It doesn't take many minutes of web-surfing to discover that there are huge numbers of people feeling frightened and angry about one of the most notorious measures the present Government have introduced as part of their 'Welfare Reform' agenda, namely the so-called 'Bedroom Tax'.
Although that's a catchy expression, 'Bedroom Tax' is somewhat misleading as what we're actually talking about isn't a tax at all; the 'under-occupation penalty' is a reduction in Housing Benefit entitlement set to affect tenants in Social Housing from April.
The Government's justification for introducing the measure, which will reduce entitlement by 14% of eligible rent for one additional bedroom and 25% for two, is that firstly, it will control the spiralling cost of Housing Benefit and secondly, it will make better use of the limited supply of Social Housing available. Naturally, being a measure from the ConDems, it will do this by putting various poor and vulnerable families through months of uncertainty, additional financial hardship and misery - and in many cases throw them out of the homes they've occupied for decades -rather than tackling the root causes of either problem. They'll also be giving Housing Associations and Councils who still own and manage housing stock an almighty headache as they attempt to shuffle their tenants into small enough properties to avoid the 'Bedroom Tax' and when they fail (which they will, because most have 'too many' larger properties and 'too few' small ones) they'll have an even bigger headache dealing with rent arrears and the grim prospect of evicting the very people it was their mission to help and house.
And Local Authorities, who administer Housing Benefit, will end up looking the villain of the piece, whereas if the Government had waited to tie these changes in with the introduction of Universal Credit, the DWP would have carried the can and the buck would have stopped more sharply at No 10.
I'm not going to run through a long, detailed list of the type of people likely to suffer as a consequence as those with the most plaintive and, at least from a media perspective, 'deserving' stories are already finding their way into the press. But we're talking about disabled people needing rooms for special equipment or for carers to stay in during bad times, separated parents who aren't the principal carer for their children, families with grown up kids working away from home on short-term contracts, and more mundane situations, such as couples who want a bedroom each because one (or both) snores like a jumbo jet taking off. But you'll see plenty of similar cases in your local paper soon enough.
Before I go on, I'm going to take a brief moment to remind readers that, contrary to the impression given by Government ministers and the usual suspects in the press, Housing Benefit is paid to working people on low incomes and not just people out of work. Just in case you're still swallowing the shirkers/strivers rhetoric. I'm sure you're not. What I'm going to try to do is debunk the Government's argument about 'fairness' and parity with the private sector, and suggest some logical alternatives.
Firstly, the myth that this simply brings provision for Social Housing tenants into line with that for people in the private sector. The only thing the 'Bedroom Tax' has in common with the Local Housing Allowance scheme for private tenancies (introduced by Labour in 2008, but made tougher by the ConDems) is the calculation of how many 'bedrooms' a household requires. There, the similarity ends.
In the private sector, Housing Benefit is paid based on the 'Local Housing Allowance' (LHA) for a property of the size required by the claimant's family or household. This was, when the system was set up, the median price for rented accommodation in any given district, but has subsequently been moved down to reflect the cost of the lowest third of private rented housing, limiting the availability of affordable private rented housing to benefit claimants. Prior to the introduction of LHA, councils were still expected to cap Housing Benefit for private tenants to a level commensurate with the size of property a household required, and set the rent at a rate judged appropriate by a rent officer if it appeared excessive for the type. But it was never utterly inflexible as councils did have the discretion to allow higher payments in exceptional circumstances - for example where a larger property was needed due to disability.
So, private tenants claiming Housing Benefit have limited access to housing due to the level at which LHA is set and also a built-in 'under-occupancy' provision stating how many rooms they need. However, if they are fortunate enough to find a three-bedroomed house or flat for the same price as the LHA for a two-bedroom property in their area, they can receive Housing Benefit based on their full rent. It even used to be the case that if they could track down a property for less than the LHA for the size they required, private tenants could keep up to £15 per week of the difference; but that's gone now, of course, along with any idea that you might actually try to reward benefit claimants for making canny financial decisions. Though to be fair, there was always the risk that what this would actually do was lure poor families into cheap but substandard accommodation, or encourage landlords to set their rents at LHA levels where previously they had been below.
So it's a tough regime for private tenants - especially when you add reduced security of tenure into the mix - and many must look enviously at their peers in Social Housing, especially if they have been shuffling from one shorthold tenancy to the next waiting in vain for a Council or Housing Association allocation to come their way. If you're that family, it's going to look very unfair to you that a couple whose adult children have left home is now living in a three-bedroom Council House all on their own. And maybe it is, but being equally unpleasant to another family is hardly 'fairness' and anyway, the root cause of this 'unfairness' isn't the couple in the Council House, it's the fact that when the people next door to them bought theirs, they got it at a knock-down price and even then the Council couldn't use the proceeds to build a replacement.
Social landlords are not reckless and wasteful with their housing and they have always tried to fit the house to the tenant as best they can. As a Housing Officer in the 1990s I was regularly involved in arranging all-expenses paid moves for willing pensioners from big family houses into retirement bungalows, for example. Much under-occupied housing could be freed up if there was more good-quality, secure, affordable accommodation close to their existing support network for older people though interestingly, doubtless mindful of the bad press persecuting pensioners would get, not to mention the power of the 'grey' vote, pensioners are completely exempt from these 'Bedroom Tax' proposals.
Most tenants don't want a property that's too big for their needs either. It costs more to heat and furnish than something 'just right'. And while there will be squeals of disapproval from some that 'The Public Purse' is paying for the spare bedrooms needed to house children staying with a separated parent, better that perhaps than pick up the less visible but probably higher costs of estrangement and anxiety that are the alternative.
Arguably, then, the problem of excessive Housing Benefit cost solves itself if you allow - indeed fund and encourage - Social Landlords to build the range of housing the communities they serve require, and to buy and renovate existing properties, enabling those who want to to 'downsize' (possibly even providing positive incentives for them to do so, such as assistance with removals and setting up their new utility accounts) and others from the over-priced private sector housing to move into better-value, more secure tenancies. The last time I looked, there were no shortage of contractors willing and able to do this work looking for projects, and tradespeople 'signing on' who could be working, earning and incidently, not claiming Housing Benefit.
Or you could be really radical and introduce rent control back into the private rented sector. Because what you won't get ministers telling you is that a substantial chunk of this 'out-of-control' welfare bill isn't going to the 'shirkers' and 'scroungers', it's actually lining the pockets of landlords and, where the shortage of accommodation is most acute, those pockets are likely to be on some very expensive items of clothing.
Instead, when you confront a minister with the hardship this is going to cause, you get the suggestion that tenants might manage the extra expense - and alleviate the housing crisis - by taking in lodgers. In some cases, that might indeed be a practical proposition, but in plenty of others it's quite impractical (eg. where rooms are needed for visiting carers or children), fraught with complications for benefit entitlement and an outright danger to some vulnerable households. One of the local Councils in this district ran a high profile anti benefit-fraud campaign only last autumn encouraging neighbours to report people they believed were co-habiting - and I'll look at how fine the line can be between sharing a home and 'living together' in a future blog - so that's almost certainly not a sensible tactic if you're single (note that you can be 'living together' in a same-sex relationship).
And if you've read the book which inspired the title of this blog, you'll probably remember what happened to the Eastons when they decided to try and balance their budget by taking in a lodger, who seemed thoroughly decent and respectable, at first...
(SPOILER ALERT - it didn't end well.)
And if you haven't read 'The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists' by Robert Tressell, it's probably time you did!
