Now the Bedroom tax hits Domestic violence victims as 'panic rooms' are levied

[ttosca]

Terrified victims of domestic violence are being forced to pay the Bedroom Tax on “panic rooms” in their homes.

The ultra-secure spaces are only created by councils when tenants are known to be at real risk of attack from their brutal ex-partners.

Despite this, hundreds of women are now being told their potentially life-saving sanctuaries will cost them a chunk of their housing benefit.

The panic rooms – spare bedrooms with strong bolts on the doors and bars on the windows – are provided so women can flee there with their children if under attack. Many have a direct phone line to the police.

But data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows that 281 ­households in these “sanctuary” schemes have been told to pay around £14 a week extra. The problem is worst in the north east of England where a quarter of homes with panic rooms have been hit with charges.

Campaigners are now calling for a change in the hated new regulations forced through by Tory Work And Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

Polly Neate of Women’s Aid said: “The Bedroom Tax is putting women and children at risk. It took no note of the difficulties survivors of domestic violence face in moving and at a time when there is a severe lack of safe, smaller properties for them to move into.”

The controversial new charges are also hitting kidney dialysis patients who treat themselves at home, even though they save the NHS an average £15,000 a year by not going to hospital.

Nick Palmer of the National Kidney Federation, which is already dealing with dozens of such cases, said: “We are very disappointed these very vulnerable people, who often can’t work, are being penalised for saving the NHS a lot of money.

“Dialysis at home is very cost-­effective. And it’s not just the saving of time in hospital. There are reduced transport costs and less complications.”

Government ministers claim the charge will save £490million a year and free up badly-needed larger properties.But the new charge is hitting ­vulnerable people such as the disabled, who often need an extra room.

Anna Bird of the disability charity Scope said: “For the vast majority of disabled people these are not spare bedrooms, these are ­essential rooms. We’ve spoken to disabled people who aren’t able to share a specially-adapted bed with their partner so they sleep in a separate room.

“But they are being forced to move or find the extra cash they don’t have to pay their rent. Many are struggling to make ends meet and getting in debt just to pay for essentials.”

Two-thirds of households affected by the new tax cannot find the cash to pay their rent, according to the National Housing Federation.

In a survey of 183 housing associations the federation found 66 per cent of their residents affected were in arrears.

More than 522,000 people on housing benefit have had it reduced by an average of £14.50 a week .Another 92,000 had their benefits cut for having two “excess” bedrooms, losing around £23.43 a week.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/now-bedroom-tax-hits-domestic-3299992#ixzz2xOAJK9hT

Contrarian, what makes you think a bedroom/panic room isn't dual purpose?

It's certainly not being used dual purpose to sleep in. I think of all the arguments against these changes this security room one is one of the weakest. The left can surely do better?

BackOnlyBriefly….comparing me with ttosca’s posts and calling my factual input political ‘shrill’ is frankly a larf, I would only post once or twice on some threads of several pages.

FYI I tend to post more when challenged by ttosca’s name calling and/or get accused of being a liar, as happened here and fairly often on the Politics Board - and then I prove him wrong, so I’m not sure why he still does it, it would save everyone time if he didn’t.

Re your ‘listening to you no problem can be fixed as can be traced back to the last Labour government’, completely misses my point of explaining WHY A COALITION POLICY WAS NEEDED, as reading most posts on here, it is assumed that there wasn’t a problem, and the coalition has nothing better to do.

Re your ‘building homes, this government isn’t doing it’, again forgetting why Labour didn’t bother to do in 13-years and build many more than 100,000 homes ayear, what bit of the greatest financial/economicrecession in 80-years do you not understand, where home builders took huge losses until recently, would cause that?

So it takes time for home finance, buyers and builders to come together and put the spades in the ground, as some of Osbournes initiatives that helped kick start the process, funny old world, get lambasted on here.

As it happens housing starts are back to near pre crash levels, and the only thing that will spoil that is the possibility of an anti business Labour government in 2015, who only offer businesses new taxes and threats. So one has to ask if the builders won’t build 200,000 Miliband homes a year,WHO WILL?
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/10334506/Housebuilders-baffled-by-Ed-Milibands-land-grab-threat.html

As to your ‘mass immigration should be rejected’ joke, look at the figures for the last 20-odd years on Table 1, and tell me I’m wrong, explaining why the General Election voting Commonwealth and ‘others’ increased so much - and don't start me on those coming out of the school system.
migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/long-term-international-migration-flows-and-uk

BackOnlyBriefly ...FYI as you seem to have problems accepting facts.

“HOUSING STARTS CLIMB BACK TO PRE-CRASH LEVELS”

“Latest statistics (in November 2010) reveal that the last 3 months have seen the fastest rate of house building since the crash in 2008. Housing starts over the last 12 months increased by 16% compared with the year before, rising from 101,280 to 117,110, and the 32,230 homes started between July and September this year represent the fastest rate of house building since 2008.”
www.colliers.com/en-gb/uk/insights/property-news/2013/1122-weekly-planning-update

And I agree with lock these people up so they aren't a danger. I hardly think panic rooms are the answer.

Cost of locking people up: 40,000 a year.

Cost of panic room: I don't know, but it's a one-off cost of probably around 2K at most.

The left can surely do better?

Why do you think it is purely the left wing which doesn't like this initiative? Do right-wingers really condone a situation where people are losing housing benefit they sorely need because they are deemed to have a spare room but their local council can't find anywhere smaller for them to move to?

Do right-wingers really condone a policy which results in what a couple of families I know are dealing with: they have severely autistic children who wake regularly at night and can become violent and destructive, and who therefore cannot conceivably be left overnight with their sibling. Yet under the rules it is deemed that, because the children aren't sharing a room, there is a spare room so housing benefit is cut - and this is for families already on their knees due to the stress of coping with their children's disability, the parents are unable to work also for that reason, and they have a lot of extra expenses due to the children's destructiveness, cost of travel to medical and therapy appointments, etc etc.

There seems to be wilful misunderstanding on this thread.

Council allocates housing according to rules.
Expensive panic room is installed for person under direct threat to life.
Council changes housing rules and tells person to move house.
Threatened person moves to house without panic room.
Threatened person is attacked and killed.

Death could have been avoided by leaving person in house with panic room.

And some on this thread are wurbling on about luxuries of spare bedrooms? Seriously?

I see your point Nennypops about cost. But on the other hand it does infuriate me to think that women have to cower in barricaded rooms to escape dangerous people who might seriously injure them or even kill them. That's why I said I didn't think panic rooms was the answer.

Partial because it wouldn't be a spare room then would it? Unless the person was over-occupying anyway.

I was listening to the radio the other day, and they were debating this so-called bedroom tax. The shadow attorney general (her name escapes me now) acknowledged that in the private rented secotr, these measures had been bought into place by the previous labour government when people moved house. Presumably this was to stop people seeking housing benefit for housing which was in excess of their need.

Perhaps we should consider 5 year fixed term tennancies. That wouldn't seem unreasonable to me. If we've not enough subsidised housing to go round, then perhaps that's an answer. You'd be able to afford to do away with the 'bedroom tax' then - as the housing would be allocated on the basis of need, and effectively reviewed every 5 years.

Contrarian, true to your name you have completely missed the point.

You are whinging that panic rooms are not also being used as ordinary rooms. From the article, clearly they are in many cases. Possibly in all cases. The nominal "spare room" may not be the panic room (specially not where councils have been re-naming dining rooms as bedrooms in order to accuse people of under-occupying).

Answer this.

What do you personally want someone living in an expensively adapted house (panic room, disability adaptation, whatever) to do?

Do you want them to move to an unadapted property?

Why?

What on earth would be the point?

Nenny, if we are talking about the spare room issue more generally then the right have lots of suggestions. If the local council have no one bed places then put two people together into one flat. Those of us who do not depend on the state for support have to slum it like that including my children. I don't see why benefits claimants should be feather bedded such that they never have to do flat shares.

Fucking hell, this is like fact-free right-wing fantasy land.

Jane, what makes you think people on benefits don't do flat shares?

You apparently don't know that for younger people, housing benefit is set to only cover flat shares.

. People are still being subsidised. It isn't a tax. It's a reduction in a subsidy.

It's a cut by those we subsidise the most. We pay for their second homes. We paid for Gidiots paddock, and Maria Miller made over £1m profit on a house bought by us and rented out to her parents. It's one law for these useless wastes of skin and air and another for the rest of us.

The thing is that dv victims who left their partner in a hurry trend to need housing very quickly. With a shortage of council accommodation the council can't always find the Tyre right size.

And I understood that hb is paid based on a standard rate for the size of home needed so if a family is under-occupying they are already paying for that directly.

I think making dv victims' more stressful is a shameful thing for society to do.

Is it just me or is this an utterly grim thread.

I didn't think I lived a sheltered life/was naive but, feck, i didn't know about panick rooms. The mere thought is utterly chilling. I don't know enough facts about how such facilities are used but if indeed they would be difficult to live in 'everyday' due to barred windows, heavy doors, fire safety etc. then people who say public money needs to be saved in this particular area in the way op described are simply devoid of compassion and, pretty useless human beings.

I am really shocked that anyone would think that women who are at real risk of dv should be penalised financially or their lives made harder.

I am actually depressed now. .

this thread is really grim!

it's not even one of those issues that's at all difficult to get your head around is it, there should so obviously be an exemption in this policy for 'these people' as someone so beautifully phrased it, the people who need this adapted space in order to be kept safe and well

whenever I ride round the back of John Gummer's garden for which we all helped to pay several thousands of £££ (towards mole removal) I always wonder why more people aren't more angry about that sort of thing instead of panicking that someone somewhere might be getting a paltry £few more than is necessary in housing benefit

JaneinReading, I can only think you're missing the point deliberately. I was writing about the specific situation where the so-called spare room isn't spare - because it's a specially adapted panic room which someone has decided is essential to preserve someone's safety, or because the reality is that it's needed for a disabled child who isn't able to share with a sibling for the reasons I gave. How on earth do you imagine moving a single person into the house will assist that situation one iota?

Isitmebut even when I point out that I agree with you on some points you are so worked up you don't notice. You really ought to slow down and read properly.

Partial That's why I said "Unless the person was over-occupying anyway"

I don't especially think that people should move where adaptions have been made. Though where possible, we should treat the cause rather than the sypmtom.

I'm all in favour of giving people the help they need. Though I do think that the case would be an easier one to make if we had fixed term tenancies and didn't exclude pensioners.

Lastly, if those on the left are that bothered, dig into your own pockets, set up your own charities (I believe they already exist) and fix the problems you see in society I'm not specifically talking about the bedroom tax

Charity isn't an answer to social problems.

That was already tried in centuries previous to the 20th Century. Thankfully, society has moved on since then.

PF, of course I know that benefits are "set to " (i.e. do not currently) make young people share in the same way ordinary young people who have jobs share in their 20s and into their 30s and 40s these days. It's about time tha tchange was in force.

You've just shown yourself up, Jane.

I don't mean "set to" = are planned to become.

I mean "set to' = set at the level that. Currently. And for some time past.

ttosca I really couldn't disagree more. The Charitable Sector is very important. Otherwise, why bother with Womens Aid, Save the Children, etc., etc. I'm sure they all receive public funding.

As a society, we made great progress in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The largest progress being made when public goods which had been provided patchily and haphazardly by charity became universal and provided by broad, mandatory taxation.

Education, healthcare and pensions being cases in point. But also sewage, rubbish removal, policing, fire services, and so on and so forth.

The latter services weren't even provided by the charitable sector. The rich paid for them, the poor didn't get them at all. And cholera killed rich and poor alike while fire destroyed their assets.

For many public goods, universal provision funded by broad taxation really is the most effective and the most efficient way to do it. Fragmentation is highly inefficient.