No wonder she’s smiling! Second £1m home for benefits family with 8 children
A JOBLESS Somali refugee and his family living in taxpayer-funded housing have been forced to downsize... from a £2 million home to a semidetached property worth £1.3 million.
Saeed Khaliif, 53, and his wife Sayida, 46, hit the headlines in 2011 after swapping a modest home in Coventry for a £2,000-aweek, six-bedroomed property in West Hampstead, north-west London, because they wanted to live in the capital.
The property was close to the Underground station and homes owned at the time by the comedian Stephen Fry and the actress Emma Thompson.
Now the couple and their eight children have moved to a four-bedroomed Victorian semi in nearby Cricklewood, where the local council continues to pay their rent. It is understood the switch came after the Government capped benefits, forcing the family to downsize.
Their new home was previously divided into four flats but has been refurbished.
Mr Khaliif, who sought asylum in Britain in 2008, refused to discuss his circumstances when asked by the Daily Mail for a comment yesterday. A voice from inside the property said: ‘Go away – we don’t talk to the Press.’
It is understood that Camden Council sets rents low for such properties so Mr Khaliif is able to live well within housing benefit rules, paying only around £150 a week for his home. Privately owned houses in the same street are let for about five times that amount, £3,000 a month.
Pedro Rodriguez, 39, a neighbour, told The Sun: ‘ The council has given them a home of luxury and spent thousands renovating it before they moved in.
‘The house is huge and it has been decorated to a very high standard with an open-plan layout, high spec kitchen and slate patio.
‘But they are strange and rude and do not open the door to council staff. I am very frustrated and stressed. It’s not right some people are given so much for free when others are struggling.’
Andrew Bridgen, a Tory MP, said Labour-controlled Camden Council was wrong to subsidise such a luxury property. ‘The benefits cap was introduced to end the abuse of the benefits system. It looks like the council is trying to undermine this sensible policy,’ he added.
Dia Chakravarty, the political director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Hard-pressed families will be furious so much was spent on housing a single family in one of London’s most expensive areas.’
When the couple moved to London five years ago, they left their Coventry landlord with a £600 bill for damage and failed to pay their final month’s rent of £1,000.
Sarah Hayward, Camden’s Labour leader, defended the decision to rent the property to the couple and their children, two of whom are understood to suffer from physical disabilities. ‘Camden Council uses council housing to support families who can demonstrate they need help finding a genuinely affordable home,’ she said.
‘Many of our tenants need help because they have a specific highlevel support need like illness or disability. In addition, London’s economy depends on having access to a broad base of labour from the highly skilled and specialist to more generally lower qualified and lower paid. The provision of affordable housing is essential to meeting this labour demand in addition to our responsibilities supporting vulnerable families facing illness and disability.’
But Douglas Carswell, the Ukip MP for Clacton, accused the Government of being ‘mad’ in allowing Mr Khaliif to be funded so heavily.
‘This Somalian individual and his family is getting all this money,’ he said. ‘There are constituents of mine who have paid into the system for all their lives and also have children with special needs and they cannot get a penny in support.’
‘Families will be furious’