Bedroom Tax? “The completely crackers Bolton At Home Chief Executive and UNISON member Jon Lord explains why the Bedroom Tax is so wrong…
Chief executives of publicly owned
companies normally play it safe when asked to explain policies. But when it comes to the Bedroom Tax, Jon Lord, Chief Exec of Bolton At Home, doesn’t pull his punches. “It’s one of the most pernicious pieces of legislation I’ve seen in twenty odd years of housing” he fumes “The whole thing is just completely crackers. And the most bizarre thing I came across is a Conservative councillor telling us in the paper that we shouldn’t be evicting people – I’ll take that from anybody affected by the Bedroom Tax or those who voted or protested against it but not from the party that introduced it!” In Bolton there are around 2,200 residents who have been hit by the Tax, hundreds who want to downsize, and not enough smaller properties to meet the demand. To deal with the ConDem Government created mess, Bolton At Home, working with the Council, is having to get creative. This includes looking into the possibility of reconfiguring its sheltered housing scheme to create smaller units, leasing private properties in new developments and house sharing for young people in vacant three bedroom houses. “We’re having to look at solutions which aren’t necessarily what the person or we would want” Jon explains “but the permutations on some of the cases we’re
getting now are requiring us to almost look individually at things rather than have a cast iron policy set in stone.” One of the major headaches is rehousing people with disabilities who need adaptations in their homes… “It’s a massive issue for us because in some cases we have spent up to £20,000 to do adaptations for people, and if they are caught up in this and have to move, we then face another bill for £20,000” he says “We haven’t got a budget to re-do hundreds of adaptations, we’re already swamped with requests from people not affected by the Tax…” Jon emphasises that it’s not tax payers who are picking up the costs associated with things like downsizing and adaptations, it’s other Bolton At Home tenants, as the budgets get drained... “They face delays to improvements on their properties and they are subsidising for lost income” he says “The poor pick up the tab for other poor people. That is the way the Tax is constructed.” And, at the end of the day, Jon argues that the Government isn’t even saving any money, as people move out of social housing and into the private rented sector where they get full housing benefit… “It’s a nonsense” he fumes. While everybody with a conscience
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