Options
Bricking up bedrooms
alanwarwic
Posts: 28,396 Forum Member
✭✭✭
With reports that the room tax has increased arrears 4 fold in many places which councils are bricking up the bedrooms?
There is also said to be a glut of 3 bedroomed houses in some areas too, obviously with a major potential to run down complete estates when vandalism strikes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10087896/Leeds-council-uses-loophole-to-avoid-bedroom-tax.html
That reclassification tactic can't work for them all so whats stopping the brick/locked off doors solution?
And perversely, wont rents will have to go up to pay this new income shortfall?
Crisis Time
http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/tenancies/bedroom-tax-compounds-direct-payment-problems/6527533.article?PageNo=1&SortOrder=dateadded&PageSize=50
There is also said to be a glut of 3 bedroomed houses in some areas too, obviously with a major potential to run down complete estates when vandalism strikes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10087896/Leeds-council-uses-loophole-to-avoid-bedroom-tax.html
That reclassification tactic can't work for them all so whats stopping the brick/locked off doors solution?
And perversely, wont rents will have to go up to pay this new income shortfall?
Crisis Time
http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/tenancies/bedroom-tax-compounds-direct-payment-problems/6527533.article?PageNo=1&SortOrder=dateadded&PageSize=50
0
Comments
Could it possibly be that some Councils are incompetent in the management of their housing stock and others are playing politics - perish the thought :rolleyes:
Reversing the bedroom tax looks like being a vote winner for the UKIP.
Could it not now said to be very sudden and dangerous social engineering far worse than the right to buy?
(bricking 'crisis time' link added to starter post)
Care to elaborate as I don't understand it as you have written it
Meanwhile moves like making pensioners exempt, has further made it harder for the policy to free of any homes worth having. 3 bedroom homes are not "wrong" a couple and two children im sure will be very happy in one, but the way government policy says how old a kid has to be, to have their own bedroom, makes those 3 beds unattractive for younger family's, who might otherwise be living in them.
Meanwhile tenants being unable to find the extra money, also disproves the theory, that people on benefits are swimming off private yachts, only coming in, to collect their benefit cheques.
As for UKIP, is tempting to say that any party who would reverse the Bedroom Tax, is a party, which deserves to be voted for, but what would they replace it with? how would they solve the housing problem?
Each void costs on average about £3,000 to do up, and average re-letting time is nearly a month, meaning we lose about over £300 in rent payments. If this continues then we'll lose over £1.5 million a year just from voids. And that's before I get started on the rent collection, which has plunged from nearly 99% (one of the best in the country) to just over 93%, and the 1000 extra tenants who are in arrears.
Not only is this crippling to housing associations in itself, but it's also forcing many of them to expand into private development to make money to re-invest in their stock, which is inherently risky.
It's looking increasingly like that some housing associations may go to the wall over this. Perhaps that's the motive- an attack on the entire social housing sector.
It could turn out like that. Arrears will only slowly build up over time, meaning it could be a year or two till the sh*t really hits the fan.
Having a lodger does need to be done carefully (probably best done though people you know) and you lose some privacy but I've managed it for years.
If the people thus accommodated were single people who were taken off the housing list or out of more expensive B&Bs, it would cut the waiting list and save costs.
No bricks needed.
In practice, however, I think they should abandon it. The political problem is that everyone would scream "U Turn!", instead of applauding when a government changes it's mind in the light of circumstances and experience.
Exactly. It would be extra income for those who have a spare bedroom and help those on the council waiting list get somewhere to live. Everyone's a winner.
Of course it would not be suitable for everyone but Councils should at least make it available as an option to those interested. The Council could manage the system by bringing lodgers and those with spare rooms together and could vet both parties to make sure they are suitable.
Well i have two young kid's one 11 & one 7. With have a 3 bedroom house. The little room is only big enougth for a bed and a little table. How on earth could i rent that out as a room???. Also i don't think i would like a stranger living with my two kids.
Yes i work, yes I am struggling to pay the £14 extra, but i say to hell with there utter horrid policy. I would rather go without then see my family shunted into some 2 bed flat.
Good idea. Councils can put exterior stairs up to them and market them as studios
How long before those it is decided that it would be better if those properties were quietly sold off on the open market?
Is everything actually going according to plan?
Don't be silly. We haven't got the cardboard cities yet and Lincoln Innn Fields hasn't been turned into a campsite for the homeless. They've still got some way to go to get back to the halycon days of the 1980s
Or maybe the halcyon days of 97-05, when less social housing was built than ever before.
You seem to have a blind spot.
A lot of people dont even have a sare room, it is filled by one or more children,but because the goalposts have been moved those children are not now allowed that bedroom, but still occupy it as before. Also there is a risk factor of having a stranger in your home with children, how would a child feel if he has to move out of his room for a stranger to occupy it?
HAs and councils have always allowed extra rooms as well, for growing families or if there are no other smaller suitable homes, those are the people I feel sorry for, those who are affected because the rules have changed.
I can't remember massive homelessness and people sleeping in almost every shop doorway in London between 97 and 05. But hey, if you want to think everything was perfect during the Thatcher years, go ahead.
[and yes, I think it was a massive mistake not building lots of council homes 97-10, but the government probably though that rebuilding hospitals and schools took priority after 18 years of neglect]
There must be situations where this 'tax' proposal makes sense. To level the provision between people in subsidised social housing and those in private accomodation seems reasonable. A room can be paid for if they have the funds and choose to retain their privacy, or rented out if circumstances allow it.
I think the whole idea stinks. It's just another way of "screwing" those at the bottom of the heap. What's wrong with having a spare room, somewhere where realtives or friends can be put up if, or when, they visit. What is a "spare room" anyway. For example: First: a fairly wealthy, middle class couple with a child, renting a large, spacious 3 bedroom property in, say, Chelsea, a property valued at, maybe, £400,000 - £500,000, (the sort of property a Tory Minister might live in), compare that to a couple with a child, maybe on benefits, living in a 3 bedroom rented property in a squalid Council estate in Newham or Hackney, worth £120,000 top whack, a property that occupies an area of land that would almost fit into one room of the Chelsea house, but which has a "spare room", a spare room that is hardly bigger than a broom cupboard. How can anyone compare the two examples? Statistics show we have the smallest houses in Europe, are we who can afford nothing better, to be forced into even smaller rabbit hutches.
If there is a housing shortage, stop letting more and more people into the country. We may not be able to prevent migration from other EEC countries, even when they provide no particular benefit to our economy, but there is no reason why we have to ignore the large numbers of illegal migrants living here, or why we have to give domicile to migrants from outside the EEC. Apparently the Border Controls at Calais only manage to search a small percentage of lorries crossing the Channel from France to Britain, that can only be because they are under resourced, the Border Controls need to trebled or quadrupled in order to stem the influx into this country. We are an island with finite space and finite resources, the very idea that the population is expected to grow to 70 million within a couple of decades is ridiculous.
Neither tribe has much to crow about IMO. Let's not forget this was originally a Labour idea. I wouldn't put it past either side to quietly sell off any artificially generated "excess stock".
Clearly renting out the room wouldn't be suitable for you but it could be a good idea for others - say someone who is single and living in a 2 bed council house.
I know some councils do allow sub-lets but many don't (although a lot of people do it unofficially). Lifting this restriction could help a lot of people.
There's a diferece between having an idea and implementing it badly.
I earn an above average wage yet to be able to rent a 2 bedroom flat near to where I work would consume almost half of my net pay. So my options are to house share or still pay quite a high rent for a 1 bedroom.
Why should people who happen to be able to get subsidised housing get all the spare rooms they want while the rest of us who are not eligible can barely afford the luxury - especially as we're helping pay for those spare rooms?