Austerity or Class War?

[DanaC]

Amongst the many austerity measures brought in by the current government are a raft of changes designed to completely overhaul the benefits system.

Some of the most controversial changes are to housing benefit. These changes are about to bite as the new financial year begins in April.

On face value the changes sound like they are an attempt to make the system fairer. certainly the word fairness gets used an awul lot in the discussions. It is unfair, say ministers, that a family in receipt of benefits should be able to live in a house and area which ordinary working families could not hope to afford. So, a hard cap on total payments for housing benefits has been introduced. Rather than than housing allowances being tagged wholly to the value of rents in the are, theynow take account of that local value but are hardcapped.

In the South, and particularly in London, this effectively prices housing benefit claimants out of the private rental market entirely and there is a woefully low number of social houses available.

At the same time, a second limit has been placed on housing benefit, in what has bene termed in the press a 'bedroom tax'. If a house is under occupied housing benefit will be reduced for every unoccupied bedroom.

The trouble is that a) families change their composition as people grow up, move out, move in, die, separate, divorce etc and this effectively forces a house change with any family change resulting in a spare bedroom. This might include cases of family breakdown, where a father has a room for their child to stay in at weekends, but whose residence is counted as elsewhere and therefore...the 'bedroom tax' applies. In the event of bereavement (either a partner, or a parent of adult child) there's a year's grace before it kicks in.

And b) there aren't enough different sized houses available in the social sector for those people to move into. Thus pushing them onto the private sector where the prices soar and the state of the housing is barely regulated in practice.

Alongside these changes are changes to Council tax benefits which will see many families currently exempt become liable for a portion of that tax. As well as changes to the levels of other benefits. And currnetly they're bringing in a cap on the rate at which benefits rise (1%) because, we are told , it is unfair that benefits are rising at a higher rate than wages.

A Department of Work and Pensions spokesperson said: "It's not right that benefit claimants can receive higher incomes than families who are in work. That's why we're introducing a cap on benefits – to restore fairness back into our welfare system while ensuring that support goes to those who need it. Local authorities must consider the individual circumstances of the household and they must absolutely not apply a blanket policy of moving homeless families to different districts."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/fe...n-benefits-cap


Fair, it's all about what's fair. Except that it isn't really.

Firstly a lot of the people claiming those benefits are actually not unemployed, they're on low wages. So not only have their wages all but frozen, now their benefits are also being capped, and their homes rendered untenable.

Secondly, the cost to the tax payer of maintaining those families in their current homes is often cited as a large part of the benefits bill which needs to be trimmed; except that the costs of dealing with this are much greater if the current projections are to be believed.

A council is planning the largest single displacement of poor people from London in the wake of the coalition government's controversial welfare reforms, singling out more than 700 families to be moved up to 200 miles away.

Camden council said that it would shortly be contacting 761 households, comprising 2,816 adults and children, because the coalition's benefit cap – which limits total welfare payments to £500 a week for families – will mean that they will be unable to afford their current accommodation or any other home in the south-east.

The Labour-controlled council warns that the majority of these families have three children and, once the cap is imposed this summer, will need to find on average an additional £90 a week for rent to remain in their homes – which means "sadly the only long-term solution for some households will be to move".

The local authority says it has been forced to look as far afield as Bradford, Birmingham and Leicester and warns that 900 schoolchildren – more than one child for each class as an average across the borough's schools – face having their education disrupted by the move.

Last month Westminster, a Conservative-run borough, estimated 2,327 households would be affected. In Haringey, one of the four councils chosen to test the changes in April, "temporary accommodation" teams are beginning to collect information about the "income, employment status, personal circumstances and household composition" of 1,000 families who may, according to papers seen by the Guardian, have to move to "lower-cost areas outside of London".

Some authorities have also looked at buying properties outside the south-east. In nearby Brent, where 1,100 households will lose £100 a week after the household cap is introduced, the council has "assessed the costs of procurement in different areas of the country such as the Midlands — including Coventry and Birmingham. We have procured properties so far in Luton, Slough, High Wycombe and Hertfordshire."

One single mother in Camden with four children, all under the age of 10, told the Guardian: "I want to stay where I am for my children's education. What it seems like is the government just want London for the rich. They want to move people on benefits to poor areas." Her rent is £340 for a two-bedroom flat in Camden. When the cap comes into effect, the government will reduce her housing subsidy to £204. This leaves a shortfall of £136. The council has offered to rehouse her in Liverpool.

Is that really what we want for our nation? Whole regions and the capital city set aside for one economic class? And the service workers...how far will theyhave to commute to serve those who can afford to live there?

It isn't just the South. The caps and cuts are forcing high numbers of individuals and families out of their current housing and onto an already overburdened and hard to regulate private sector, with many projected to become effectively homeless (living in shelters, low rent hotels, sleeping on family's couches).
Some estimates coming from the local authorities in the North suggest there may be a cost half a billion to their region.

There aren't enough houses of the right size to accomodate all the different family variations perfectly. Not even taking social and private housing together. It is going to cost the country millions to disrupt and distress individuals and families (single people under the age of 30 will no longer be helped to the tune of a one room house or flat, now they'll only be given enough for a room in a shared house) who are already on the edge.

The numbers of people resorting to foodbanks is at a staggering all time high in this country. Many of these people are employed.

Again and again we hear about fairness, setting us against them. Them being anybody poorer than Us. We hear about the 'scroungers' versus the 'strivers'. We hear about unemployed layabouts twitching the curtains of their super lovely large houses as good decent ordinary people struggle out in the winter weather to work and not be able to afford that nice house themselves.

Except, that we're all pretty much the same. The vast majority of people claiming out of work benefits are back in work within weeks or months of being unemployed. It's a small minority who are long term unemployed, yet they have been set up to characterise the entirety.

Of that small minority, a large percentage are people with serious and genuine barriers to employment. People who'd have trouble getting and holding a job in a time of plenty and confidence. In a climate of high unemployment, insecure jobs and low wages, they don't stand a bloody chance and hammering them for continuing not to have a job is pointless cruelty.

Most of the people claiming benefits are either in work, temporarily claiming out of work benefits, or have genuine need to be permanently supported (for example in the caseof disability).

But the fairness debate is so frustrating. Again and again people show that they are in favour of cuts. damn right! To other people's benefits. Everyone has someone to point at and say, yes, but that's not fair. And all of us struggle more because of it. It is a false divide that we are being offered, betwen the deserving and undeserving poor, between the shiftless and respectable, between the worthy and the unworthy of support.

And it's a false economy. It costs us more to engage in this rampant cruelty, than it does to offer genuine and well-funded support. Clever though. As the costs mount the paymasters can say....look, the benefits system is breaking....it is costing too much we must cut. And cut. And reshape. Until it becomes a creaking and broken thing...and they can say again, look it is broken, it costs too much it is inefficient, we must reshape and cut. Rinse and repeat.