Is The Bedroom Tax Unravelling? Part 4 What is likely to undo the Bedroom Tax quickest is the fact that the money isn’t coming in. Based on a survey of housing associations it emerges that 51% of those affected by the tax are already in arrears with it. This was reported on 19th September by the chairman of the National Housing Federation which represents the housing associations like Whitefriars here in Coventry. There are 660,000 families involved and “over 330,000 are already struggling to pay their rent and facing a frightening and uncertain future… there is no other option but to repeal.” Let’s look at this statement. ‘Rent’ here must refer only to the 14% or 25% portion by which is being deducted from tenants’ Housing Benefit. The rest is still paid directly by the council (for now, but wait till Universal Credit comes along). But the tenant is supposed to pay the shortfall directly to Whitefriars or whoever and most haven’t been doing that. A few are doing this as a protest, and all credit to them, but mostly people simply haven’t got the money to pay it out of, as we have been saying all along. Now you wouldn’t have thought this was rocket science for the highly-educated chaps who made this law to have predicted, but they must have been carried away by the thrilling wheeze of inflicting a benefit cut that superficially sounds fair to people who don’t know the facts (‘why should we subsidise people for having a spare room?’) Personally I am more surprised that 49% aren’t yet in arrears. I think there’s two main ways that people have been managing it, but both are temporary. Firstly, most families affected include someone disabled, many of whom get DLA. In one sense that is extra money on top of the basic benefit you are supposed to live on, and some will have taken the hit out of that. But DLA is meant to help with the extra costs of care and getting around for a disabled person. It is disgusting that anyone should have to give it up just to pay this cruel tax. Disgracefully, even more people are going to be robbed of all DLA by the change to PIP, which has been designed so only about half of DLA claimants will get qualify. The other half won’t be able to make up their rent any more and will fall into arrears. Secondly, local authorities were given some ‘discretionary’ money this year to help the most vulnerable tenants meet the shortfall. Quite rightly lots of people have applied and got some help, but that money is running out fast, so arrears will rise again. And the government hasn’t yet promised anything at all for discretionary payments next year. So this leaves the social landlords seriously short of rent, with worse to come. The government tells them to enforce payment by widespread evictions, but they aren’t keen because they do kind of grasp why the money isn’t coming in, aren’t confident it would work and don’t want to get bad publicity. They know that campaigns like ours across the country will make it difficult for them. So they threaten people, but no-one at all has yet been evicted over the Bedroom Tax. And they scream to the government to get them out of this mess. The Tories have set their face against that but ultimately they can’t let the social landlords go bankrupt. This is how the Poll Tax died. John Boadle
Posted on: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 07:14:09 +0000
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