REAL LIVES Welfare
SPARE ROOM MADNESS
Who’s been sleeping in your spare bedroom? And have you paid your tax on it?
As the letters start dropping on the doormats of social housing tenants across the UK, the full horror of the Tories’ unjust ‘bedroom tax’ is starting to sink in.
From April, if you’re a social housing (council or housing association) tenant, and the government decides you have a ‘spare’ room, then it will deduct money from your housing benefit for it, leaving you to pay the difference.
Later this year, with housing benefit being replaced by the new universal credit, tenants will also be expected to pay rent themselves instead of having it paid direct to the landlord.
“In pilot areas it’s been shown that immediately 41 per cent of tenants can’t afford to pay,” says Unite Community Scotland co-ordinator, Jack Ferguson. “When introduced this could inevitably lead to a massive rise in the number of tenants getting into rent arrears. And the longer that goes on, the greater the chance we’d be looking at mass numbers of evictions, and a huge rise in homelessness.”
The unfairness of the cuts will be felt by many groups who fall through the cracks, and whose extra room is anything but spare. These include disabled people who occasionally need a carer; kids who will be forced to share (if they’re the same gender they’ll have to share through teenage years as well); or parents who have part custody and need a spare room to see their kids; all
are set to be hit hard.
Unite believes the bedroom tax is a punishment from the government for having more rooms than you need – in its view. “If you have one ‘spare’ bedroom your housing benefit will be cut by 14 per cent of the rent you pay every week,” explains Jack.
“If you have two or more spare bedrooms you will lose 25 per cent. And if your benefit is cut you’ll have to pay your landlord the difference between your housing benefit and your rent.”
These changes are going to be felt far and wide across the UK – 660,000 social housing tenants are expected to be affected – 31 per cent of existing working- age housing benefit claimants in the social sector.
Daylight robbery Most of those affected will have one extra bedroom and estimates show the average losses are between £14 and £16 a week with nearly 100,000 residents expected to incur debt from the tax.
Which all sounds a bit like the window tax introduced in 1696, which profoundly affected Britain’s housing for the next 156 years. Homeowners boarded up windows to escape the tax – hence the phrase, ‘daylight robbery’.
The bedroom tax aims to address the shortage of social housing by matching
24 uniteWORKS March/April 2013 BY AMANDA CAMPBELL
families to the right-sized home but Unite and other critics say there simply aren’t enough smaller properties available. Figures from the National Housing Federation suggest that around 180,000 social tenants in England are ‘under- occupying’ two-bedroom homes. Yet critics of the tax point out just 68,000 one-bedroom social homes become available for letting in a single year.
Unite is working to stop the bedroom tax by standing together. “Become a part of a nationwide campaign against
the
bedroom tax. Many local groups have mushroomed all over the UK and are raising awareness, challenging social landlords and building solidarity within communities,” Jack reports.
“If you’re directly affected or if you have friends, family members or neighbours in danger of losing their home, just show up to any local campaign group meeting in your area and get involved. If there isn’t one yet, talk to your neighbours and friends and start one up yourself,” he adds.
“
In pilot areas it’s been shown that immediately 41 per cent of tenants can’t afford to pay
Jack Ferguson Unite Community Scotland ”
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