Abolish the Bedroom Tax event: Saturday 13th July 2013

ONE HOPE, ONE VOICE, ONE BEDROOM TAX TO ABOLISH

Saturday 13 July 2013
1pm: Meet at Parliament Square
2pm: Set off for 10 Downing Street for delivery of personal letters to the PM
3pm: March to Trafalgar Square for rally till 5pm
More information: wewillbeheard.org and falseeconomy.org.uk

We Will Be Heard have been inviting anyone who's been affected by the Bedroom Tax to write a letter to the Prime Minister, and copy it to their campaign, so that they can add it to the Personal Petition they will deliver to the PM on Saturday. Unfortunately the deadline is today, but perhaps they will accept late entries!

Meanwhile, following the previous post by the beleaguered Marmoset, we were sent this correspondence by another Deptford resident... 

Dear Joan Ruddock,

I am a carer for my Aunt who is 92. She has glaucoma and is almost blind. Her mobility is very bad and she is in a lot of pain. I am with her every day for five hours or more and as she is housebound I do all her chores, shopping, hospital visits etc. I exist on carers allowance and income support and get housing benefit. I share a council house with my brother, who works and pays half the rent. We have lived here for 35 years. As the property has 3 bedrooms and we only use two, I will have to pay bedroom tax out of the paltry amount of money I am expected to live on. Downsizing is not an option as the reason I am able to look after my Aunt is that she lives in the next street and I can be there in minutes. My brother and myself have saved the government thousands of pounds by looking after my Aunt and my mother, when she was alive, in their own home. I do all this work for about £1.50 an hour, which is what these benefits work out to, and now we are getting kicked in the teeth by this government. I phoned the DWP and was told the cut in housing benefit was an incentive to look for work. I pointed out I was a carer and was met with silence. I was wondering where you and the Labour party stood on this very depressing matter?

Yours sincerely, -----

Dear Mr ----,

Thank you for your email about the bedroom tax, I am sorry for the long delay in responding to you.  I receive a huge volume of post and this can lead to a delay in my reply. Please be assured that the Labour Party has vehemently opposed the bedroom tax. Liam Byrne, the Labour Shadow Work and Pension’s spokesman has said,

“This wicked bedroom tax is going to rip neighbour from neighbour, force vulnerable people to food banks and loan sharks, and end up costing Britain more than it saves as tenants are forced to go homeless or move into the expensive private rented sector. It is the worst possible blend of cruelty and incompetence. The Government must think again and drop this tax now.”

I agree with him and I hope that this reassures you as to where I and the Labour Party stand. With regard to your own case, have you been in touch with the council about your circumstances?

Yours sincerely, Rt Hon Dame Joan Ruddock MP

Unfortunately, Lewisham Council has not been particularly proactive in finding ways round the Bedroom Tax. It should follow the lead of Leeds Council who have found a loophole: it is reclassifying rooms in its social housing as 'non specific'. It has identified 837 spare bedrooms, and people who have already lost out because of the tax will be refunded. They say it would cost the council more to chase up rent arrears and evict people. Read the recent Telegraph story.

This Saturday campaigners will also be remembering the grandmother who took her own life and left a suicide note blaming the bedroom tax. Read the Newstatesman story.

There is also a Facebook group for the campaign.  

Bedroom taxidermists - who's stuffing who?

So, being unemployed and therefore dependent on the state, I eventually gave up waiting for Lewisham Homes to process (or lose) my ''underoccupation'' forms and went down to the Trading Places event held at the Civic Centre in Catford to see what kind of properties came up.  You see, I've had £15 knocked off my benefit each week because the flat I've lived in for 29 years, which was let to me as a single person in the olden days when the estate was ''hard to let,'' was originally designated as having 2 bedrooms.  Sooner or later, I'm going to start getting letters about arrears, threats of eviction leading inevitably to eviction proper.  Because, maybe I should be able to but I can't live, light and heat my flat on £50 a week.

A Saturday morning, take my bike from the study - sorry spare bedroom, because there's no safe provision for bikes outside, or indeed any storage room whatsoever, and cycle down to Catford.  As my 80-year old mother lives just over the Ha'penny Hatch and I don't run a car, I don't want to go too far out of the area where I've lived for 45 years, and I need to be able to get there quickly as she grows frailer.

Right, I set to searching for nearby one bedroom flats with owners wishing to move to two bedroom flats.  And, guess what, all the one bedroom flats available bar one were more expensive than the flat where I am now.  The only cheaper place was a tenant on the 4th floor of another Crossfields flat.  I contact the tenant but my flat, also top floor, was unsuitable because of the difficulties getting shopping and children and buggies, etc, up the stairs.  Clearly they need somewhere closer to the ground.  Or a lift. 

It looks like, in order to save money from the housing benefit bill, they've come up with the so called bedroom tax, but the only smaller places coming up on offer are more expensive, so the housing benefit bill will increase, on the smaller flat because the bedroom tax doesn't apply, and if my 2 bedroom flat is let to a claimant with children, then the bedroom tax won't apply here either.  It's the tax payer who ends up paying more.

Ironically, a big part of the reason I never bought my flat at a discounted rate (when I was earning money and had good health) was because I believe in social housing.  But this is not so for many others and I believe a good number of smaller flats around here have disappeared from social housing altogether.  New social housing stock has not replaced them either.

The result for me: no security of tenure, nowhere cheaper to go to, potential loss of the home where I've lived for a tad under 30 years, potential loss of quick access to my elderly mother.  The personal solution, of course, is to simply move somewhere more expensive but, with the meds for my dodgy kidney, I'm unlikely to be in full time work for a while and the increased financial burden will fall on, well, you all.

You'd think that Lewisham Homes would help tenants out on this one.  Indeed, they appear to have paid someone to come in on a Saturday morning to phone round tenants in April this year.  And post the application forms for the underoccupation scheme - help with removals, etc.  But, having filled in the forms, physically delivered them to the address on the forms (Eros House) and got a date-stamped photocopy of them, those forms – together with personal passport details and billing details – never got to where they were supposed to.  The lack of care over personal information, in an age of identity theft, is truly astonishing, but that's by the by.  So more forms posted out, more journeys, this time to the Pepys Housing Office back near the beginning of June.  Since then, nothing.

The fruit of 2 journeys to Catford, 2 journeys to Pepys, postage costs, form printing, photocopying, paying overtime for weekend office work, and dealing with an increasingly irate Marmoset is absolutely zero.  Well, it's less than zero, actually, because someone has to pay for all that.  I wonder who.

Creekside Centre celebrates three years of Rivers & People Project this Sunday

Sunday 7th July, 12pm to 3.30pm –  It's a WRaP
The final event of the Rivers and People Project celebrates its three year duration with crab races, wildflower bingo, traditional fairground games and food – including barbecue and cake – plus puppet theatre Monkey Biz. All welcome.

Creekside Discovery Centre, 14 Creekside, Deptford, SE8 4SA
www.creeksidecentre.org.uk

Bermondsey Carnival – Saturday 6th July, 12noon-8pm

A free family event around the bandstand in Southwark Park with live music, a second-hand and vintage market, licensed bar and Bond’s Victorian Funfair. Local young people will also be taking part in a parade and the Mind Your Own Business Live strand for teens includes a dance and music programme, advice on how to set up your own business, a giant climbing wall and a music bus.

And only a short bus or bike ride away...

More info from Southwark Council.
Note admission policy: no dogs, alcohol, bikes, drugs, weapons or glass.

Garage Sales at the Deptford Project as occupants make way for the new development...

The future of the Train Café still hangs in the balance and depends very much on the will of the powers-that-be wanting to find a way for it to stay. However, the staff have already found new jobs, so the carriage may not be able to stay open much longer in its present location. (See our previous post Wave goodbye to the Deptford train cafe). Update: Last day of business is Saturday 6th July.

Meanwhile the artists and businesses who have been occupying the development site are on the move. Those at Deptford Project Arches (behind the train) must be out by Sunday. Studio Raw have just relocated their container to the old Tidemill school playground. Union Cycle Works are keeping their new location under their hat.

Borohome.co.uk (aka Boro) have not yet found a suitable new home. They are brilliant recyclers (or upcyclers to use the fashionable term) and make old objects beautifully new again, specialising in furniture (tables and chairs), textiles (great bags!), jewellery and other objects.

Check out their Closing Down Sale at their Arch on Friday 5th (midday – 5ish) and Saturday 6th (10am–5pm). Some of the sale items will be the oddities they have collected for projects never brought to fruition, but there will also be the chance to grab something at a greatly reduced price from the range of upcycled items they sell at Columbia Road. Everything must go!

Next weekend, it's the turn of the artists in St Paul's House Project Space to have a clear out. They're having a Garage Sale starting on Friday 12th July, 6-9pm, and continuing on Saturday & Sunday 13th & 14th (12-6pm) until everything's gone...by which time it may be confirmed whether they will find a new home in part of the old Tidemill School...

Also see The Deptford Dame's latest news on this development: Cathedral's Richard Rogers-designed Deptford Project (or Deptford Rise, as their partners Union House call it) might be downgraded a bit now that Rogers' firm has pulled out from taking the project through to completion, and a cheaper architect takes over.