The bedroom tax might be the clearest example of the coalition punishing the poor for the financial crisis.
The bedroom tax might be the clearest example of the coalition punishing the poor for the financial crisis
It was claimed by the government that the bedroom tax had two aims – to reduce spending on benefits and to help the 300,000 people living in overcrowded accommodation by incentivising those tenants ‘over occupying’ to move to smaller homes.
But the maths didn’t add up.
When the policy was first proposed, critics pointed out that there were not enough homes for the so-called ‘over occupiers’ to move to. There were only 85,000 one bedroom social properties available in England, and 180,000 social tenants “under-occupying” two-bedroom houses. That’s quite a large gap.
Hardly surprising then, that research carried out by the BBC a year after the tax was implemented showed that only 6 per cent of people affected by it have moved home. There are simply not the homes for them to move to.
Despite this, the Conservatives gleefully claimed a victory for the tax, saying that it saved the government the conveniently round figure of a million pounds per day.
As professor Rebecca Tunstall, director of the centre for housing policy at the University of York, told the New Statesman:
“There were two major aims to this policy – one was to encourage people to move, and the other was to save money for the government in housing benefit payments. But those two aims are mutually exclusive.”
The government saves money from the people who have no choice but to stay where they are.
And what happens when people with a low income have that income cut? They go into arrears on their rent.
According to the BBC, this is what’s happened to a third of tenants affected by the tax. The debt has been successfully shifted from the government to benefit claimants.
Could this have been the main aim all along?
Supporters of the bedroom tax certainly focused on the under-occupancy issue. Ian Duncan Smith, for example, pointed out how unfair it was on those who did not have a spare bedroom:
“It is unfair on taxpayers, it is unfair on those in over-crowded accommodation and it is unfair that one group of housing benefit tenants cannot have spare bedrooms and another group are subsidised.”
Yet it’s unlikely that the government did their housing sums wrong and genuinely believed the main outcome of the tax would be people moving home. It seems more likely that focusing on the ‘unfair’ behaviour of benefit claimants suited their rhetoric of vilifying a certain section of the general public.
Without discussing the possibility that an increase in homelessness caused by the tax could result in it saving the government no money at all, how ethical is it for a government to shift debt on to the general public?
There is a faint silver lining to this deplorable tax, however, and that is the creativity it has brought out in campaigners.
In North London, for example, one group of artists are protesting by putting on an exhibition inspired by the bedroom tax, hosted in a bedroom subject to the tax. The 27-year occupier is moving out for a week and will be exhibiting art along with other artists, all inspired by the tax. The exhibition will be free and also show short films on the housing shortage so that local people can visit and learn more about it.
It seems the bedroom tax might be the clearest example of the coalition government punishing the poor for the financial crisis, but there are always ways to fight back.
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72 Responses to “Was the aim of the bedroom tax always to shift debt from the government to benefit claimants?”
From the Moral Dustbin
I think what we are dealing with hear is a barely covert attempt to attack social housing itself. The Tory party think tanks have clearly stated they want to sell off social housing in expensive areas (this now means nearly everywhere).
This neo-liberal mind set cannot stand anything that has social value, it must first be ‘wrung’ through the financial system so that wealth ALWAYS gets syphoned up to the financial system and its unproductive, rentier greed.
The greatest trick that this foul, mendacious Government has perpetrated is to convince people in work and struggling to pay for housing costs to turn their anger in the wrong direction, towards people even worse off than themselves-and its worked!
QE has shown us that Government debt can be magically wiped out when it comes to the interests of the financial sector but the poor must be vilified so that the squeezed middle can turn its resentment somewhere. The population is a sleep and dumbed down.
J Wilson
It may not be a Bank ‘per se’, but the payment of Civil Service Pensions was ‘privatized’ years ago to a company called Capita Business Services, instead of the Paymaster General’s Office. So what was their ‘aim’ of doing that? Increasing the costs as they no doubt have highly paid Directors who do nothing and feel they have no responsibility on Human Rights either. E.g. What if they ‘accidentally’ or deliberately sold everyone’s personal details for profit to one of their ‘associates’? Would we even know about it?
Joy Boyd
It was clear from the Governments own Impact Assessment in
2012 that the desired savings would only
be realised if the Social Tenant did not seek to downsize or move from their
present property and did in fact pay the shortfall from their Social Security Benefits.
If the tenants did move this would reduce direct savings and
place demands on the Social Landlord. This would also impact on the Governments
desired savings as their prediction of savings is based on tenants staying put.
Therefore two of the Government objectives cancel out one
another. On one hand the Government is saying we want to ease overcrowding and
reduce Housing Waiting lists and believe this will be accomplished by tenants
downsizing. On the other hand to save the half a billion projected savings the
tenants would have to stay put and pay the shortfall therefore not freeing up
properties.
The Moral Dustbin
precisely! Which means there is another underlying agenda:
Focus the wrath of the pissed off, debt laden populace onto the poorest and most vulnerable because working=debt slavery and we don’t want people questioning the financial system do we? So let’s do the most cowardly thing possible and point the finger at the poor and deprive them of even the ‘freedom’ of their poverty!
The Moral Dustbin
Think of where all that money goes, or a lot of it, go on, think about it. basic accounting shows that Government deficits equal a private sector surplus-without benefits, the economy would be even more knackered than it already is.
And by the way, the £375 billion of QE was, using a sleight of hand, a form of debt cancellation that benefited the financial sector and assisted in the growth of asset bubbles. At least benefits have true social value whereas QE had virtually none except keeping the ATM’s going until the next time it happens