Bedroom Tax Facts?

 

 

 

Victoria Derbyshire had a caller (24 mins 40 secs), Sonora(spelling?), who relayed to us her tale of woe as she became a victim of the callous Bedroom Tax.

Worth a listen….Sonora lives in Holloway under the care and protection of Labour’s Islington Council…..Derbyshire didn’t listen, didn’t have enough facts and didn’t seem inclined to challenge anything being said….it seemed more like a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on…very nice but not very informative….and all highly political.

It does seem that there is a lot of help, both financial and with the logistics of moving, for example prioritising ‘downsizers’ to find a new home, to cope with paying the ‘Bedroom Tax‘ or to downsize…..this just isn’t made clear at all by Derbyshire…..and what about those families desperate for a bigger home?  Rarely get a mention on the BBC.

 

Here is some information, from Islington’s website, to help you judge Sonora’s position:
From August 2013, the government will cap the total amount of benefit paid to people of working age who claim out of work benefits.  This will mean a benefit cut for about 900 Islington residents. The cap does not affect people of pension credit age, those claiming working tax credit, war pensions or some people on disability or sickness benefits. 

Where the cap applies, your total household benefits will be capped at:
£350 a week for a single person without dependent children, or whose children who do not live with them

If you rent privately:
Your LHA will be capped at a maximum of:
£255.50 a week if you are estimated to need one bedroom

The Bedroom Tax:
Who is affected?
You may be affected if you:
rent your home from the council, a registered housing association or other registered social landlord

If you have two or more ‘spare’ bedrooms, your Housing Benefit will be cut by 25% of your full rent. In Islington this is equal to £25 a week, on average.

Some options to help you move or stay in your home:
1. Swap homes with someone who needs a bigger home, through a mutual exchange:

Special offer – Swap homes through a mutual exchange and receive £750 for each ‘spare’ room you make available, plus £400 towards moving costs and in some cases money towards renovations and decoration. Terms and conditions apply, please call 020 7527 4140 to find out more.

or
2.  Apply to transfer to a smaller home:

Receive £500 for each ‘spare’ room you give up and £400 towards moving costs.

or
3.  Stay in your current home
If you stay in your current home you will need to pay extra rent to cover the cut in Housing Benefit. It’s important to consider now how you will do this, to avoid getting into arrears with your rent. To pay the shortfall in Housing Benefit you can:

Take in a boarder or lodger
More information about taking in a lodger is available in the Department for Work and Pensions’ fact sheet at the bottom of this page or by contacting the Tenancy Management Adviser at your Area Housing Office. Income from a boarder could affect your other benefits. Contact the Income Maximisation Team

 

An example of what type of extra income could be available if letting out a room:

Female looking for Double Room Rent up to £ 800 per Month
Joyce is a Basic Member 32 yrs old, Female, Student Moving Date: 30 Nov 2013

 

 

 

 

Sonora, Victoria’s caller, is single, disabled and unemployed.  She lives in a house with three double bedrooms.  She runs a car.  She actually wants to downsize.

 

For all its political protests about the Bedroom Tax Islington Council wants you to downsize…it’s just a lovely thing for everyone:

 

 

 

 

Here are some of her comments:

She lost her job in January.

She owes £4,000….rent, council tax, credit cards….she doesn’t say how much is for rent arrears.

She has heart problems and has fought cancer…and has hip pains.

Because of her health she wants a groundfloor home.

Her present home has three double bedrooms and 3 flights of stairs. ..unsure if she is in a flat…she calls it a ‘house’.

She says she had to choose between paying rent or the Bedroom Tax….later it was a choice between eating or the Bedroom Tax.

Is now in rent arrears and claims she cannot move because of those arrears.  [Islington makes payments to help you move, £400, plus a bonus of up to £750 per room that you free up by moving]

She tells us that she has claimed the Discretionary Payment that covers the Bedroom Tax….but she claimed it late.  [The council sent out letters to all those likely to be effected by the change and told them to prepare early to avoid arrears…she clearly didn’t].

Her Bedroom Tax is £37/week.  [Islington above says the average cut for a home with two extra bedrooms, as she has, is £25/week in total]

She says she gets £71/week in benefits…..from which £15 is for electric, £13 for gas and £12 for council tax….she says she has £10 left for food if she is lucky.  [This clearly doesn’t include housing benefit…which for a single person is capped at £350/week….but the cap may not apply if you are disabled…as she is…she also runs a car….perhaps a ‘Motability’ one?]

 

The bedroom tax is a tax that destroys your soul, she says, it’s something you have to use your benefits to pay for. There are no tax credits to help you with that.  There is nothing.

Derbyshire proves that she doesn’t listen saying…..

‘But there is a discretionary payment that can help you…’ [Which she has already said she is claiming]

 

Sonora agrees…but doesn’t remind Derbyshire that she has claimed it…only saying that the Discretionary Payment will pay for a Bedroom Tax…but if you are on a low income you don’t have the surplus cash to buy things like everyone else (unsure what that has to do with things)…the Bedroom Tax ricochets onto everything she tells us…[clearly not…as hers is now being paid in full].

Derbyshire….’Have you spoken to your local council about that?’

Once again proving she didn’t listen.

Sonora again doesn’t admit she has the Discretionary Payment…..only saying that if you have rent arrears you can’t move house.

 

She tells us that she totally understands her two ‘colleagues’ who called Victoria earlier….I can only imagine she meant ‘people in similarly distressed circumstances’ and not ‘colleagues’.

She says she wants to downsize to allow a family to move into her big house.

She has been to hospital 3 times in the last week…and it costs a lot in petrol for her car.

 

Sonora seems to be more a victim of her own failure to apply for the discretionary payment early enough than the Bedroom Tax that she seems intent on damning……also if she had applied to downsize early enough she would have had extra priority, on top of the ‘higher priority’ already given to her:

Apply for a transfer. As an under-occupier you will have a higher priority on the transfer list – plus from January to March 2013 you will be given extra priority for bidding on properties through the Home Connections website.

 

Derbyshire makes absolutely no effort to correct her phrasing and allows her to continue to call the ‘Spare Room Subsidy Cut’ a Bedroom Tax…..as does Islington Council.[is that legal on official documents? Political?]

As for not being able to move because of rent arrears….that can’t be true…for a start the council would pay her at least £1000, pus £400 costs, to move out….she didn’t say and Derbyshire didn’t ask, how much of her debt was in fact rent arrears.  Surely it is in the council’s interest to help her….a smaller new rent and she can pay off her other rent arrears?

She could easily help herself by taking in a lodger…as one example above shows, that could net £500 or more a month …if she is so desperate,and she says she is ‘broken’….then surely that is a solution…one recommended by the council.

And of course she manages to run a car…in London….where we are told no one really needs a car because of the superb Public Transport.

 

Derbyshire didn’t seem inclined to challenge any of her claims and as said allowed her to keep saying ‘bedroom tax’ uncorrected and to launch into a tirade against it….despite the fact hers was being fully paid….and that she wanted to downsize and help a family into a proper size home which she didn’t need.

 

If Derbyshire is going to have on callers like this who give vent to such emotional and ‘heartrending’ tales on what is clearly a highly political subject, and there isn’t one much more political than the ‘bedroom Tax’, then she must challenge the callers on the detail and have the information to hand to question claims being made.

If not, then the call becomes what is essentially a mini political broadcast…and the BBC knows such ‘personal’ stories are all the more effective in pushing a certain narrative, a view of certain subjects and effects, therefore, how people look on government policies….and how they vote.

The BBC’s greatest trick is to make the story ‘personal’…..ignore the millions of immigrants and the effects such a swamping has on a country, but instead, look at one asylum seeker, one immigrant, one Muslim bomber, one Palestinian terrorist…….report their life story, their family, their ‘problems’, their struggles made worse by the ‘West’ and the prejudice and discrimination they have to struggle against…all of which turned them into what they are now….it’s not their fault.

As  said in the ‘Living Room Dialogues on the Middle East‘:

‘An enemy is someone whose story you haven’t heard yet’

 

The BBC believes if you hear enough sob stories about the ‘Bedroom Tax’ you will come to realise just how pernicious, callous and cruel it really is….and that seems to be their tactic….fill the airwaves with such claims that the ‘Bedroom Tax’ is destroying lives, destroying their ‘souls’…..a campaign by the BBC?  I would say so.  Irresponsible and careless as to effect journalism at best.