterly, utterly ridiculous what sort of properties the council must be housing these families in.”
The last annual figures available show 10 families getting between £20,600 and £38,300 for the year 2008-09.
The year before was even higher, with 10 families claiming between £30,500 and £58,000Continued