Bedroom tax will hit women hardest
You can’t ‘choose to downsize’ if there is nowhere to go.
Housing benefit is to be cut for families living in social or council housing who are deemed to have a ‘spare’ room or rooms.
Women on low incomes, and their children, face being forced out of their homes when the controversial ‘bedroom tax’ comes into force in April.
Women will be particularly hard hit as one million more single women claim housing benefit than men, according to a report by The Fawcett Society entitled ‘The impact of austerity on women’.
A household with one spare room will lose 14 per cent of housing benefit, and those with two spare rooms will lose 25 per cent.
As housing charity Shelter explains, in real terms if a rent is £100 per week and there’s one spare bedroom, then occupants will only receive £75 housing benefit leaving them to find the remaining £25 per week from overstretched household budgets.
The cuts are part of series of welfare reforms introduced by the UK’s coalition government.
The idea behind this one is that families will choose to downsize to smaller homes, freeing up larger ones for the one million plus families currently on council waiting lists.
Conservative MP Richard Harrington puts the case for the government in a Guardian debate here.
Campaigners against the tax fear the reality will be that more people will become homeless because there is not enough social housing being built to accommodate those who downsize or are forced out of homes which they now can’t afford.
So there is nowhere for them to go.
Those living in private accommodation will not be affected by the bedroom tax, but women living in council or housing association homes will be.
More women rely on housing benefit than men because many are single mothers, and 64 per cent of all low paid workers are women.
Disabled women and women from ethnic groups will also be affected by the new rules.
Journalism students in Birmingham found that the bedroom tax will hit hardest in predominantly ethnic communities rather than predominantly white ones.
The Bedroom Tax Investigated blog says: ‘Ladywood, possibly the most affected area, has the lowest proportion of white residents in Birmingham at just over a third.
‘The predicted least affected area of the city is Sutton Coldfield, where a massive 94 per cent of its residents are white.’
In 27 February’s Prime Minister’s Questions David Cameron promised to listen to every bedroom tax case – and The Sunday People, which is running a campaign for a fairer deal for those affected by the tax, urges people to write to him.
These include disabled people who because of their health issues are unable to sleep in the same room as their partner; parents of children who died who want to keep their child’s room as a memorial; separated or divorced parents who have their children to stay for part of the week – their room will be deemed spare – and siblings forced to share.
And students living away from home will have their ‘home’ bedroom classed as spare, as will those in the armed services.
Cheryl Guillott of Halifax told The Yorkshire Post how she and her disabled son face having to move from the home where her grandson’s ashes are buried in the garden.
Part-time shopworker Vicky Downey of Kimnel Bay, a mother of three girls, told The Daily Post that she will lose out because one daughter lives with her for three days a week instead of seven.
And Alison Huggan of Middlesborough told The Mirror that she will have to pay the tax for the ‘spare’ room her twin sons leave behind when they go with the army to serve in Afghanistan.
The tax comes in on the same day as the coalition gives a £1.3billion tax cut to 13,000 millionaires.
Another anomaly is pointed out by Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell, in his take on Richard Harrington’s remark that ‘taxpayers, including social housing tenants, are effectively having to pay for around a million unused bedrooms’.
Protests against the bedroom tax are taking place around the country on 16 March.
Here is a list of those organised so far.
The article states that those renting privately are not affected by bedroom tax. This is not he case, I am aware of families who are already contributing towards rent in private properties and have now received a CT bill asking for them to pay bedroom tax on top. Although as I say, this is an example of families and not single women/men but either way I wanted to put the information out there.