Social housing in the UK is deteriorating and “is almost a lottery” argues UN housing expert Raquel Rolnik. Her claims that the ‘shocking’ bedroom tax affects the most vulnerable citizens drew fire from the Tories who called her report ‘a disgrace’.
The United Nations special investigator on housing has called on
the British government to scrap its unpopular bedroom tax,
officially known as the spare room subsidy, after hearing
“shocking” accounts of how the policy is affecting some of
Britain’s most vulnerable people.
The bedroom tax was introduced by the coalition government last
April in a bid to save money from the £24 billion a year housing
benefit bill. It charges tenants extra for under occupying homes
that are supposedly too large for them.
Raquel Rolnik, a former urban planning minster for Brazil, and
now the UN’s rapporteur on adequate housing, said Britain’s
previously good record of providing housing to poorer people in
society is being eroded by successive government’s failure to
provide sufficient and affordable social housing.
During her two week trip to the UK, Rolnik travelled to Belfast,
Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh and London where she visited
council estates, food banks, homelessness centers and new housing
association developments.
She said that Britain was in the middle of a housing crisis, with
middle income people also hit hard by the cost of rent and
mortgages, which was an equally urgent subject for investigation.
Rolnik said that although in the 1970’s social housing was
readily available and easy to access; it had now become
stigmatized with just 17% of the population living in it.
She was also skeptical of what she called Britain’s
“obsessive” approach to home ownership and the right to
buy policy; where the government offers financial support for
families who want to own their own home.
Rolnik singled out the bedroom tax as affecting “the most
vulnerable, the most fragile, the people who are on the fringes
of coping with everyday life.”
“I was very shocked to hear how people really feel abused in
their human rights by this decision and why – being so vulnerable
– they should pay for the cost of the economic downturn, which
was brought about by the financial crisis. People in testimonies
were crying, saying 'I have nowhere to go,' 'I will commit
suicide,'" she said in an interview with the Guardian of her
findings.
Carol Robertson is a council tenant in Edinburgh where many older
buildings owned by the council have two or more bedrooms. She has
lost £13 a week because of the spare room subsidy and now has
just 26 a week to live on. As the winter draws in she says she
will save extra money by not turning the lights on.
“It sounds preposterous, but I think people will save on the
electricity and use candles. I won’t put my lights on; I will
just buy candles,” she told Rolnik, The Guardian reports.
Carol wanted to remain in the two-bedroom flat where she brought
up her two children and so had to pay the spare room supplement
designed to push people like her out of her flat, which is deemed
too big for a person living on their own.
When central heating was being recently installed in the council
block, Carol chose not be connected. “I knew I couldn’t afford
it. If I get cold I just put on my jumper,” she said.
Her neighbor next door is even worse off, and after paying the
supplement has just £4 a week to live on.
She says she can’t move because there are no smaller properties
for her to move into in Edinburgh and she wouldn’t know anyone in
a completely new area, so she has to pay the subsidy even though
it leaves her with so little to live on.
Rolnik says in her assessment of the tax that the government
“didn’t assess the impact on lives when it took its
decision”. She explains that the discrepancy payment the
government makes to local council to try and mitigate the costs
of implementing the policy is just for a couple of months so
councils cannot count on it on a permanent basis.
In comments emailed to RT, the charity Shelter, which deals with
homelessness and housing issues in the UK said: “With the
shortage of social homes of the right size in the right places,
we know that it will be very difficult for many families to
downsize and none more so than the disabled and others with
special needs.”
The UN expert was not sure whether her report, which will be
presented in its entirety next spring, would impact the legal
challenges already being made to the tax in the UK courts, but
that she believed when somebody was forced to cut down on their
heating and electricity it represents a violation of their human
rights. She said that “judges should take that into
account”.
Her report drew a blistering reaction from the Conservative Party
chairman, Grant Shapps, who questioned whether Rolnik, who is
from Brazil, can criticize the UK when in her country there are
50 million people living in inadequate housing. He also said she
had talked to no one in government who had implemented the
policy.
“It is completely wrong and an abuse of the process for somebody
to come over, to fail to meet with government minsters, to fail
to meet with the department responsible,” he told a BBC radio
program Wednesday.
The department for Work and Pensions issued a more measured
statement: "It is surprising to see these conclusions being
drawn from anecdotal evidence and conversations after a handful
of meetings, instead of actual hard research and data. Britain
has a very strong housing safety net, and even after our
necessary reforms we continue to pay over 80% of most claimants'
rent if they are affected by the ending of the spare room
subsidy."
Previously Rolnik as the UN’s special Rapporteur on housing has
considered housing problems in Rwanda, Kazakhstan and Indonesia
but says that Britain’s housing crisis is an equally urgent
matter for investigation.