No.
However who knows what makes 'em tick?

Some may remember that when the Tories rolled out the poll tax.  In order to find a sympathetic case (rather than the millionaire paying the same as shop worker) they argued for the poor pensioner with the big house paying as much as the family with four wage earners in a similar house.  They claimed this was fundamentally wrong.

 

The fact that those wage earners already paid income tax on their incomes was conveniently ignored.  That's the Tories for you!

 

It's interesting that when they've turned their own poll tax logic on its head to justify the bedroom tax. What they now say is those who under occupy should pay more!

 

I guess it's a different logic for people likely to vote Labour than those likely to vote Tory.

It's a stealth benefit cut... plain and simple. Butter it up how the hell they want it's them taking money out of the people who need it's benefits.

 

I'm so pleased this is being questioned as it's stupid and the way they have done it for the 'reasons' they have just doesn't make sense. If they were willing to help people move to smaller homes with some sort of funding to help with the move then it would just about pass as being done to free up larger houses for people who need them.

 

Like i say the way its been done just doesn't fit with the reasoning behind it at all.

Not that I really like to get in to political debates, but my step daughter has just been rehoused with respect to this new bedroom tax and got a nice little £ bundle on top of them decorating and carpeting her new house. 

 

(this was in Yorkshire)

 

1) The bedroom tax is lining the pockets of private landlords,because of lack of smaller social housing houses, therefore saving the government not a penny. In reality its costing more in rent rebate and the emergency funds to help people pay the extra subsidy, which will stop when the funds run out. 

2) 50% more people are now in rent arrears since it was introduced in April, low paid workers and unemployed.

3) We have the smallest houses per square foot than anywhere in Europe, the spare bedroom tax is applied to rooms that are only big enough to take a single bed. 

 

Is it unfair? hell yes. The low earners the, unemployed, the disabled are not to blame for the banking crisis. Personally I think its more about drumming home the lazy unemployed culture,  living in 4 bedroom houses, 50 inch flat screen TV's, lay in bed whilst working people get up at the crack of dawn to go to work. In reality most people know that this isn't the case in the percentage of the unemployed, there are no jobs and what little jobs there are mostly part time in our area. therefore not saving much on the welfare bill, but making the unemployment figures look good IMO. The class divide is widening more each day, job done 

 

 

 

The people living in under occupied houses are mainly pensioners and they are exempt from the bedroom tax  my neighbour's both sides are pensioners and have 4 spare bedrooms between them

See that's good! Well done Yorkshire. I only have a little experience on this which is my Dad, he is in a 2 bed high rise flat and is having to pay £16 every week which has left him really struggling

As far as I'm aware they don't help you with moving costs here, would your dad like to move Jen? Like I said there seems to be a lot of older people in houses with empty rooms that would like to move into a flat or one of those places where you have your own place but there's people of the same age as you and someone is on hand if you need them (can't think what they are called) but there isn't any, where do they think everyone will go

Where I was dragged up, we had lots of council houses, and I seem to recall a certain amount of house swapping. I don't know if they still do this. I'm not sure if council houses still exist as we knew them! Not only did the horn-ed one sell 'em off, but I think they may have sold the rest to some sort of privatised firms.
In general houses seem to have evolved from "a machine for living in" into an investment market of overpriced sheight and fetish magnets.
New approach required.

The thing that makes me most angry about this is the total absence of humanity. I understand that there should be some swapping between a single person living in a 2 to 4 bedroom house and a family living like sardines, but that should surely be as localised as possible. Elderly ppl as well as younger families are settled in their neighbourhood, schools, shops, church etc. The Tories always crow about being the party for the family, but are happy to watch adhesives disappear. Not that I'm overly surprised.

He genuinely couldn't afford to move what with the cost of van hire etc and then there carpets etc. Only saving grace is he only has to pay it for a year until he's 62 (He's in Birmingham)

Totally agree Cologne.

 

What I don't understand about this is the amount of disabled people who've had expensive adaptations made to their properties being told to pay up or move.  Sometimes due to equipment or an overnight carer, they need that extra room or you may have a child that has a room downstairs because they can't use the upstairs, and the parents are penalised  which to me sounds like a stealth tax on disability

 

 

I get that it's unreasonable to expect people whether pensioners or empty nesters to have properties with excess rooms when these could be used for families in cramped accommodation, but they must be given the opportunity to move into suitable accommodation locally to keep their community ties.  Thanks to Thatcher's selling off of housing stock and subsequent governments failure to build more one/two bed social housing stock, there isn't anywhere for them to move to except to the private sector.  Those leeches are bleeding the government dry with exorbitant rents which defeats the object of the spare room subsidy

That's what is so stupid about it, if people have to move in to the private sector the rent will be more so they will need more housing benefit which defeats the object 

Sorry didn't read your post properly and I've repeated you 

One 'excess' bedroom is 14%  reduction in HB, two  excess bedrooms is 25%.

 

So far 50,000 have fallen into rent arrears because of the burden of the spare room tax( or subsidy as Dave likes to call it), many of those 50,000 will be evicted in due course, only to be rehoused by the very same local authority that had them evicted.

There are also all the legal costs to be considered.

Many housing benefit claimants will be obliged to move into the private rental sector, where rents are higher, so they will be claiming housing benefit but at a higher level.

Local authorities have always built family homes and homes suitable for the elderly as a priority and therefore there are hardly any smaller properties for victims of the 'spare room  subsidy' to down size to.

 

 

Will they be re-housed though? If you are evicted for rent arrears you are making yourselve intentionally homeless and the authoroties are not obliged to help you.

True Col, they won't give you another house if you've been evicted, you will have to go private and then the rent is more 

 

I'm still waiting to hear if I will be charged it now daughter's at uni even though she's home every other weekend and home for 5 weeks at Christmas

I read that somewhere Aimee. You should fight this, your daughter hasn't really moved out. Where is she supposed to go during her hols? This is what I mean by no humanity. They really don't care until it bites them on the back at election time and then only to hold on to their privileges.

Ah right, I didn't know that.

 

Some councils are saying that if rent arrears are purely down to the bedroom tax, then they won't be  enforcing that debt.

 

The whole thing is a mess,unworkable and was never about reducing the benefits bill, it's about demonising a sector of the population and using the 'hard working families' to do it.

That's good news, but also makes the whole thing pointless.