Joe Halewood has posted a very interesting article: it’s about a letter from the Knowsley Housing Trust which says that the recipient may be considered to have intentionally made themselves homeless if they’re evicted because of rent arrears. The letter also says that social services will be advised if there are children in the home:

People have read this as “pay your rent, or we’ll come for your kids,” as well they might.

As Joe says:

“Knowsley Housing Trust (KHT) are sending out a standard letter which tenants are reading as “pay your rent or social services will come and take your children off you”..and you thought social landlords couldn’t get any more incompetent!

“The prior paragraph sees KHT assume that any tenant evicted for arrears will be declared intentionally homeless by the council – that not paying your rent means you WILL be found intentionally homeless and that is a huge assumption and an overt scare tactic in itself by KHT and this predicates the threat of your children being taken into care. Councils have to look at the individual circumstances of each case under homeless legislation and eviction for arrears does NOT equate with being found intentionally homeless as KHT strongly allude it does.”

So.

I’m posting this, because I know that this fear of losing your kids if you can’t pay the bedroom tax looms large in many minds. I know this because people have told me about it. They certainly told me about it when I was travelling around in the northwest for this recent article about the bedroom tax. I wrote then:

“The other concern people have is that social services will remove children from parents who are found to be struggling due to the extra cost. People say this a lot. “Nobody wants social services butting their noses into people’s business, because it’s a danger game when a mother hasn’t got enough money to feed her kids properly,” Jill says [at the West Everton Community Centre]. “She’s going to starve herself to make sure her kids are fed. You’re hearing about kids being taken away when they shouldn’t be.””

A similar point was raised on at least two more occasions by people I met at the bedroom tax campaign meetings I attended during that trip. One man I was speaking with said that the campaign groups wanted to get more young people involved. “They’re probably worried about social services coming round,” a woman at our table said. I had a similar conversation with two women after a meeting in central Liverpool.

This all put me in mind of a conversation I had a couple of years ago with a Wisconsin woman called Pat Gowens. I’d rung Pat in the first instance to talk about Wisconsin’s appalling workfare programme, which she had some experience of. She and other women had set up Welfare Warriors – a member-led campaign made up of people who were directly affected by that punitive W2 workfare scheme. We talked about that for some time and then our conversation moved onto other work the group was involved in. That work, it transpired, included representing women whose children had been removed by social services. “They come into your homes,” Pat said, “usually on an anonymous call, or [a call from] your husband. They decide you’re a bit crazy, or your house isn’t clean enough – a mother didn’t vacuum her carpets, or just swept them [or something like that]. Then, they take your kids away. You used to get them back in six months. Now it can be six years. If you want them back you have to do parenting classes, therapy, anger management, domestic violence therapy.”

The group is still active – you can see their facebook page here – and they’re still running articles with titles like Give Us Back Our Children.

The fear of losing your children is an appalling one. Most people ought to know that. And it is very bad to know that people fear losing their children because they can’t pay a tax that they should never have had to pay in the first place.

Joe Halewood is absolutely right when he says:

“Social landlords are in a position of authority when it comes to housing matters. Tenants assume that landlords know housing law and good practice therein and tenants in large part have to trust social landlords.”

He’s also right when he says that anybody who is abusing that power needs to be named and shamed. There is something very unpleasant going on here. Talk about a nasty way to keep people who don’t have money in line. Pure evil.

Update: info here on this situation from the Shelter site (h-t Mr Bogbrush on facebook):

“Can social services take children away because the family is found to be intentionally homeless?

No. Social services can only forcibly take a child away from her/his parents if there is clear evidence of a risk of abuse and a court order has been obtained. If social services offer to house the children but not the rest of the family, the parents are not normally obliged to accept this option.

If social services offer to house the child alone, you should get specialist advice from a local Shelter advice centre or other housing advice agency immediately.”

I wrote this update Sunday 3 November –  “it seems that KHT is “reviewing” its customer communications after that original letter went viral on it. Bit more than that needs reviewing if you ask me” – but it seems that review of customer communications has to do with another incident to do with eviction and not this one. What a mess – how many shambles can a trust have? Will post more on that when I get info through.

Update 4 November: The “review of customer communications” has to do with this incident – “A Merseyside community formed a ring of steel around a bedroom tax victim’s house after fears her possessions would be removed without her consent.” And see this, too – that ring of steel action apparently led to KHT announcing that anti bedroom tax campaigners were a danger to staff. Unreal. Were HAs not expecting direct action as a response to this tax?

Update 5 November: You’ll see in the comments that the review of customer communications is to do with the social services letter. See comment below from Huyton Freeman and watch the links below for updates:

“I posted the letter on my blog http://www.huytonfreeman.co.uk/ and on http://www.facbook.com/huytondi any further responses from KHT will also be published there and @huytonfreeman on twitter.”

Let’s see what KHT comes back with.

Video from outside the Supreme Court today where five justices found that government “back to work” schemes were legally flawed.

Have put a full transcript of Tessa Gregory’s speech below as it appears in the video – in it, she details plans to pursue repayments for sanctions.

“We’re delighted that the Supreme Court has unanimously dismissed the government’s appeal and confirmed that the regulations under which most of the back to work schemes were initially created were unlawful. The court upheld the findings that Iain Duncan Smith acted beyond the powers given to him by parliament by failing to provide any detail about various schemes in the regulations and in any event, the required notice provisions have not been complied with.

Shortly after lodging his appeal, Iain Duncan Smith rushed emergency legislation through parliament which retrospectively amended the law. This effectively overturned the court of appeal’s judgement and shamefully rendered much of its own appeal proceedings academic.

Indeed the Supreme Court was moved to note that the government has rather unattractively taken up court time and public money seeking to establish something that it had already sought a rememdy for in parliament.

We have already issued judicial review proceedings challenging the validity of that retrospective legislation which following today, we will seek to extradite.

It is also though important to note that the judgement has real practical implications.

In addressing one of our arguments, the court found for the first time that the government has a duty as a matter of fairness to provide from the outset enough information for jobseekers about a given scheme to enable them to make informed and meaningful representations.

A failure to provide that informtion is likely to make it unlawful for the DWP to require people to participate on a given scheme, or to dock their benefits if they fail to do so. The court found that on the facts of this case, the secretary of state did not provide our clients with adequate information. For Jamie Wilson, who was stripped of his benefits for six months, that means that notwithstanding the restrospective legislation, we will now seek repayment of his benefits on that basis. We know that like Jamie and Cait, hundreds and thousands of other jobseekers have not been and continue not to be provided with information about the dizzying array of schemes. Following today’s judgement, any such jobseekers can object to sanctions that have been imposed and seek repayment of their benefits. It is staggering that Iain Duncan Smith has found himself in this position even after fast-tracking emergency restrospective legislation through parliament specifically designed to prevent repayment of benefits.

We intend to work with advice organsations to ensure that following this ruling, affected individuals have the right information and assistance. This case has expsoed an utterly shambolic system, where individuals are routinely being stripped of their subsistence level benefits after receiving inadequte and inaccurate information. Iain Duncan Smith has sought to brand our clients as job snobs. In reality, all they have been seeking is a system
that is fair and transparent.”

Because nasty, biased rubbish like On Benefits and Proud continues, I’m posting more interviews with people who are on JSA and/or who are dealing with street homelessness below. The aim is to give more examples of reality and to outline some of the real reasons why people need benefits from time to time.

And because I’m all for the balance that is missing from tripe like OBAP, I’ve also posted – after each of the three interviews below – a few words about people from the monied classes who’ve fallen on hard times at one point or another, but who were either paid handsomely to leave their places of employment, or, in the case of the one and only Chris Huhne (whose miraculous and miraculously fast rehabilitation continues to annoy me badly), were welcomed back after their self-inflicted “misfortunes” and handed high-profile gigs like shit never happened. Some of the people I’ve written about below also had unfortunate experiences – they lost a business, or a job and/or started drinking heavily to cope with those things. The difficulties that they are in now would be viewed as self-inflicted by the political class and thus deserving of no sympathy whatsoever. Unlike Huhne, though, they’re expected to pay with everything, forever. They’re from the wrong class.

I’ve said this many times before. It’s not just the fact that people are being forced into poverty that I find upsetting, although I do find that upsetting (I’m pretty sure that most people do). It’s the fact that people who having nothing are being targeted so viciously, while charlatans who have everything are allowed to carry on and even enjoy themselves and are paid to do it. If the wheels come off, the people who have the least are made to suffer the most, while people who have the most suffer the least.

Anyway. I’ll keep finding people to speak with and posting their stories – and posting comparative stories about the evil rich.

——-

Let’s start with (I’ll bet some people will say she shouldn’t have a TV):

Susan Roberts, aged 60, Stroud. On JSA. Interview and recording made at lunch at the Marah drop-in centre in Stroud:

“I’m 60. My job is – I used to do cleaning work, so [the jobecentre wants me looking for] cleaning work, or shop work or kitchen work. That’s the jobs that I’m supposed to be getting – but when you tell them your age, that’s it. They say that you’re too old.

“I think I’ll be nearly 63 when I retire, because my retirement age is March the 6^th and I’ll be nearly 63. They’ve stopped me (my benefits) three times [through sanctions]. It’s all because I’m not good enough looking for work at my age. They say I haven’t filled in the sheets and that I could have it stopped again. A month ago, they threatened me again and it’s still going on, but every time I go in [to sign on], once a fortnight. I get worried. I only get about £65 a week and I got to pay all my bills. By the time I get my shopping, I got about £20 left- for the TV licence, water rates, electric. [And people have to pay] gas if you got it, but I’m on electric. Some people have got both, haven’t they. When my budget loan finishes, [Susan is paying off a loan], that’ll go back up again.

Continue reading →

Below, I’ve posted four transcripts from interviews I’ve done with people who’ve been unemployed for several years. (Update 3 October – 5 interviews now as I’ve added another).

But a small rant first:

One of the reasons I’m posting these transcripts is that in the last week especially, we’ve not heard enough from people who’ve actually experienced long-term unemployment. We’ve heard from people who have a lot to say (and who are paid to say it) about people who are unemployed, but I feel that we could do with more from people who know the experience.

I also feel that we need to get away from some of the language that the media class uses to describe people who have these experiences. We definitely need to get away from words like “scrounger” and “workshy.” We definitely need that. But there are days (this is one) when I feel that we also need to get away from some of the crap that the so-called liberal media sprays around.

One thing I dislike, for example, is the use of words like “vulnerable” and “the poor” in reporting on people affected by austerity. (George Monbiot will even run to “the very poor” when he gets a tail wind).

I find the word “vulnerable” particularly tiring. I used it myself to begin with and then I got very tired of it. It’s patronising from that end. It sets people apart as victims – people whose life fortunes must always turn on the actions and philanthropy of the sort of well-appointed journos, etc, who like to use words like “vulnerable.” It sets people apart as Others and as objects for a bit of a sad read and middle-class pity. I’m over it. It’s become a kind of lazy media rhetoric. It doesn’t tell people’s whole stories. It certainly doesn’t tell the story of the political class that has robbed people of wages and services. And that is my point. There is nothing pathetic about the people whose stories I’ve posted below. They are simply people who, like most people, made the terminal mistake of not being born to immense privilege and of living in an era where that mistake can destroy you if you require a wage and public services. Continue reading →