One issue that's causing immense distress is the housing crisis in the city (and across much of the country).
The Coalition Government has announced £1.8 billion cuts to housing benefit, and I'll be making it a front line campaign priority in the new Parliamentary term.
In my constituent advice sessions, housing problems - whether access to or fear of losing benefit or simply joining the queue for scarce affordable accommodation - have produced the most constituent case work since my election in May.
I'm reminded of that (in)famous Tory advertising billboard campaign back in 1979 that featured a queue of unemployed people winding away into the distance with the strapline "Labour isn't working".
Today, we could update it: "Why aren't the Tories housing those in need?" with a long queue heading away from the housing office.
I'll be reminding Ministers of the devastating impact these cuts will have on some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in my constituency.
What's so striking and worrying is the extent to which Brighton and Hove seems to be directly in the firing line as the Government looks to slice off bit by bit means-tested housing benefit - that pillar of the social security system and a part of what used to be called the welfare state.
Figures recently published by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), suggest that Cameron's cuts will affect disproportionately more households in Brighton and Hove than any other part of South East. (1)
Crisis, the charity for single homeless people, has analysed these figures in more detail. (2)
It found that people in one-bed properties in the city could be paying an extra £728 a year.
£728 would be a deeper cut than experienced anywhere else in the South East for the equivalent sized property. (2)
The result: many local people - including families with young children - will simply struggle to pay the rent, risk being overwhelmed by serious debt and ultimately pushed into homelessness.
Brighton and Hove is more exposed partly because 21% of homes are in the private rented sector, much higher than the average.
My advice sessions are full of people who are struggling to pay rent, and trying to find alternatives to cramped, overcrowded, and overpriced accommodation.
Under the DWP figures, the cuts in housing benefit will affect over 12,000 households in Brighton and Hove - more than 14 times the number of affected households in West Oxfordshire, the council which covers David Cameron's constituency.
The other reason Brighton and Hove is likely to suffer more is that the government is moving the basis of calculation of entitlement from the 50th to the 30th ‘percentile' of rental costs of properties in a local area.
You might be getting the gist by now that calculating housing benefit is extremely complicated.
As any benefits adviser will explain, the level of benefit a person can claim is linked to local rents in the area and is calculated at the median rent level.
In Brighton and Hove there's a bigger gap between the 30th and 50th percentiles.
Because the city has a large private rented sector rent levels are more spread out as there is a greater variety of property.
This means there's a bigger gap and so the average cut in benefit will be higher.
To put all this into perspective, these cuts hitting the poor are equivalent to a sudden and back-breaking hike in income tax for more affluent earners.
For example; if someone earning £16,000 (after tax-free allowance) and receiving housing benefit was dealt a £728 cut in benefit, that would be the equivalent of paying an income tax rise of over 4.5 per cent.
Essentially, these figures expose Cameron's pledges that the poor wouldn't be hurt by the government's cuts as nothing more than an incredibly cynical charade.
Of course, cuts are not inevitable or pre-programmed: the government could have avoided this punitive and short-sighted policy by tackling tax avoidance and tax evasion which potentially could raise billions of pounds a year.
Rather than cutting housing benefit we should be returning empty properties back to use and investing in a major programme of investment in affordable green homes.
This would help to reduce the rental rates in high cost urban areas like Brighton as the stock of affordable housing increases.
As Parliament reconvenes this week I, along with a growing chorus of concerned MPs, will be pressing for a parliamentary inquiry into the impact of housing benefit cuts on the poorest people.
It's easy to see why people are becoming so angry.
Notes
1. Department for Work and Pensions
and http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/impacts-of-hb-proposals.pdf
2. Crisis
The report by Crisis can be found at http://www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/publications/1008HBCuts%20formatted.doc
Crisis comments, "The Government announced cuts of £1.8bn to housing benefit in its emergency Budget soon after coming to power. According to an impact assessment by the Department of Work and Pensions, every one of the 123,000 households in the region reliant on Local Housing Allowance (LHA)-the form of housing benefit paid to tenants in the Private Rented Sector-will be affected.
"On average, claimants in the South East will see their LHA cut by £12 per week, or £624 per year."
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