Our latest cuts piece in the New Statesman – this one is a collection of interviews with people I spoke to the week before last about their experiences with the bedroom tax. They’ve been cut loose by politicians, as you might expect. Making sure that people who aren’t very well off are securely housed is not one of austerity’s priorities.
“This tax targets people who know how to fight for improvements and rights as a community – older people like Roach and Jill, who campaigned for better housing and now work in a community centre that runs bedroom tax surgeries and provides hot meals for people who can’t afford them. Many of the people at the largely tenant-led bedroom tax meetings across Merseyside are middle-aged or older. They’ve been in the same homes for many years and have so-called “spare” rooms because their circumstances have changed (often their kids have grown up and left). Because they’ve been around for a while, they have networks in their neighbourhoods, contacts and a lot of experience in seeing off threats. You can see exactly why politicians of all stripes would want to target them with a bedroom tax and break them up.”