Stop “bedroom tax” evictions!

Submitted by Matthew on 10 April, 2013 - 8:57

Across the country demonstrations and meetings have been held against the “Bedroom Tax”.

The organisers vary from area to area — a patchwork of community groups, union branches, Labour Party people and left groups.

The chief demands are for councils and housing associations to re-classify homes (so that they are counted as having “studies” or “storerooms” instead of “excess” bedrooms) and to pledge not to evict tenants who can’t or won’t pay.

Dundee and Brighton and Hove councils have said they will refuse to evict people who fall into arrears on rent payments due to the “Bedroom Tax”. Nottingham’s right-wing Labour council has said it will re-classify rooms in all its council houses so no tenant gets hit by the tax.

Knowsley Housing Trust is one of several Housing Associations that have reclassified rooms too.

These examples show mass pressure can force even right-wing Labour councils to stand by their tenants. In putting pressure on Labour councils, trade unions and local Labour party branches are a vital arena of struggle.

1 April was the start date for the “Bedroom Tax”. It is a cut in housing benefit for social housing tenants of working age who are deemed to have one or more spare bedroom.

If you are classed as having one spare bedroom you will have to find 14% of the rent; if two or more, 25%. Around 660,000 housing benefit claimants’ will be hit by the bedroom tax.

The Government argues that the tax will encouraged people to move to smaller homes. But welfare minister Lord Freud, who has 12 bedrooms in his country house and his London flat, will be spared such “encouragement”; so will other rich people.

For worse-off people, there is a pitiful supply of council and housing association properties available at any size because little council housing has been built since the 1970s and the stock has been eroded by “Right To Buy”.

The Government wants to cut the housing benefit bill. Yet if social-housing tenants are pushed out by the tax into the private rental sector, then rents there are higher, sometimes more than double, and housing benefit may be higher. The “Bedroom Tax” doesn’t apply to tenants of private landlords.

The real effect of the “Bedroom Tax” is to attack social housing and push tenants into the private sector.

The Labour Party leaders have attacked the Tories over the “Bedroom Tax” sometimes quite effectively, and the government has made some concessions. However, the Labour leaders have not committed to repeal the “Bedroom Tax” when in power.

We should argue for the groups and unions campaigning against the “Bedroom Tax” also to build a proper national campaign that forces Labour to commit to repealing the tax as soon as it is power.

Campaigns should also support non-payment by tenants and communities organising against eviction.

The “Bedroom Tax” can be beaten.

Hands Off Our Homes

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