The bedroom tax

[jonicomelately]

How can anyone support a Government who inflict this on people? There are no words...

www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/brutality-bedroom-tax-exposed-disgraceful-9911421

"No-one will care about the death of social housing if council houses are filled with antisocial, and problematic tenants."

EXACTLY This is the modus operandi. Nail on head.

Joffreys posts are just one example of the lying and manipulation going on around the bedroom tax.

It would certainly be desirable if we could move from a model where people were in state provided or funded housing.

I wouldn't be too bothered if social housing was phased out eventually. Because I don't like the unfairness of it all. People getting tenancies for life and paying low rent even when they are on good salaries and then others in desperate need not getting a chance of a house.

Jealousy will get you nowhere Vivienne.

Social housing is a great idea, as are things like rent caps etc, but because it doesn't benefit the Tories and their little elite cabals it will be phased out.

In response to the person who remarked above that "in my day" (four yorkshiremen alert!) only 15 percent of people went to university.

Yes, that was when careers like journalism, accountacy, nursing, civil engineering and all sorts of others could be reached through in house, on the job training from 18 or even 16 onwards.

Firms in Britain no longer train the young, they are expected to indebt themselves in order to do it. Ah, the privillige of being able to put food on your table and a roof over your head.

It comes back again to the same reasons. The wealthy want market forces for the poor, but socialism for themselves..

Beautifully put, longtimelurker. Eradicating social housing would bring about even more unfairness as opposed to creating a more equitable society. I agree that the idea of leaving things to the market is a farce as government are quite happy to interfere with the market when it works to their benefit or when it will appeal to their core voters but oppose the idea when it is beneficial to those with less advantage.

Helena I a merely describing something I have observed going on from a few metres away. It's not a 'lie' because it doesn't fit your agenda. It is the reality I have seen. I am not even saying it is typical. But in my council district they did indeed two years ago give council houses to people who fro the hour they moved in were paying bedroom tax - even houses which had fallen vacant due to bedroom tax.

That's an uncomfortable reality the Daily Mail and Telegraph aren't going to share with you.

Hang on I havent said its a lie I was the one agreeing with you

The point is that it's nothing to do with jealousy. These are state assets and should be allocated in a fair way. And that doesn't mean to people well able to afford to buy their own homes. State subsidy is always the same. It's never fair and that's why I'm glad to move away from our present system of welfare.

I read this on the Shelter website and thought is was particularly pertinent to the argument with regards to the eradication of social housing.

It is impossible to simultaneously avoid widespread destitution; an ever rising welfare bill; and major intervention in key markets. It should be possible to avoid two of these at once – but not all three.
If we are not prepared to spend as much as we do on benefits, we have to accept EITHER more poverty OR greater intervention in markets.
blog.shelter.org.uk/2015/07/poverty-and-property-the-trilemma-of-destitution-welfare-or-market-intervention/

There is no point in throwing the baby out with the bath water. Social housing is allocated so sparingly because over time the available housing stock has been so reduced (right to buy etc.) along with changes to allocation policy that meant people had to be in extreme need to be allocated a social property.
Getting rid of social housing altogether would not improve things or right the wrongs of past and present governments it would just mean more people have rent vastly out of synch with their (average) earnings and more people struggling to get by, how can that be a good thing? Surely changing/ widening allocations policy and building more social homes would be a more helpful way of dealing with the problems and reducing the HB bill.

But should people have to buy there own housing? Especially when the market is vastly inflated as it is, the average first time buyer in London needs something like £78,000 in deposit to buy, and outside still many people are stuck in rented accomodation.

The idea of social housing wasn't to ghettoise the poor but to provide affordable rented property that would be fairly administered by local council who would do so fairly, and provide up keep. Prior to this many people lived in expensive (when you discussed how much they paid), cramped houses owned by private landlords who didn't do very much for their money.

The "why should the state help" question is always asked by Conservatives who claim to want small government, yet only when it favours them. Why should the state have helped with quantitative easing when it has merely created assett bubbles, inflated the stock market to pre-crash levels which have nothing to do with what is going on in the regular economy? Why does the Government hand out £98 billion is subsidy to the corporations, the questions go on and on.

The state should help because, if people are in secure affordably priced accomodation they have more money to spend. Paying half your wage in rent merely lines some rentiers pocket and inflates the asset bubble further. - and no it doesn't give them money to spend, increasing the wealth of the top 10-20% of the population doesn't develop more demand, the extra cash gets put into pensions,savings, buys other assets etc.

Working things out so that the average Joe in the street is relatively well off is good for everybody, the way we do it now is only good for the well off.

The disabled and carers and houses adapted for disabilitoies SHOULD have the BT taken off.

its not fair.

2 able bodies people in a 5 bedroom, yes, but the disabled? the torys hatred, yes HATRED of the disabled is beyond me.

all (I think) of the other parties vowed to take off the BT but still, these fuckers took over.

These are state assets and should be allocated in a fair way. And that doesn't mean to people well able to afford to buy their own homes.

Fair probably means different things to different people. Personally I think it's fairer for social housing to go to people in full time, low paid but essential work than it is for it to go to someone who has never worked or worked enough to be able to pay income tax.

But should people have to buy there own housing?

If they want a choice of where they live, they want to be able to stay in that home for life, they want to have spare rooms that they don't really need, then yes, they should have to buy their own housing.

Paying market rate for rent or a mortgage is really hard in many areas, but the state can't subsidise everyone. Nor should it.

But the state subsidises the housing market in the favour of those who own assets already , QE, tax breaks etc etc, why should it only work in the favour of the wealthy?

The state subsidises fecking grouse shooting, corporations that make huge profits, public schools, and many many other things because it suits them to do so.

Housing is a basic need, it suits those in power at the minute to asettise that need for the gain of a small minority of the population. Building more social housing would have a Keynesian effect of a) creating jobs and bringing money into the economy that way and b) reducing the cost of housing, even buying housing, because of the increase in supply thus allowing the population to spend more of its money on goods and services thus causing the economy to grow.

I'm tired of listening to people who preach market economics because they only want the market when it works in their favour, take the banks, they talked of risk and reward in the boom years, but when the risks turned out to be too much they didn't fold like you would have in a market but were bailed out by the state. Social risk, private reward, resulting in the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich for generations.

OOOOH this thread has gone off on a tangent, caused by me really. Sorry

I agree with you longtime. Just thought id better make it as clear as glass as ppl seem to think ive posted stuff that i havent.

I have no problem with the principle behind the bedroom tax / spare room subsidy. I don't think it has always been applied fairly - as in some of the examples quoted upthread. But that is down to local councils, many of which (most? I lose track) are not Tory dominated, so setting this up as the work of the Evil Tory Party is misguided at best.

I'm a homeowner and I can assure you I don't feel any benefits from QE or get any tax breaks, or get any form of government subsidy. Yours just sounds like a jealous rant to me.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bedroom-tax-victims-fighting-prevent-6345137#ICID=sharebar_twitter

Couple caring for their grandson and a victim of DV being subject to bedroom tax and/or advised to take in a lodger

Noone's denying there's a small minority that have been genuinely shafted by the bedroom tax Helena.

But I personally know three people who've increased their hours at work (which had previously been kept low to maximise top-up benefits) to cover their HB reductions since the bedroom tax came in.

Is that really such a bad thing that we should be campaigning against? Really really really? Really?

It's terrible that those people were put in that position Helena.
As much as local councils of all colours are implementing the policy the Tories ARE to blame because they put the policy into action without first addressing so many of the issues around it, like the fact that families with members with disabilities needing spare rooms for health reasons would be affected and the fact that many people with spare bedrooms were allocated those properties in the first place because there was a shortage of 1 and 2 bed properties and so had no choice but to accept what the council offered them.

The fact that IDS urged courts to throw out these cases in the face of their obvious merit shows not only what a heartless man he is but that this is an ideological attack and that he is completely unmoved by whatever suffering is inflicted on people as a consequence of it.

I'm a homeowner too dearie. If you've seen the value of your house increase since 2009 it is because of things like QE, help to buy etc etc. It inflates the housing market, as many, many articles out there will tell you, so you will have benefited.

Ah the politics of envy retort, but isn't that what people are also doing when they rant about what people on benefits have, envy? I find that the jealousy argument is very, very poor, and actually proves that you have no logical rebuttal to my argument. You know I'm right but you have a vested interest in things staying the way they are.

I'm discussing the politics of equity. In the last 30 or so years we have seen the end of the post war economic consensous that saw living standards for the many improve rapidly. This has been done in favour of free markets, so what have we had: The real terms wages of workers fall, the concentration of vast amounts of wealth in the hands of a minority of the population. Now yes living standards have gone up too, but not because the share of wealth is getting higher, but because more and more people are indebted to live, also globalisation has made lots of goods cheaper.

Low taxes on wealth and assetts have meant that the vast benefits produced by society are reaped by the few, while the majority are forced to work harder for less.

At the same time the focus of the middle, is on the poor. Its their fault that you pay so much in tax, its their fault that you work so hard and will work so long. Policies like the bedroom tax produce crowing in the hoimes of the Daily Mail reading types.

When the answer is actually, the reasons things are tough for you and your children, or harder than they should be is not because the poor have so much. Its cause the wealthy reap the benefits of society without contributing their fair share.

saucy thats great that they have been able to find permanant guranteed extra hours as a result of the bedroom tax.

The focus of some of the working class Tories are on the poor too. I find some of their attitudes worse than the middle class Tories ones especially as they have experienced hardship themselves in some cases.

I once heard an American say that American voters dont vote for what they are.....they vote for what they aspire to be. Even if that aspiration is never realized.

I think Helena, we do that in Britain too. Despite the fact that other policies would benefit the majority, we vote for things that we think we will want when we get our rewards. The fact that the game is rigged in favour of those already at the top means that the majority will never achieve those goals escapes most people. Usually because they're looking at what the poor get and going: "That's not fair."

John Oliver puts it much better than me:

If you've seen the value of your house increase since 2009 it is because of things like QE, help to buy etc etc. It inflates the housing market, as many, many articles out there will tell you, so you will have benefited.

I find it quite hard to see any benefit from the value of my house rising though, as no benefit actually exists until the house is sold. Until then, it's the same pile of bricks it always was. And even when it does sell, every other house has gone up in value too, so in real terms there is no benefit.

There might be a benefit if what you want to so is sell up, downsize, move to a cheaper area and spend the leftovers on holidays, but that isn't everyone's plan in life.

Really, if I have a vested interest in things staying the way they are then woudo you mind telling me why I want that, because genuinely, I don't know. Economics is not my strong point.

I disagree that everyone who 'rants about what people on benefits have' is all about envy. There are problems within the system that everyone who pays taxes has a right to comment on. It is our system and we should all be invested in it. Sometimes people will complain out of envy, some of the time that will be misguided, and sometimes people will complain because it's a government that runs the system so there's likely to be something worthy of complaining of.

Joffrey I dont read the Daily Mail OR the Telegraph and i never have.