Will The Bedroom Tax Affect Me?

BigAunty

Any government party that said they would build 1 or 2 million social housing properties might get my vote, provided that it results in mixed communities rather than the ghettos of economically inactive ones that have now occurred due to the cherry picking of the RTB that took the best ones out of the social rental market and the needs based allocation system which resulted in estates full of lone parents, the unemployed, ex-prisoners and so on.

They'd need to prioritise British citizens as tenants over naturalised or european citizens in the allocation process.

They'd need to have temporary contracts for emergency housing and support in place to resolve the tenant's reasons why they ended up in need in the first place - joblessness, addictions, illness, domestic abuse, criminal behaviour. Handing over a key for life never addressed the actual reason, just cured a symptom of it, at the cost for later generations who were denied access to social housing as the stock diminished.

They should have rents set at the income of the tenants so we don't end up with tenants earning £50k and paying £100 a week for their properties.

There should be schemes in place that encourage tenants to be able to move much more freely to smaller and larger properties and to take up job offers in new areas.

It's a blunt instrument to introduce the housing benefit reduction for properties that are too large for the tenants needs retrospectively - some kind of upfront management at the start of the tenancy that outlines rules and expectations that tenants can't just upsize but must downsize too, to stop this 'property for life' mentality however much their household size and income changes.

Extend it to owner occupiers? Pah, what a daft idea. The current policy may be punitive, counterproductive and so forth but those who depend on the state, who takes the state's shilling, must sadly be aware that the state has control over them and will do their best to minimise costs. For households that don't draw from the public purse to such a degree, why would the govt want to nanny them?

KxMx

Dunroamin wrote: »

But you're assuming that you'll be on benefits for the rest of your life and I don't think that's a healthy viewpoint at your age.

For myself I am 26 next month and I have been thrown on the medical scrapheap by the Drs after 7 years. Refused more tests and investigations, all they can offer me now is "management" services for pain and fatigue (not my only problems). Great if they work but won't solve the problem- like a sticking plaster over a gaping wound.

Unless I marry a rich man (and let's face it I am bottom of the pile when it comes to the competition) or win the lottery, I foresee sadly a long future for myself on benefits.

I certainly cannot work myself out of poverty as was my intention when I left College. I got sick just 6 weeks after I completed my further education.

I am well resigned to living at home a long while yet before moving to a one bed flat if I am lucky enough to do so. I certainly will continue to have a low income.

It's hard for someone healthy to grasp. Even though I know you care for your husband and see the effects of illness it is not the same as living through it yourself.

Perhaps Nannytone is also realistic about her situation and thinks improvement in her sight, and therefore her situation, is unlikely.

There is being negative and there is being realistic. Sometimes healthy people confuse the two!

I am very realistic about my situation. I am realistic about the fact I have nothing (and I mean absolutely nothing) in my life. I am realistic about things never changing for the better. But outsiders are all too quick to paint me as negative.

You can call my attitude unhealthy if you like, of course a 26 year old having no hope is not healthy, but it is also the reality of my life.

plum2002

Dunroamin wrote: »

The housing crisis will be solved by building more social housing and more affordable homes for private rent and sale (which will do wonders for kick starting economic recovery as well), not by threatening owner occupiers with punitive tax measures.

Bingo! Sadly it's not going to happen. All that is happening is people are being pitted against each other, just like during Maggies time whilst Cameron and his cronies slap each other on the back and continue living in their mansions with their millions.

Jennifer_Jane

Morlock wrote: »

I am all for people owning a house as big as they can afford, even when most of it is under-occupied, if the housing stock is available to do so without causing a housing crisis. That is not the case in the UK, and the fact that home owners under-occupy by 88% is causing problems due to a housing shortage.

If such a law came into being (as you and George Monbiot are suggesting), an alternative option for me would be to convert my current 3 bedroomed house into a one bed with a nice large bathroom instead of two average bedrooms, a single bedroom and a tiny bathroom. I wouldn't do this without the ridiculous law, but actually it's a quite exciting prospect.

It would be the most wonderful gorgeous luxury to have a pretty big bedroom. I might just turn the small bedroom into a balcony. The value would fall, of course, but so be it. Also, my friends couldn't come stay, and I'd need better earplugs for when the gentleman friend comes to stay, but I'm almost looking forward to it.

bloolagoon

Morlock wrote: »

Now you are sounding stupid. The 'entitled to' brigade are the largest cause of the housing crisis? By that, I assume you mean those in social housing, which has the lowest under-occupancy rate of any housing sector. If a model existed to represent an efficient use of housing stock with minimal rates of under-occupancy, that is it, or the 'entitled to brigade' as you refer to it.

No the entitled to brigade is not limited to social housing, it is the majority of society and I include myself. We now want it all, right now. Waiting and saving for your own home is alien. Society wants to move out and own space way before financially stable or able. People do not wish to share their homes, they want their own home. Teenagers who become pregnant are given houses, until recently people took 100% mortgages with secured loans as deposits. Society is being devalued, people are so concerned with wealth and material goods that the word community is old fashioned.

In the past children lived at home until financially secure, parents moved back in with their children for care and neighbours actually cared. There was no DLA to the extent now, as communities rallied round to help others. Society now at times wants payments for things that should form part of a caring society.

The need for new cars, video consoles, latest TV's when older models are still working and often on credit is one such example. Perhaps my opinion is based on a few things, one being I spent the day at Beamish yesterday where families of 10 lived in a house the size of my front room, from spending time in Spain and watching their economy collapse and true hardship and financial divide and also from realising I am lucky to be alive and will never take this for granted.

As Thatcher sold our soul for short term gain, then Blair borrowed money we cannot afford and the economy fell. Yet we still don't appear to have leant anything. Sharing with siblings, moving to smaller homes if you have no means to pay is hardly the worst that can happen. This is the start of cuts, yet you see 20 year olds whom are unemployed asking about how they can move into their own place and their subsequent parents berating a loss in benefits due to occupancy.

As I said, birth rates are lower, there is more housing than years ago, but we won't be happy still. Then in future generations when there is no green belt, homes are derelict as no one can afford children to use them the questions will be asked.

Dunroamin

KxMx wrote: »

For myself I am 26 next month and I have been thrown on the medical scrapheap by the Drs after 7 years. Refused more tests and investigations, all they can offer me now is "management" services for pain and fatigue (not my only problems). Great if they work but won't solve the problem- like a sticking plaster over a gaping wound.

Unless I marry a rich man (and let's face it I am bottom of the pile when it comes to the competition) or win the lottery, I foresee sadly a long future for myself on benefits.

I certainly cannot work myself out of poverty as was my intention when I left College. I got sick just 6 weeks after I completed my further education.

I am well resigned to living at home a long while yet before moving to a one bed flat if I am lucky enough to do so. I certainly will continue to have a low income.

It's hard for someone healthy to grasp. Even though I know you care for your husband and see the effects of illness it is not the same as living through it yourself.

Perhaps Nannytone is also realistic about her situation and thinks improvement in her sight, and therefore her situation, is unlikely.

There is being negative and there is being realistic. Sometimes healthy people confuse the two!

I am very realistic about my situation. I am realistic about the fact I have nothing (and I mean absolutely nothing) in my life. I am realistic about things never changing for the better. But outsiders are all too quick to paint me as negative.

You can call my attitude unhealthy if you like, of course a 26 year old having no hope is not healthy, but it is also the reality of my life.

There are many people who have health issues and disabilities which will stop them working, even part time - I wouldn't dream of sayng otherwise.

On the other hand, there are very many people who are blind, deaf or in wheelchairs who can and do work in any number of careers without expecting their disability to improve.

We've come a long way since blind people were trained to tune pianos and were thought capable of nothing else!

KxMx

Dunroamin wrote: »

There are many people who have health issues and disabilities which will stop them working, even part time - I wouldn't dream of sayng otherwise.

On the other hand, there are very many people who are blind, deaf or in wheelchairs who can and do work in any number of careers without expecting their disability to improve.

We've come a long way since blind people were trained to tune pianos and were thought capable of nothing else!

And that is a very reasonable response.

But by saying what you did to Nannytone in the first place, you presumed to know the ins and outs of her problems and pass judgments at the same time.

No-one except Nannytone knows how her problems effect her and how that translates into being unable to work.

Not you, I, or anyone else sat in front of a computer.

Dunroamin

KxMx wrote: »

And that is a very reasonable response.

But by saying what you did to Nannytone in the first place, you presumed to know the ins and outs of her problems and pass judgments at the same time.

No-one except Nannytone knows how her problems effect her and how that translates into being unable to work.

Not you, I, or anyone else sat in front of a computer.

I've worked and trained with two blind people and I really can't see how being blind can affect two people differently.

My comment was intended to be both supportive and encouraging.

Blue22

Morlock wrote: »

"The underoccupation of homes...constrains the availability of larger homes to households that need them. There are 7.9 million ‘underoccupied’ homes in the UK, with the majority (88 per cent) being in the owner-occupied sector."

You have stated in several threads recently that 88% of owner-occupied homes are underoccupied. If you read the source that you quoted above that is not what it says. It says that 88% of the 7.9million underoccupied homes are owner occupied, so less than 7 million OO homes are underoccupied. As there are about 17.5 million OO homes in the country this equates to less than 40% of owner occupied homes being underoccupied.

Fire_Fox

Plenty of empty studio, one and even a few two bedroom flats empty in many city centres, especially brand new builds that won't sell and of course repossessions. Conveniently situated for public transport, crime is not what you expect - I live in city of multiple deprivation, but actually the crime in the centre here is shoplifting and a little drunk and disorderly and that is not on my doorstep so doesn't affect my neighbours and I.

I feel very safe walking around alone at night, there are always plenty of people about and shops/ takeaways open, lots of CCTV and good street lighting. Little chance of being burgled, surprisingly quiet once the buses stop running every ten minutes, easy to avoid the little pockets of prostitution and alcoholics they have their 'patches'.

Not sure what having owner-occupiers downsize would achieve, who is going to purchase the property for all the families that need it? Mortgage interest rates and house prices are lower than they have been in a while, if these families were going to purchase they would do. Unless you want even more amateur landlords in the form of the over occupying home owners? Spend some time on the 'House Buying Renting & Selling' board and see why that is not a good idea.

They'd only be able to repurchase if they had a large enough deposit left and could get another mortgage or owned outright, again with enough equity to pay the costs and still buy. Otherwise they'd increase the pressure on the rental market ... and we'd have fewer home owners overall so another crash in the property market. It's a lot cheaper and simpler for renters to downsize than owner-occupiers.