It's just another attack on the people at the bottom of the ladder, allowing more money to be directed to the people who already have plenty. Just like all other Tory policies it is about as well thought out as placing a multiple murderer in the same accommodation block as vulnerable people, (oooh, I'd love to tell you all about that one but you'll just have to wait).
Now you may think that spending public money on spare rooms is a waste, but it's not that simple, here's a couple of examples:
Person living alone, with custody of his kid at weekends, if he is unable to find the extra cash to pay for the kids room, then the kid loses out and dad moves to a bedsit.
Couple whose son is serving in the army, he stays with them when on leave as it has been his home all of his life before signing up. Parents must move to a smaller property and he gets to spend his downtime on a sofa.
That's just a taster, there are plenty more examples out there if you look.
Here's the rub, if these people are in social housing, then rents are low and the money paid out for a two bedroom flat is less than half the cost of a private rented one bedroom flat, so by moving people into smaller properties the bill for housing benefit actually increases.
It would actually be fairer if it was a bedroom tax, because then the people with 3 houses and more than half a dozen spare rooms would have to pay out, this would then be able to fund the building of new social housing and alleviate the problem of these empty rooms. That would then lessen the divide in rental costs between private and social accommodation, as the demand would fall and less people would be exploited by exploitative landlords.But it is public money I hear you say, we need to not waste it? Well if we need to address the empty rooms and under occupation of houses paid for with public money, then why have we been paying for this? (see pic)
It's "The Old Barn", it has been heavily funded by public money to the tune of many thousands of pounds (about 25k pa) over the last few years, it has a couple of spare bedrooms and will not be taxed any more than a bog standard 3 bed detached house in your town, despite being worth more than a million quid.
Let's make it a real bedroom tax and work out the potential rental value of this country pile and charge the owner 25% of it for the empty rooms. Yes, the owner, because although this house was heavily subsidised with tax payers money, it is in fact privately owned, by Tim Loughton our "local" MP, I use quotes because he's not very local at all, but that's OK because when he wants to visit us here in Shoreham he can get us to pay his travelling expenses for the nearly 40 mile trip, even though we already paid for his house, which he claimed was his constituency residence despite being many miles outside the constituency border.
There are only so many beans in the can, and if one person takes more than his share, then others have to go without, simple concept, easily missed.
HHH
*All statistics approximated due to me not being arsed to do proper research.
